Chinese History under Construction "again"
: The Northeast History
Project
It is a common knowledge among the Chinese history students that the history narratives written later often get more detailed with new episodes added, sometimes expanding the story back to the farther antiquity. The Northeast History project, which had been carried out for the period of five years that ended in 2007, masterminded and orchestrated by the Chinese Communist government, in an attempt to incorporate the history of some ancient Korean states into the Chinese one, was just another example we, as history student, had the luck to witness happening before our eyes.
It was mainly to fortify the national integration and territorial claims when they did that for Tibet 1) and another for the Uigur or Xinjiang region. 2) But the Northeast History Project 東北工程 over the history of the ancient Korean states seemed to carry much more complicated and far-reaching spectrum of interests and reverberations for China under the Chinese Communist Party (“CCP” hereinafter), casting a somewhat ominous pictures for the future of the most power-dense quarter of today’s world. Carried out behind the façade of a domestic academic project, the CCP initiatives on the history subject did not get enough international attention that it should deserve for its augural implications in the CCP’s scheme for global hegemony. To properly understand the true dimension of multi-layered intentions of the Northeast Project, we need to start with its time setting from the perspective of the Chinese society.
1) Southwest Project (西南工程) was initiated under the order of Deng Xiaping in 1986 and was carried out by Chinese Tibetology Research Center (国藏学研究中心).
2) Northwest Project (西北工程) of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) was implemented for five years from 2002 to 2007 to justify the incorporation of the Uigur region into China in the context of history.
The Background for the Northeast History Project
The concerns of the CCP in rushing the
potentially volatile Northeast History Project would fall into three areas.
Firstly, with the introduction of the
scientific approaches in the field of historical study, the pressure for the
historical rewriting had augmented gradually due to the accumulation of new
evidence and findings that chipped away at the notion of the
“Yellow River Civilization” as the sole and dominant source of the cultural
influence in the East Asia, which served as framework of the Synocentrism.
Secondly, witnessing the rise of Hallyu, the Korean Wave, the CCP came to apprehend the importance of the soft power and decided they could not afford to let the Korea represent the attractions of the East Asian traditional culture any further. They wanted a soft power that would match their hard power, or something that would make the expansion of their influence, if not territory, much easier. While reconstructing their own cultural assets from the olden times for the global attention on one hand, they resorted to the history rewriting to expand their claim on the cultural assets, which had proved always successful and profitable throughout millennia of their historical experience.
Thirdly, the need to secure more historical rationale in preparation for the possible territorial dispute over their Northeastern provinces-the relatively new territory that was acquired in the modern time, not free of challenges, legal and historical, from the neighbor countries, especially from (the Unified) Korea.
To
understand the gravity of this affair over the subjects of history and culture,
we need to go over each of the concerns involved here in the Chinese
perspective.
The needs for history rewriting from
the science
Even before the introduction of the scientific approaches based on the archaeology, linguistics and other scientific approaches that the Chinese history as written by the ancient historians had met the probing eyes from a different perspective. The Qing Dynasty, founded by the Jurchens from Manchuria, did not take in the idea of the Huaxia supremacy in its whole, and its scholars tried to see the Chinese history objectively. Yet they had their own limits since they were to be the beneficiary of the Synocentrism themselves, on top of the lack of the scientific tools in their hand.
The heavy dependence on the literature was broken only with the arrival of archaeology in the study of Chinese history coming into modern times. Since 1930s the new school critical of the traditional historical narratives, called Gushibian 古史辨, often translated as Doubting Antiquity School, formed the mainstream of historical studies depending much on the archaeology and scientific reasoning and began to question the validity of the historical narratives by the ancient Chinese historians.
The movement eventually led to the admission of the multi sources of Chinese culture in denial of the “Central Plain” theory 3) , which was at the core of the idea of Synocentrism that the ancient Chinese historians had created and fostered for the period of two millennia, that in turn came to be accepted without due diligence by early Western Sinologists, who tended to be undoubting admirers of the Chinese literature and civilization, whose academic authority was protected by the high wall of the Chinese writing system inscrutable to the outsiders, to beget the term “Yellow River Civilization.”
While the pluralistic approach was a departure from the brassbound Synocentrism, it is still a question whether the new pluralistic view on the formation of East Asian culture, in its current state, is balanced enough to be said now close to the whole truth. 4) The further scientific studies made in the late 20th century is revealing the neolithic cultures in the Northeastern China in the lower Manchuria down to Shandong Peninsula preceded and influenced the later cultures in the Chinese Central Plain located around the middle stream of Yellow River, the birthplace of the Huaxia identity and the sacred “Yellow River Civilization”.
The acceptance of the pluralistic view must have been a concession big enough, yet the Chinese authority realized the urgent need to redefine the Chinese-ness and to declare that the northeastern barbarians were actually Chinese, now after two thousand years of denigration, in a pre-emptive measure before science unearths harsher truth.
The most devastating finding lately for the Chinese, based on the scientific approaches,
was that the builders of Northeastern cultures from the neolithic age, who they
want to define as Chinese now, were the Transeurasian language speakers from
which Korean, Japanese, Turkish, Manchurian languages derived.4) Now instead of
using the “Yellow River Civilization’” they have come up with new terms such as
“Chinese Cultural Sphere” and “Confucian Cultural Sphere”. While the
Chinese effort to hold on to their long-held claim for the cultural superiority and influence over the "barbarian" neighboring countries are understandable for its nationalistic motive, it
should not be allowed to cancel out the gravity of the problem that those newly
coined terms create, or perhaps are intended, in blinding the people to the significance
of the underlying deep-rooted cultural demarcation between China and the block
of countries with the Transeurasian language speakers, such as Korea and Japan,
that may have influenced the cultures of the Yellow River more than the other
way around since the neolithic period.
3) Su Binqi 苏秉琦 ( 1909 -1997 )
depended heavily on the archaeological findings and first formulated the
Multi-Region Model around the end of 1970s that exhibited how the multiple
sources of culture since the neolithic era influenced each other to form the
Chinese civilization, in denial of the two-millennia old view of the “Yellow
River Civilization” whereas the Central Plain Chinese enlightened and civilized
all the other surrounding “barbarian”
peoples. His such academic initiatives were further detailed and streamlined by
the Taiwanese-American scholar Kwang Chih Chang (1931-2001), who developed the
Chinese Sphere Interaction model, whereby he urged the historians to conceive
of the East Asian prehistory ( China, Korea and Japan ) as a pluralistic whole.
4) “Triangulation supports agricultural spread
of Transeurasian languages”,
Nature, published Nov.10.2021
The
territorial concern from the modern history of the land
By 1997 China had
surpassed South Korea in the Gross Domestic Product, yet the per capita income
difference was more than 15 to 1. The migration of ethnic Koreans living in the
northeastern provinces in China to South Korea to make money in their grandfathers’
land since early 1990s right after the opening of the diplomatic relationship
was making a drastic demographic and economic change in the region. They were
descendants by a few generations of those who had migrated from Korea in the
19th century and early 20th century, not much different from Japanese
descendants in Brazil.
Yet, what made the area potentially
vulnerable to regional instability from possible future conflict with Korea,
north or south, was the fact that, on top of the area having been part of the
ancient Korean states historically, the China’s modern-time claim to the land
was not free of dispute from Korea either, under the framework of the modern
international law, due to the complicated history involving Japan in the 20th
century.5) The establishment of the State of Manchuria by
Japan in 1932 was based on the historical recognition that the Liaodong 遼東
had not belonged to China. 6) The Korean
economic influence along with the raised ethnic identity felt in the region was
not a thing the Chinese authority could relish for long.
5) Gando or Jiandao 間島 in Chinese is the area in the lower Manchuria that borders present-day North Korea to the south, where the Koreans immigrated and settled from 19th century during the tubulous period. The area had been part of the territory of ancient Korean states, Goguryo and Buyeo. As Qing Dynasty of China allowed their people to move to the area, the two government authorities sat down to settle on the border in 1880s, but failed to reach agreement. Then in 1909 while Joseon was Japanese protectorate, Japan returned the land to the Qing China. It became part of the Manchuria State that Japan set up in 1930s. Now the part of Gando or Jiandao is designated as Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture 延边朝鲜族自治州 under the Communist China.
6) After the signing of the Shimonoseki Treaty in 1885, the Chinese Prime Minister Li Hongzhang 李鴻章 said in his letter to the Qing Emperor that the Liaodong had belonged to Korea historically, in justification of the concession of the area to Japan. The view that Liaodong had belonged to ancient Koreans were reiterated by Mao Zedong in 1958 in his meeting with Kim Il Sung and Zhou Enlai in 1963 with North Korean delegates. The Northeast History Project may have been made to nullify the official views made by the Chinese leaders in the modern times.
The looming
presence of the Korean Soft Power
Since
the establishment of diplomatic relationship between China and South Korea in
1992, the cultural tide was quite one way. It was in 1997 when the Chinese
journalists coined the new term Hallyu, meaning Korean wave in Chinese, after
the syndrome of inexorable spread of popularity in China for the Korean TV
dramas and music, well before the time Korean pop culture began to gain
global attention via YouTube from the early 2010s.7) By around the end of
the Millennium the inner conflict in the Chinese society as surfaced by
Tiananmen Square crisis of 1989 appeared to have subsided as the economy got
better and people became more confident of their future that the economic reform
Deng Xiaoping had promised to bring to their country. As the Chinese society
began to get conscious of their new status and image in the world, the first
country that came to their eye was South Korea. 1997 was a busy year for China.
The Paramount Leader Deng passed away in February. Hong Kong was returned to
China in July. Meanwhile, the TV drama from South Korea titled “What on earth
is Love?” that CCTV started to broadcast from June, made a big cultural splash
across the Chinese society until it finished its 55 episodes in December.
Barely two decades away from the Cultural Revolution, which had denied all the traditional values and destroyed the trappings of the past eras, they suddenly came to rediscover the value of the cultural legacies, of which they found themselves left with almost none, in an unpalatable contrast with the Korean society they could peep into through the K-dramas.8) Left with not much of memory and heritage from their past, the scenes of the Korean families and society they saw in the Korean dramas impressed the collective mind of the Chinese society as an image of what they might have lost. The Hanfu movement started by young Chinese to revive the wears of their olden dynasties beyond the Qipao of the last dynasty Qing, while the Communist party started the Northeast History project in 2002. 9)
7) It is not clear who first the coined
the term Hallyu, the Korean Wave, but the most prevalent argument is that it
first was used by Taiwanese media in 1997. Hallyu is the way the Chinese
words 韓流, which means Korean wave, is
pronounced. It carried the nuance of a warning since it sounded
similar to the cold wave 寒流 used often in the weather
advisory. It meant the phenomenon of Korean popular culture influx into the
Chinese speaking countries and Southeast Asia, spearheaded by the sudden
popularity of Korean pop music and dramas coming into 1990s.
8) The long TV show titled “What on earth
is love?” is a series of family episodes surrounding a new bride married into a
big family. It contained a lot of the cultural elements of the Korean family
and society, many of which Chinese people took as of the Confucian tradition
they had lost, right or wrong. The attraction of the Hanbok, Korean traditional
wear, that the female main character wore as was customary for new brides in
the Korean society of the time, came quite inspiring to the Chinese society.
9) Hanbok is the name of Korean traditional wear from the Chinese characters 韓服, which means literally Korean wear. Koreans for thousand years wore Hanbok, but the word Hanbok was made and kept by Japanese to refer to the Korean traditional wears, not by Koreans themselves. As Hanbok gave way to western styles for Koreans coming into modern times, Koreans began to call their traditional wear Hanbok when they wear it on special ceremonies and social events to tell it from the usual western styles. Hanfu, the word Chinese use for their traditional wear, came from the Chinese 漢服, the clothes of the Han Dynasty. The word was contrived in late 1990s under the cultural movement by Chinese young generations to restore the ancient clothes styles of what they perceive as of core Han people. While Hanfu is not necessarily confined to the wears of the Han Dynasty of two millennia ago, it does exclude Qipao, the only surviving traditional clothes style passed down from the China’s last dynasty Qing, which they regard as of Manchuria, not real Chinese. In that sense the Hanfu movement reflects the idea that Huaxia is the true Chinese, which is in line with the Synocentrism or Huaxia Supremacy. Another criticism, for a different aspect, is that the Hanfu movement is nothing more than a costume play in that the wear style is not traditional since it had failed to get passed down, only being artificially imitated and reconstructed with no tradition of artisanry that had survived.
The ultimate goal of the Northeast History project was to incorporate the history of the ancient Korean polities into the phylogeny of the Chinese civilization. It was both for the territory and the cultural assets at the start. But, as the project proceeded, the significance of its cultural facet grew larger. The Korean historical drama “Dae Jang Geum” broadcasted in China in 2005, while the history project was in progress, was followed by a boom among Chinese young people to take the wedding photos in Hanbok. While the growing admiration among their own young generation for the Korean culture alone was enough of an alarm for the Communist cadre, the periodic news of the Korean TV series sweeping the world, even in such unlikely corners of the world such as Iran, Turkey, Romania and South America, not to say of the Southeast Asia and Chinese speaking countries, 10) soon led to the dire realization that South Korea was representing the East Asian culture and traditions to the world, overshadowing the clout that the term “Yellow River Civilization” had vested China with. The Korean culture that Chinese society admired as they were opening up to the world turned into an eyesore overnight, for many of them who turned nationalistic.
The lifetime of the “Yellow River Civilization” façade was coming to the close, not just because of the scientific findings piled up coming into 20th Century against its notion, but also because of the real-life appeal of the Korean traditional culture that came unveiled and available to the world with the arrival of the New Media platforms such as YouTube and Netflix. The nationalistic movement of the Chinese society was reborn in our time, in part propelled by the jealousy towards its neighbors. And the history rewriting was one of the solutions the Chinese society had always resorted to historically with the successful results. They charged into revamping the perception of China by way of redefining and expanding the Chinese-ness to cover what they thought as the very root of the culture that made South Korea the “Cultural Juggernaut”. 11)
10)
The Korean drama of the biggest worldwide hit ever was Dae Jang Geum long
before the arrival of OTT services such as Netflix. It was first broadcasted in
South Korea in 2004 as a TV series with 54 one-hour episodes. The story was
based on the real story of a girl who entered the royal palace as kitchen
apprentice in Joseon Dynasty about 500 years ago and became the first female
royal physician. Many countries imported the TV show and broadcasted to make a
new record in ratings. In Iran the Korean drama is known to have recorded
higher than 80% viewership. The drama contributed greatly to making the
richness of Korean traditional cultural assets known to the world and preceded
the Korean waves with its popular music, movies, fashion and beauty products in
many countries.
11)
The term Cultural Juggernaut was first used in reference to South Korea in
August 2016 by the magazine The National Interest. The term was used again for
Korean pop culture by New York Times in November 2021 after the success of BTS
and Squid Game.
The first Chinese History Project two
millennia ago
Before we discuss the history projects of the CCP, it is necessary to get some idea on what the history has meant to the Chinese all along. It may come quite new to many that the historical narration could be a governmental project, but in China the history has often been more of the government project than of private academic pursuit from its very start. It was the First Emperor of Qin himself, who unified the Chinese characters out of the different character writings of the seven warring states he had consolidated, that ordered the burning of the classics and historical records relating to the dynasties other than his own. And those scholars who opposed his line were buried alive. 12) It was an event defining, and formative of, the mainstream attitude and manner the history was to be dealt with by the Chinese society thereafter. With the Northeast History Project, the CCP is simply being faithful to the Chinese tradition of rewriting the history as a means, most cost-effective and proven successful so far, to fulfill their expansionist ambition.
12) The Burning of Books and Burial of Scholars 焚書坑儒 took place around 213 BCE during the last years of the First ( and last ) Emperor of Qin Dynasty ( 246 – 210 BCE ). He ordered the burning of books when he found the popular teachings and literature in high praise of the Zhou’s feudal system, which was the ideal form of government in the Confucianism, were against the centralized government system of his dynasty. It was the Confucian guideline of historical narration to sanctify the Zhou Dynasty.
Skip the first comprehensive historical compilation called “Records of the Grand Historian” by Sima Qian of Han Dynasty around the beginning of the first century BC and you are not a serious student of the Chinese history. The “Grand Historian” in the original title of the work was the name of the author’s profession, the government official responsible for the historical records, so the title of the book tells the nature of the historical narrative of the compilation by itself.13) Thus, one needs to understand the historical setting of the author’s time for a proper interpretation of the framework and direction the compilation was written in. How to define China and the Chinese was the big question given for Sima Qian to answer in his time of the grand opening new dynasty Han. 14) The biggest challenge was about how to deal with the Eastern people, called DongYi 15) back then. Following are some key factors in the historical setting of Sima Qian’s time regarding the identity of China:
- During the time of the Warring States (481-221 BCE), there had been formed the Synocentrism, an exclusivism placing Huaxia race as owner of the Chinese culture, associating the Zhou Dynasty with the Huaxia race, dismantling DongYi of its status as superior originator of the culture from the farthest antiquity.
- The
dichotomic notion of China vs. four surrounding Barbarians, that is another
expression of the Synocentrism, was born during this period, not without the
effect of denigrating DongYi as non-Chinese barbarian by way of putting it
along with the three other barbarians.
- Yet,
the Qin Dynasty that preceded the Han, which had unified the Chinese Plain for
the first time finishing the Warring States Period, carried DongYi elements
passed heavily down from their Shang ancestry, thus showing no prejudiced
posture against DongYi, an aberration from the Confucian guideline. 16)
- There
still persisted mythical admiration for DongYi people and Gojoseon to their
northeast that suggested the cultural superiority of DongYi as was well
presented in the Confucius’ Analect, or Lun Yu.
13)
The common English title “Records of the Grand Historian” is word-for-word
translation of the original title the author made, 太史公書. He used the name of his family vocation ‘Grand
Historian’ 太史公, that he inherited from his father,
for the title of his book.
14)
Sima Qian is known to have worked on the compilation intensively during the
period of 109-91 BCE, around the end of the reign of the Wendi (141- 87 BCE)
after the adoption of Confucianism as state ideology earlier in his reign and
the successful military campaign against Xiongnu, Vietnam, Tibet and Gojoseon
(the early ancient Korean state). The period is known to have been the peak of
the early Han Dynasty.
15) The “DongYi” in the Chinese history alluded to apparently different groups of people, straddling the early Han period. DongYi 東夷 literally means Eastern People, with Dong 東 meaning East and Yi 夷 big man with a bow originally. So, to the referrer of “DongYi” it always meant the people to their east, not their own. The nature of the referrers may have changed across the ages as the border of what they perceived as China expanded to the east. As The Chinese polity reached the eastern coast, incorporating the whole Shandong, during the Warring Period and the first “DongYi” people got blended into the Chinese society with the unification of the mainland China, coming into the Han Dynasty “DongYi” began to mean the people living to the northeast region outside China, alluding to the people of the ancient Korean states such as Joseon, Ye, Buyeo, Koguryo, Baekje, Silla and Japan. They were the people who had stayed in the cradle of their civilization from the agricultural neo-lithic era, in the lower Manchuria area. It is probable that the strong demarcation between the Chinese and the DongYi was maintained all along, from the very start, by the unblendable difference of languages between the two. It is plausible that the Chinese knew two “DongYi” people, the “earlier DongYi”, Shandong people the Chinese had perceived as DongYi in the farther antiquity, and the later “DongYi” that Chinese used to refer to ancient Koreans and Japanese, were the people of the same cultural and linguistic root.
16)
Some recent archaeological findings and the literature studies seem to support
the thesis that the Qin people had been originally from Shandong area.
According to the new theory, right after defeating Shang, Zhou ordered the
tribe to move to Gansu area and assigned the task of growing horses for Zhou.
The majority of the terra cotta warriors found in the Tomb of the Qin First
Emperor had the top Knot in their head, the archetypal hair dressing style of
the DongYi that Koreans wore until the early 20th century.
Given his mission to stage the new dynasty Han as the legitimate carrier of the Huaxia identity and secondly to make the Huaxia the originator and main builder of the Chinese civilization, the challenge he had to face was how to deal with the heavy legacy and traces of DongYi, starting with the legends of culture heroes, most of whom were affiliated with DongYi, down to the birth of the Zhou Dynasty. The result was shown in the peculiar way of his work Shiji in narrating the lineage of the Chinese legendary founders to conceal and erase the presence of DongYi in the Chinese uppermost antiquity.
- He chose to avoid using the names of the Three Sovereigns, who were affiliated with DongYi, by way of using new generic terms in place of the proper name of the semidivine beings. 17)
- He changed the lineage of the Five Emperors to skip the Shao Hao, who carried a clear identity as DongYi, thus who, as the first born of Huangdi, would imply his father as DongYi too. 18)
- He removed the name DongYi from the four surrounding barbarians, and now put the ancient Koreans living in the lower Manchuria and the peninsula under the category of the barbarian “ManYi”. 19)
17)
Most of the Chinese historical records, especially before Shiji, put the
three semidivine heros Fuxi 伏羲, Nuwa 女媧, Shennong 神農 as the Three Sovereigns. No other records,
before Shiji of Sima Qian, had dropped Fuxi among the
three. Sima Qian contrived generic names for three sovereigns such
as 天皇 Sky Emperor, 地皇 Earth Emperor and 泰皇 Great Emperor for the first time in place of the proper names of the Three Sovereigns. Among
the three cultural demigods with the proper names, Fuxi had been
described as the ancestor of DongYi in various ancient records, with the
two others also affiliated with DongYi.
18)
Shao Hao 少昊 was described in ancient
Chinese records preceding Shiji, notably in 呂氏春秋 Lushi Chunqui or Master Lu’s Spring and
Autumn Annals, as one of the ancestors of DongYi from Shandong area.
Master Lu (呂不韋 Lu Buwei ) was the
patron of the Qin First Emperor and the book was compiled under
his direction.
19) Man 蠻 in the ManYi 蠻夷 means barbarian or Savage, so now the new expression carried no respectability that the term 東夷 had carried. His such naming may have been designed for two intentions: firstly, to make sure to put the ancient Koreans under the barbarian category to abolish the mythical admiration the Chinese had in the name DongYi and, secondly, to cut the affiliation between the DongYi in the Chinese antiquity and the new DongYi, as the Chinese of his time used to refer to the ancient Koreans.
Especially the Confucius’ comment in the utmost admiration for the Nine Yi, as in none other than Nunyu, or the Analects, was something one could deny or ignore, now that the new dynasty Han had adopted his teachings as the official state ideology and no one could dare to commit the impiety of challenging his sayings.20) Thus, the story of Ji zi was born, an archetypal example of the historical fabrication and the prototypical showcase how fake stories, upheld with tenacity and consistency, could work to serve to affect the course of the real history.
20) In Confucius’ time ( 551-479 BCE ), DongYi meant still those who had originated from the east China, notably in the modern-day Shandong. Confucius tried to set up the perception of new China, clean from the DongYi presence in the history since the mythical age, placing the legitimacy of Huaxia in the Zhou Dynasty, which he tried to feature as inheriting Xia lineage, bypassing the Shang for its affiliation with DongYi in the popular perception. But Mencius (372-289 BCE), whose time belonged to the Warring States period, did not exercise any restraint in revealing DongYi identity in the historical figures though he was follower of Confucius. Nine Yi 九夷, the people Confucius admired, was to be called DongYi by around the end of the Warring States period.
The Span and Gravity of the Northeast History Project
The
series of the history projects in all four directions of their frontiers plus
one for Uigur or Xinjiang were the biggest history rewriting ever made in China
since the Shiji of two millennia ago. Among them the Northeast History
Project seems to carry the heaviest implications in many dimensions that have
potentials to impinge on the course of the future world power politics.
First of all, with the Northeast History
Project China is attempting to redefine the cultural identity China or
Chinese-ness as Shiji did two thousand years ago and, amazingly, both are about
largely the same people, DongYi and ancient Koreans. The intriguing difference
is that while the Grand Historian Sima Qian attempted to conceal and erase the
DongYi elements from the Chinese identity and denigrate the people as
non-Chinese barbarian then, the Chinese this time are endeavoring to declare
the ancient Koreans as Chinese. The hazard of the Chinese attempts this time is
in the fact that the ancient state they covet the most to claim as their own
has Korea as the legitimate inheritor of its very name and cultural heritage.
It gets even more implausible and egregious when one remembers the cultural
legacies from the ancient states have been made so attractive today as result
of what Koreans did in the past thousands of years in preserving and developing
the traditions.
Secondly, the Northeast History Project,
distinct from other history projects, is being followed up heavily with various
subprojects, seemingly under the CCP orchestration, from the global propaganda
campaign to physical construction of new edifices and historic sites in an
effort to solidify the reinvented history.
Thirdly, at stake here can be the cultural
assets of South Korea, one of the leading soft powers in today’s world, which
for now remains in the block of democracy. If the cultural ownership claim was
not their primary concern at the start, there is a plenty of evidence that the
CCP is now using the products of the project as academic context to claim much
of the soft assets of Korea, the success of which would have the immense
potential to tilt the ground of contest for the global hegemony between the two
blocks. 21)
21) The K-Culture has the greatest following in the Southeast Asia with India newly Joining the trend. In terms of population the Southeast Asia and India alone accounts for more than 25 % 0f the world population. The fans of K-Culture fans are dispersed around the globe, indiscriminately of the North and South, in Europe, Russia, Central Asia, South America and Africa and the Middle East. In many of the non-English speaking countries K-Culture is more Influential than the Hollywood, but Korean soft power should not be interpreted as replacing, but as complementing the Hollywood, in that the privation of K-Culture would not always equate to the increased Hollywood influence.
The
Northeast History Project; Brief History and its Focus
The Northeast History
Project was led by the Chinese Academy of Social Science in collaboration with
the three Northeastern Provinces under the name of “Research Projects on the
History and Current Situation of the Northeast Frontier” and was initiated on
February 28, 2002 with its first committee meeting in Beijing after the CCP
approval for the plan in 2000.22) The project is basically made of a
series of sub-projects to produce the academic evidence and contexts to
justify the eventual declaration of the ancient Korean states as Chinese. The
majority of academic efforts would focus on defining, as a Chinese local state,
the massive-scale wars with two Chinese dynasties, Sui and Tang, before its
fall in the 7th century. Their second meeting in July 2003 made it no secret
that the main focus of the project would be on the Koguryo and it immediately
invited the protest from South Korean government. After a meeting between
the two governments on the issue in August next year there seemed to be a halt
to the project for a while, but as the publications were known to have been
produced continuously in line with the project, the Korean government began to
make official protests to the Chinese government in 2006, including at the
summit. 23) In 2007 the project came to the official close, but it only
meant the end of the official academic tasks under the name of the Project. It
was time for follow-up now that the project is over.
22) The founding generation
Communist leaders in China supported the historical view based on scientific
approach and criticized the traditional historical narrative as based on the
Imperial Chauvinism. In his meeting with North Korean delegate of the
historical research in 1963, Zhu Enlai recognized the Liaodong region and the
Amur River basin area in the East Manchuria had belonged to the ancient Koreans
and apologized for the historical fabrication committed by the ancient Chinese
historians, taking example of the story of Ji Zi 箕子, lamenting on the shamelessness of such practice.
The wind turned back towards the old Chauvinistic view by some Chinese
historians from 1980s arguing the Koguryo State had been a local state of China
before it moved the capital to Pyongyang, producing new ancient maps 中國歷史地圖集 in accordance with such view, in annulment of the
historical position of the founding leaders of the Chinese Communist Party.
23) During the period 2003 to 2007 South
Korean President Noh MuHyun had 8 summit meetings with the Chinese President Hu
JinTao, including the one in Seoul in 2007. The suggestion of Wu Dawei 武大偉, the Chinese vice minister of Foreign Affairs in
2004 during his Seoul visit in August that, if South Korean gave up on the
claim on the Gando land, China would not claim Koguryo as ancient Chinese
minority state shows that the initial concern in the project on the Chinese
side was about the territory.
What
Koguryo Means to the Modern-Day Koreans
Koguryo is not just one of the ancient Korean states to the modern-day Koreans. The ancient state, that commanded the northern part of Korea Peninsula and the Liaodong part of Manchuria for most of its active period, is at the core of the Korean national identity.
The Koguryo society was
the trove of the cultural gems and its tomb murals deliver the lives of the ancient
Korean state vividly to our time, manifesting the cultural continuity
of the Korean society at least for two millennia. <From the top,left to right > [1] Koguryo noble
ladies in Hanbok [2] North Korean Delegates in Hanbok at the 2nd International
Student Association gathering held in Budapest in 1947 [3] SSireum, Korean traditional wrestling in
Koguryo mural with the referee present [4] Today’s Ssireum contest
in Korea being broadcasted on national holidays [5] The empty-handed martial
art match was a sport with spectators in the
Koguryo society along with SSireum. [6] Taekwondo in the Olympics First of all, the very country name Korea
derived from this state that had existed for more than 700 years until 668 AD.
The name came to be revived by the middle-age dynasty Koryo (918-1392) before
the last dynasty Joseon.24) The Joseon court maintained the ancestral service
to Koguryo (and Baekje, but not Silla), so historically Koreans can be said to
have placed more legitimacy on Koguryo for their lineage than on Silla, the
dynasty that unified the Korean peninsula after the fall of Koguryo.
Secondly, Koreans love Koguryo the most
for its spirit of valor and military prowess. One of the first three destroyers
of South Korean navy was named after a Koguryo king demonstrating the pride
and respect the modern Koreans have for Koguryo.25) If there takes
place a poll for the most popular ancient state among the modern-day Koreans,
Koguryo will be the overwhelming No.1, in both North and South.
Thirdly, of all the ancient Korean states,
Koguryo is the state identified as the source of the most cultural and personal
DNAs of modern-day Korean society and people. Almost all Korean cultural
legacies that have survived until today, such as the traditional Korean wear
Hanbok, the social culture of civility and high ethical standards, the personal
attributes of the modern Koreans, even traditional sports like Taekwondo and
SSireum, are traceable back to Koguryo.26) Koguryo is the cultural backbone of
today’s Korean society.
The problem is that the majority of
territory of the Koguryo was in the modern-day China in terms of area. The
bottom line here is that this history rewriting under the Northeast History
Project is the first time ever the Chinese have claimed the historical and
cultural ownership on the Koguryo throughout the history of China. In other
words, during the time of more than two millennia since Chinese knew of the
ancient Korean state there had been no single claim by the Chinese on Koguryo
as Chinese, down to as recently as the CCP in late 1970s under Mao Zedong.27)
24) According to the Korean records
Koguryo was established in 37 BCE. It is uncertain from when the ancient state
was called Koguryo, but it is probable that the people and state had existed
from much earlier. The early Koguryo rulers had the national identity as
inheritor of the old Joseon and took it as their national mission to recover
the land of the old Joseon. From the King Jangsu ( reign 412 -491) the
name of the state changed to Koryo, from which the English name
came from.
25)
The other two destroyers were named after Sejong the Great, who invented the
Korean alphabet Hangul in mid- 15th century and Admiral Li Sun-sin, who saved
the country from the Japanese invasion at the end of 16th century.
26) Book of Later Han, Treatise on
DongYi, Koguryo 後漢書 東夷列傳 高句驪describes Koguryo people as keeping
high standard of ethics - “they don’t ever touch other’s belongings left on the
street”, strict laws with habits of keeping clean, walking fast and bowing deep
to others while fond of singing into the night, men and women together,
amazingly like today’s Koreans. Later records added the Koguryo people’s
eagerness for the education of the children and the established schooling
system, even making the today’s Korean society seem just a modern version of
Koguryo.
27) At
no point in time of Chinese history ancient Korean states had been considered
as part of China or Chinese. They were regarded as foreign called DongYi as a
group of people and always treated in the records in the foreign Section.
The
collective memory and Psychology of the Chinese society over Koguryo
Apart from the newly-found value of Koguryo as the trove of cultural gems, Koguryo has served as a psychological weight for more than a millennium for Chinese when they had to deal with Korea, working as a deterrent for any further aggression beyond the status quo with the descendent Korean states. The two colossal defeats China experienced with Koguryo in 7th century remained in the collective memory of the Chinese society as a source of awe and fear. 28) When there was a territorial dispute between China and Koryo in 1387 right after the start of the Ming Dynasty, China enumerated the eight wars between the two countries, starting with the one between Old Joseon and Han Dynasty followed by four wars Koguryo fought with four different Chinese dynasties including Sui and Tang. Notable here is the Chinese recognition of Koryo as inheritor of Old Joseon and Koguryo. In 1488 when a Joseon bureaucrat met a Chinese local official on his way back to his country from the accidental landing in China, the first question from the Chinese was about how Koguryo had been able to defeat China, Sui and Tang, twice, in the wars fought more than eight hundred years before.29) The Koguryo general in the wars remained as a legendary king among the Chinese populace and appear as a figure of military demigod in the Beijing Opera episodes.30) It was only during Imjin War of late 16th century when the Ming force came in Korea to join the fight against Japanese that Chinese found Joseon short of the valor and military strength Koguryo had been associated with. 31) When the history of North Asia is looked at in a big picture, the rise of South Korea these days both in the soft power and in the harder one can be said as resurrection of Koguryo. And that explains why the Northeast History Project of CCP China had so much focus on Koguryo.
28) Sui Dynasty was born
ending the period of division called Northern and Southern Dynasties ( 420-589
) and Koguryo fought the four big wars from 598 to 614, of which the second one
had arguably been the biggest war in the human history before World War 1, with
allegedly 2.3 million people mobilized on the Chinese side. The consumptive war
with Koguryo is often said to have been one of the main causes of the demise of
Sui in 618. The Tang Dynasty fought three wars during the period 0f 645 to 668
with the second war led by the Tang ruler Taizong 唐太宗 himself. The wars with Sui and Tang were fought
by land and Sea and though Koguryo won the first six consecutive wars, but
lost the 7th war with Tang, not by a specific defeat in the
battle fought but more by the internal division due to the exhaustion of
resources after seven decades of war of attrition. The strength of Koguryo
was remembered for a thousand years after the fall of the state by Chinese and
the peoples around and affected the course of history by way of increased
negotiation power for its descendant states. (*episodes with Khitan and
Mongols) Based on the records of
household registrations, Tang population at the time of wars with Koguryo is
estimated at the minimum over 50 million, that of Koguryo at around three
million.
29) 漂海錄 The Record of the Travel Adrift, by Choi Bu 崔溥 published 1490. While the episode of
conversing with the Chinese local official reveals the awe Chinese still held
about the Koguryo state 800 years after its demise, it also shows that Chinese
of the time thought Joseon as descendant and inheritor of
Koguryo.
30) 獨木關 dumuguan , 淤泥河 Yunihe
31)
Objectively Joseon at that time cannot be said to have been weak for its size
of population. Yet, while the unpreparedness after 200 years of peace was the
cause for the defeats in the early part of the war in the land, the
overwhelming military superiority at sea was decisive in stalling the Japanese
further advance.
Chinese
Rationale for their Koguryo Claim
The Chinese rationale for their
first-time-ever claim on the Koguryo history is in dual mode: the
territorialism (Jus Soli) and the personal principle (Jus Sanguinis). That is,
all that happened in the present Chinese territory is the history of China and
the cultural assets of Koguryo is Chinese because now their descendant Koreans
are part of China as ethnic minority.
It is not unusual the cultural ownership
is claimed on the basis of territorialism, but the declaration of the ownership
on the cultural assets, with the historically recognized inheritor of the
culture next door, should require more than just the territorialism for its
justification, especially when the country placing a new claim has no cultural
legacies passed down on the basis of cultural continuity. 32)
While the personal principle may sound
more reasonable and less confrontational, it is questionable whether that
principle can be applied to the Korean-Chinese given the nature of the minority
people in China. They are not of the direct Koguryo descent, but descendants by
a few generations of the Korean immigrant farmers who established there from
the tumultuous period of 19th century. They are not unlike the Japanese in
Brazil, Chinese in USA or, more adjacently, like Koreans in Russia. So, the
claim on the Korean cultural legacies, such as Hanbok, food and folk musical
performances, based on the ethnic Koreans in China are as preposterous and
frivolous as Brazil claiming the cultural ownership on Kimono, USA doing the
same on Chinese calligraphy and Russians on Taekwondo. Showing up the
traditional wear of an ethnic minority in a parade can be a show-up of national
integration, but to declare it as its own cultural tradition is an act of
deception, a cultural larceny in nature.
One of the Chinese assertions was that China had the share in the Koguryo culture because the Koguryo people after the fall had been incorporated into the Chinese society, forming part of the pool of Chinese-ness. But such argument is quite ignorant, in the light of what the ancient Chinese did after the fall of Koguryo. The Tang China used the cultural eradication measures after the fall of Koguryo, including the relocation of the people to their southern and western border areas, such as Gansu and Sichuan. 33) The majority of people stayed in the Korean peninsula now under Silla, while some went to Japan and those remaining in Manchuria moved a bit to the east and established a new state Balhae.
In Japan there are people who still keep the family names with Koguryo origin and cultural elements down from Koguryo, perhaps with more Koguryo contribution in their culture and ethnicity, but they do not claim Koguryo as theirs for that reason. And in the Japanese royal court, the Koguryo music has survived to this day. But in no part of the mainland China survived the community of Koguryo people, where the ancient Korean was spoken with any of the cultural legacies preserved and passed down. If some country is to claim the cultural heirship of Koguryo second to Korea, it should be Japan, not China, when judged from the legacies passed down and preserved in the society.
Some argued that Koguryo was a local government of China, because they paid the tribute to the Chinese states and the Koguryo Kings were given titles by the Chinese courts. The ancient tribute system in the East Asia was a form of reciprocal state-to-state trade in place of the civil border trade that was prohibited in principle, different from the tax system, which was applied to the domestic people and local governments, thus was one way and uniformed in nature. The diplomatic protocol of tributes and title giving could be maintained only when the both parties respected the status quo of power. The tribute from the other party was often bought with the promise of more return when the Chinese court needed a diplomatic relationship with a certain country or when the peace with the other party was desired.34)
32) The territory of Koguryo that
falls on the current Chinese territory was only a part. For the most period of
Koguryo State the Pyongyang was the center of the cultural activities with the
majority of the Koguryo tombs with murals found near Pyongyang, North Korea,
the rest in the basin area of Aprok River, the border between Korea and China,
on the Chinese bank side. Though Koguryo controlled much of the lower Manchuria
with the network of castles, they functioned more as military outposts and municipal
governing hubs than the centers of cultural activities.
33) Ko SeonJi, or Gao Xianzi 高仙芝, the Tang general who fought the Tallas
battle against the Abbasid Caliphate in 751 was the son of Koguryo
refugee.
34) In Guanzi 管子, appears a conversation where Guan Zhong, the top
chancellor of the Qi State, advised to the Duke Huan of Qi of the 7th century
BCE during Spring and Autumn Period to buy the staple items of Joseon and other
countries at a high price to induce them to come visit in person.
發·朝鮮 不朝 請文皮毤.服而以爲幣乎。..故物無主 事無接 遠近無以相 則四夷不得而朝矣。
CCP’s Follow-Up Campaigns after the
Northeast Project
What distinguishes the Northeast History
Project clearly from its peer programs is the fervor and intensity the CCP has
been demonstrating in the follow-up of the history rewriting, that involved a
global campaign of propaganda, the reverse-engineering of the history by way of
the material construction, and the orchestrated media campaign for cultural
ownership claims and other private sector activities emboldened by the CCP
direction.
History rewriting by way of Physical Construction
CCP China opened the landscaped park in the suburb of Beijing, named Zhonghua San Jutang or Chinese Three-Forefather Shrine 中華 三祖堂, after three years of construction. It was actually the first and huge departure from the Shiji of two millennia ago in that the new demigod Chiyou, the archenemy of Huangdi in the record, by the victory over whom Huangdi was able to open the Chinese history, the mythical leader of DongYi and Miao peoples associated with advanced iron culture, joined the forefather group of three.35) Equally worthy of attention about the shrine was its location. There has been the tomb and shrine of Huandi near Xian in the basin of the middle stream Yellow River, deep inland, but now the shrine was built far to the north, away from the Yellow River basin, near to the lower Manchuria where the earliest neolithic agricultural sites in the geographic China were found with the discrete cultural origin that preceded the Yellow River cultures. That was the first big movement that signaled the Chinese intention to redefine Chinese-ness in aberration from the traditional framework of “Yellow River Civilization”. They changed the principal address of Huangdi away from the Yellow River to the north, driving down the hometown of Chiyou to the south, to the effect of bartering the birthplaces of the two demigods, in a furtive concession of the precedency and superiority of the northern cultures over that of the Yellow River.36)
Mural painting of Chi You 35) According to Shiji, the Records of the Grand Historian, Chiyou was the ruler of the Jiuli people 九黎 and his tomb was in Shandong province. Jiuli is believed to be the olden name of Gao Juli or Kogureo 高句麗 and Shandong was regarded as the land of DongYi in the Chinese antiquity. The image of Chiyou was used as mascot by the Red Devils, Korean soccer supporters, at the 2002 World Cup.
36) Apart from the uncouthness of the sculptures for the newly-appointed three demigod forefathers, the Chiyou image in the mural, drawn with a comic book touch, is holding the stone axe to present the barbarian image, in contradiction to the descriptions in the Chinese records, including Shiji, as having the iron age technology feared by others. It is obviously one of the latest examples of historical deception since no historical records had described the demigod as using stones, unravelling the reluctance of the planners of the new shrine to give up the Synocentric framework of the “China vs. Barbarians” even after the membership reshuffling of their forefathers.
The Great “Elastic” Wall and Chinese Empire still growing on papers
In September 2009, two years after the closing of the Northeast History Project, the National Cultural Heritage Administration of China (國家文物局) declared the total length of the Great wall increased from the previous 6300 to 8851.8 kilometers including the newly found extension of its eastern lag from the previous “Shan Hai Guan” to Hu Shan or Mount Hu, near Dandong, the southeastern Liaoning Province, facing Uiju City of North Korea across the Yalu River.37) They had been building a new brick-layered wall about two kilometers long in Hu Shan area since 1992 reproducing the typical look of the Great Wall overriding the ruins of the Koguryo castle. They made the announcement through CCTV in 2009 as soon as they finished the construction and hung up the new sign saying “the eastern Starting of the Great Wall”.38) They claimed they had “restored” the Ming edifice based on the historical records, but there has been found no records for anything more than for the wooden fence in one of the maps from the dynasty.39) Roughly around the same time China began to disseminate the new map of the Han Dynasty, that set the Han China’s border deep into the northern part of peninsula stopping just before Pyongyang, the current capital of North Korea. Unfortunately, the fabricated map landed in the history textbooks in many countries including USA and some Western European countries.
37) Shan Hai guan山海關 ( shown right above) was the custom check point for entering China and in the gate edifice is hung the sign 天下第一關 the First Gate Under Heaven, the expression of which shows the perception of Korea by olden time Chinese as foreign land and their most important neighbor. In the newly built edifice near the border with North Korea stands the sign 虎山 長城 Hu Shan Great Wall, underlines with 萬里長城 東端起点 Eastern Starting Point of the Great Wall. That way the Gerat Wall was extended 300 kilo meters to the east.
38) The proclamation of the new
extension of the Great Wall was made by 徐德明 Xu Deming, a Director of the
National Cultural Heritage Administration and was broadcasted by CCTV 2 on
September 25 2009.
39) The map of the Ming Dynasty shows the Shan Hai Guan as the eastern end of the great wall. There has been found no records of the Great Wall extension in the Ming and Qing Dynasty. The only border-related activities during Ming Dynasty was about 遼東邊藏 or Liaodong Bianzang, a line of linking natural barriers, such as mountains and rivers, and wooden fence for some parts, to fend off the Jurchens. Even that did not reach the Aprok River. Most of the time during Ming Dynasty the Liaodong area was left as buffer alone between Ming and Joseon, which situation gave the time and space for the Jurchens to grow enough to open the Qing Dynasty putting an end to the Ming.
The Global Propaganda of Confucianism
It was not a mere coincidence that they set up their first Confucius Institute in South Korea in 2004. While it is questionable that the social culture of civilities and interpersonal order in Japan and Korea, as presented well in the Korean dramas, were there by the Confucian influence, Chinese Communists found in Confucianism a brand value that would be useful for their global soft power build-up. Li Changchun 李长春, a standing member of the CCP Politburo, laid out the case in his 2011 speech: “The Confucius Institute is an appealing brand for expanding our culture abroad. It has made an important contribution toward improving our soft power.”40) With the institutes mushrooming across the world, the battered “Yellow River Civilization” brand gave way to the newly synthesized terms, such as Chinese Cultural Sphere or Confucian Cultural Sphere, wherein Korea and Japan, like it or not, never fail to be put in the front, like celebrity models in commercials. By April 2020 the Confucius Institute under the control and support of the CCP through the Education Ministry had 545 establishments in 162 countries around the world with 1170 classes in operation.41)
40) Li Changchun was the governor of Henan Province in the 1990s, where he encouraged the blood trade, or Plasma Economy, among the poverty-stricken farmers, that led to the AIDS/ HIV epidemic in China. During the epidemic, he successfully contained the gloomy news from spreading to the world. He was named the member of the CCP Politburo in 2002 and was responsible for propaganda and orchestrated the construction of the global network of Confucius Institute.
41) From the late 2010s the government s around the
world began to take measures against the spread of the Confucius Institutes. In
2015 Sweden government ordered the closing of the Confucius Institute in
Stockholm after an espionage incident and its neighbors, Norway and Finland,
followed suit. In USA the Senate passed the law placing fiscal
restriction on the high-education agencies hosting Confucius Institutes in
2021.
The Media Campaign for Cultural
Ownership Claims
Coming under Xi leadership from 2012, the new generation of radical young patriots in China increased their presence in the internet space and became more and more aggressive on the sensitive international issues, spewing out the revamped Sino-centric view that China was the source of all cultures and civilizations. The list of the Korean cultural properties that came under the Chinese attack in recent years, through SNS, public TV shows and the internet media, the ones under the virtual control of the CCP and the Western media, such as Reddit and Quora, alike, comprises almost all Korean cultural legacies that have garnered global interest and following recently, such as Kimchi, Hanbok, traditional music and dances, Taekwondo and what not.42) Their aggression on the Korean cultural assets is definitely beyond the realm of cultural appropriation. They are not just using the Korean cultural assets without acknowledging their source; they assert that those were originally Chinese before stolen by Koreans.43) It is notable that many cases of the cultural ownership claim were prompted by the CCP-controlled news media or TV broadcasters. The Kimchi dispute was a showcase of such CCP-initiated campaign with the apparent engagement of multiple sectors of government well-orchestrated. In all cases the digital encyclopedias,notably Baidu, which no one believes to be independent from the CCP control, supply the keyboard warriors with the knowledge material which gets updated according to the situation of the dispute.44) The historical low of the favorability of China in Korea in 2022 Pew Research report was the result of the series of such unpalatable experience with its big neighbor.45)
42) The
list of the Korean cultural items that has come under Chinese attack in
differing forms includes Kimchi, Korean barbeque, Samgetang in the food
section, Pansori, Fan Dance, Farmers’ Music in performance art section,
Taekwondo in Sport and even the Korean National Flag.
43) It has become a common pattern for the Chinese keyboard warriors,
Xiaofenhong, call Korea “Thief Country” for stealing all those cultural
items from China.
44) The Baidu, digital encyclopedia in Chinese, is being used as a medium to manipulate
the knowledges supplied to the Chinese internet users.
45) The percentage of unfavorable opinion of China increased sharply around the globe notable from 2020. In 2022 survey by Pew Research, South Korea joined the five countries with more than 80% unfavorable percentage, after Japan, Australia, Sweden and USA among the 18 democratic countries surveyed. What made South Korea stand out was that it was the only country among the surveyed whose younger generation was found more unfavorable to China than the older generation. The reason for the reverse generational gap peculiar to South Korea may rest on the difference in the level of exposure between generations to the cultural provocations by Chinese. The young people are the first to know at the frontier.
The
Rush of Counterfeit Hallyu in the Private and Public Sector
Chinese often get associated with the lack of respect for intellectual property right, but to say no other country on earth have felt the blunt of the abhorrent Chinese tradition more than South Korea would be still an understatement. Yet until 2014 Koreans had not had any idea what could be in store for them when they found there suddenly sprouting out consumer chain stores with Korean names in countries like Malaysia, Vietnam and Philippines, owned by Chinese businesses. They named their brand to sound Korean with Korean alphabet used in their logo and store signs, products with descriptions in the back written in broken Korean sentences, girls bowing to the customers in what obviously wanted to look like Hanbok and shouting out Korean greetings, playing only K-pops in the shop. They even hung up Korean national flag for the press release photos. According to a report by Korean Intellectual Property Office, as of May 2019 there were 1499 such stores in 45 countries, 25.5 % increase over that of October 2018, in just six months since the research started. Mumuso, known the first Chinese company who came out with the amazing marketing strategy, had 344 stores mostly in Southeast Asia, but expanding to USA, Australia, Europe and Africa rapidly.46)
It is not new for restaurants or some other businesses to use an image of a certain country to boost their product image, like spaghetti noodle products using Italian-sounding brands or Mexican chefs shouting out Japanese greetings in the Sushi bar, but what seemed to set these Chinese chain stores apart was that they were not selling Korean traditional products or even something associated with Korea. They were just pretending Koreans were selling Korean products while almost 100 % of the stuffs on their selves were modern consumer products, such as cosmetics, small house gadgets, fashion items, character goods made in China. They pretend they are Korean to take advantage of the brand image of the Korea as country. They are just imposters in the commercial field.
<left>The female
staff greeting customers in Hanbok in the grand-opening ceremony of a Chinese
consumer product franchise in Vietnam <right> Hanbok staged as
centerpiece of the Chinese ethnic costumes in the opening ceremony of the 2022
Beijing Winter OlympicsIf the CCP involvement in those movements by private companies seemed quite improbable, the CCP government showed no interest in curbing such massive acts of cultural appropriation by its people and businesses. The scene of a girl in Hanbok, the Korean traditional wear, holding the Chinese national flag at the opening ceremony for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, refreshed many Koreans to the memory of those Chinese shops doing the grand opening in some Southeast Asian cities with the line of girls greeting in Hanbok a few years back.47)
46)
The chain store brands with the fake Korean marketing include Kioda,
Ilahui, Toyoso, Minigood and Ximiso. They tend to use less of Korean
image when they decide they have secured the enough amount of customer
base in the initial market. They were put to the police investigation in
Vietnam and Malaysia in 2019
47) In 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics the Chinese flag was held by soldiers while it was held by the group of people wearing minority ethic costumes in 2022.
Conflicts
and Clashes in the field of Historical Narration
In September 2022 Chinese National
Museum held an exhibition of ancient bronze artifacts of the three North Asian
countries, China, Korea and Japan. There China dropped the names of Koguryo and
Balhae in the panel for the Korean historical chronicle in the chamber for the
artifacts sent by the Korean national museum. At the protest from the South
Korean government the Chinese host removed the chronicle panel the next day,
but they did not put up a new one inclusive of Koguryo and Balhae as had been
demanded by the Korean side.48)
In 2021 there took place an unprecedented happening at the very kernel of the
Korean entertainment industry manifesting the shrewdness and pervasiveness of
the Chinese aspiration for soft power. The Korean TV drama titles Joseon
Exorcist was stopped broadcasting after just two episodes at the deluge of
complaints from the Korean viewers that the drama distorted the history by
using props with Chinese origins in wrong scenes. It was strongly suspected
that the CCP mouthpiece Renmin Ribao 人民日報 had
been behind the incident.49)
48) The Taiwanese National Museum in
Taipei keeps the chronicle of the Korean history that starts with Gojoseon or
Old Joseon from around two millennia BCE followed by Buyeo and three kingdoms
including Koguryo.
49) 조선구마사朝鮮驅魔士. SBS broadcasted the first episode on March 22 of 2021 and the series was cancelled on March 26 after the first two episodes.
The Future of the Northeast Asia after the History Project
The History Projects by the Chinese government should be noted as a historical event by itself. It reflects the change in the view on the cultural phylogeny of the Northeast Asian Civilizations due to the introduction of science in the historical study from the beginning of the 20th century. While the archaeological studies kept fraying the clout of the “Yellow River Civilization”, the arrival of the New Media in the global community by the last decade of the 2nd Millennium made South Korea a new cultural celebrity in the world stage, much of it owing to their rich cultural legacies well-preserved down from their ancient states despite the country's long history of agony and tribulations from its belligerent neighbors.
For the first time
over the span of one millennium, since the demise of Silla Dynasty in 10th
century, the world came to meet and see Koreans and their culture directly,
neither through Chinese literature nor by Japanese mouth. China desperately
needed the soft power in their aspiration for the global hegemony, but in their
way stood South Korea, the new cultural juggernaut in Asia. China chose to
resort to the history rewriting, the cost-efficient way which had always
brought sweet profits to China in the past two millennia, to snatch away
what they identify as the root of the Korean cultural power and to label it
made-in-China.
When the project was first contemplated in 1990s by CCP, it was
more from a defensive motive, out of their concern for the potential
territorial dispute for their northeastern region. For China the region was the
troubled land, especially in the modern time. But it gained more and more of
cultural focus as they were witnessing the further escalation of the Korean
soft power even as the project was in progress. And as the cultural side of the
project got followed up with the succession of activities by governmental and
private sectors in China, often in subtle collaboration, the probability of the cordial
relationship between the two countries in the future has become tenuous visibly. With the recent ascension of the South Korean military power in a
speed and scale far beyond the expectation of any parties concerned, the
political topography of the region, known for its greatest power density in
today’s world already, seems to be undergoing a cataclysmic transition.
Whatever the cultural confrontation with South Korea might end up costing China in their long-term balance sheet in their struggle for the world hegemony, China so far seems single-minded in their cultural endeavor. No one knows yet whether such audacious attempt by the Chinese this time would turn out to be as successful and profitable as the one made in two millennia ago. It certainly seems to have helped fortify their grip on the society by blinding the people with the great-country Chauvinism 大國主義 and making the people call their neighbors “thief country”. But, yet to see is the bill from the global community for the short-term domestic gain. No one would be able to say that the nose-diving fall of China of late in the favorability ratings around the world has nothing to do with the cultural and historical fondling of the CCP China.
End.
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