Not sure about state vs people. Even if we use your standard, Chinese is only slightly more peaceful than Europeans. During 3 kingdom periods, spring and autumn periods, warring states periods, 5 dynasty periods, china is divided into many states and we do fight one another. Yap those are states.
I guess you are not familiar with that history because china remains united for like the last 600 years. Ming, Qing, and PRC are all united periods in China. It’s not always that way. So for the west, china is always one super big country.
Even during that period, China attacked Tibet, Vietnam, Mongol, Russia, etc. State treasury is mainly consumed for war. There is a theory that humans will kill one another anyway and the only way to prevent people from killing one another is to pick an outsider target. Each males will want as many women as possible and all countries have surplus males that need to be channeled somewhere. That’s what China did, like every other country.
În fapt,, before the qing dynasty, there is no such thing as “china”. The Chinese think that their emperor is emperor of everything under heaven. That means the whole world. So we’re even more hegemonistic than contemporary US. Qing dynasty is the first to see itself as a nation within nations.
The difference between china and Europe is the amount of plain region. It’s easier for the strongest party to conquer everything under heaven in China. In Europe you have mountains. A very strong general like Hendry the great, can’t easily conquer the whole Europe. There are tons of language barriers and geography barriers. That provides niches for weaker kingdom to defend. Those weaker kingdoms are strong enough to defend but weak enough to attack. Hence, you reach a stable divided state. Not in china.
This also facilitate trades which promote capitalism like society. Which explains Chinese peacefulness during prosper period. We’re too afraid to die we’d rather bribe neighboring country with money than killing them and get killed in the process. Much like contemporary US. In retrospect, that’s how we lost many wars actually.
US is, for its power and influence, relatively benign.
Is China Peaceful? is a post from: Piața liberă nelimitat