Qu'est-ce que la Chine ? Territoires, ethnies, cultures et histoire

I was born in 1950 and have lived through the whole of China's modern history. 
I was a farmer and a worker, and after the Cultural Revolution, I went to university. 
Since then, I have devoted myself to the study of history, especially the history of religion, thought and culture in East Asia, and I am currently working at Fudan University in Shanghai. 
I am now 74 years old and have been retired for three years. 
Anyone who has lived through China's modern history can see China and the world differently from other people. 
For example, I've lived in rural China, which is a so-called ethnic minority area in China, so I'm very interested in issues of ethnicity and identity. 
I've also lived through the era of reform and opening up, so I'm particularly interested in China's relationship with the world. 
I think that modern Chinese historiography would be between the end of the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, that is, between the 19th and 20th centuries. 
I still hold this view today. 
In other words, when Liang Qichao and Hu Shi opened up a new historiography in China, we went down that road, even though the road was fraught with pitfalls for various political reasons. 
Today, we still believe that this is a modern historiography to which we should adhere, which of course raises the problem that China is prematurely advocating a postmodern historiography that seems somewhat incompatible with this context. 
Since we have not yet become a postmodern society, we still adhere to the modern concept of historiography. 
I would like to raise three points. 
The first is that we should not think of China as an entity that has existed since antiquity, but rather as an entity that has developed and changed throughout history, from a traditional empire to a modern state, i.
e. 
it has been shaped by the historical process rather than being as it has been since antiquity. 
Then we'll look at five words about China: The first is territory, the second is religion, the third is nation or ethnic group, the fourth is state, whether empire or modern state, and the fifth is the basis of identity. 
In this book, we focus on these five concepts. 
The third aspect is that today we are very concerned about how a country like China manages its national problems internally and its relations with the world externally. 
So, by understanding more about China, we can understand more about how its domestic and international problems have arisen. 
I don't think we can deal with and solve these problems within the framework of history, but we do have the responsibility to address them. 
I wrote this book to deal with China's emergence, its place in the world today, and its national problems from a historiographical point of view. 
At first glance, when we study the meaning of the word "天下", "world", there seems to be no difference with the word "世界", "universe", which is translated into English as "all under heaven". 
However, if we put it in its historical context, the Chinese "world" is centred, meaning a world centred on China, rather than an egalitarian, universal world as Kant put it. 
Therefore, when we see that the concept of "world" has been extracted from the traditional source, we fear that it will become a concept antagonistic to the current world order. 
In other words, we are not adding to or joining this world order but trying to create a new one. 
That's why we found the "world" in the traditional concept. 
In fact, this "world" seems to be cosmopolitanism if it is not contextualised, but if it is, it is nationalism wrapped in cosmopolitanism. 
If you don't understand the historical context and the real intention of the current "world" proposal, you run the risk of interpreting the "world" as a new cosmopolitanism. 
In ancient China, the "world" was always a China-centred world. 
I think that in the history of ancient China, the world always had a centre and a periphery, the so-called centre being the civilised peoples and the periphery being the barbarians. 
So, this is not an egalitarian or pluralist cosmopolitanism, but a cosmopolitanism centred on China, with a centre and a difference. 
The same applies to the nation in China because China very early on introduced a concept that corresponds to what Mazzini said in Italy: a civilisation can only have one nation. 
In the past, China had no concept of a nation, only the concept of Hua Yi, the difference between civilised peoples and barbarians. 
After Mazzini's explanation, China understood that, according to the Western model, a nation can only have one country and a people can only have one nation. 
Hence the term "Chinese nation". 
However, this term is not a very strict ethnographic definition of a nation in the academic sense of the term; it was created to meet the political and national needs of the time. 
That is why many problems have arisen. 
When China adopted the European concept of ethnic identification in the 1920s and 1930s, 56 ethnic groups were identified by the 1950s. 
The concept of ethnicity was based on the British concept on the one hand and the Stalinist Soviet concept on the other, i.
e. 
four elements: language, customs, ancestry, and geographical area. 
These four elements, combined with the British concept of ethnology, formed the basis of China's identification of 56 ethnic groups. 
I must say that this concept has some similarities with the European concept. 
But there are also differences. 
Probably the most difficult ethnic problem is that the traditional Chinese and the barbarians are civilised. 
In China, the concept of the Han Chinese as civilised people, that of the neighbouring peoples as barbarians, and the current concept of so-called pluralism of different nationalities are now intertwined, and this has created many problems. 
In the old conception of China, Chinese territory was very small, barely a tenth of what it is today. 
After the Shang or Yin, Western Zhou and Eastern Zhou dynasties, and especially after the unification of the Qin and Han dynasties, it expanded steadily. 
We have always insisted that the territory or borders of China are an idea. 
It is constantly changing, sometimes expanding and sometimes shrinking. 
We must not use this concept of the territory of today's country to trace the territory of the Chinese Empire in ancient China. 
This is a very important point. 
A big part of the reason we're writing this book is to tell people that this area is constantly evolving and that we shouldn't talk about "ancient times". 
I think there are two periods. 
One is the Qin Dynasty, Qin or Han, two dynasties that we've linked together. 
That's the third century BC. 
The second era is the 19th to 20th century, the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty. 
In the words of Zhang Zhidong, these two periods represent "a great change that we haven't seen for 2,000 years". 
Why 2,000 years? 
Because it goes back to the Qin and Han dynasties. 
The Qin and Han dynasties formed the basis of what we call China today, meaning that its territory, ethnic groups, culture and institutions were all created at that time. 
It was this whole system, territory and culture that went into crisis in the second era for these two reasons. 
I think that cultural differences don't necessarily lead to conflict, because we have to separate culture from civilisation. 
We should insist on the coexistence of many cultures, but we must all evolve towards a common civilisation, otherwise, there will be real conflict. 
If you keep your own culture, it doesn't necessarily mean there will be conflict, but if you don't stick to that civilisation, then there may be conflict. 
What we hope most is that French academics can understand the ideas of Chinese academics and the context behind their ideas, and we especially hope that Chinese academics can learn more about France, not only about the 19th and 20th centuries, the achievements of the glorious years of French Sinology, but also about modern French civilisation.