Talk:Chinese expedition to Tibet (1720)

New article

I have established this new article. Part of materials in this new article came from Tibet under Qing rule, perhaps reworded/restructured etc to fit in the new article. --Cartakes (talk) 14:52, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

This article should be called "Qing conquest of Tibet." The Qing was ruled by Manchus and Mongols, not by Han Chinese, so actually this was a war between Manchus, Mongols and Tibetans with little involvement of ethnic Chinese. Of course the Chinese government would say they were all Chinese, but this is anachronistic: the Qing rulers in 1720 would not have called themselves Chinese. Borgon44 (talk) 16:56, 9 December 2024 (UTC)Borgon44 Dec. 9, 2024.

This is actually not the case. Apart from the fact that "conquest" is not really a very descriptive term considering the nature of the expedition, it was the Qing who regarded themselves Chinese (in the political sense), although not Han Chinese ethnically. This was not invented by later government(s), thus not anachronistic. As some scholars have already pointed out, the Qing rulers accepted their own Chinese identity, although it was not passive assimilation, as they actively changed old China from a Han-centered cultural notion to a multi-ethnic political entity; the Qing's depiction of itself as a Chinese empire was not hindered by the imperial house's Manchu ethnicity, especially after 1644, when the name "Chinese" was given a multiethnic meaning. Tibetologist Matthew Kapstein also pointed out in his book "The Tibetans" that "though the Tibetans were quite aware of the dynasty's non-Chinese ethnic origins, the Qing monarch would be generally referred to in Tibet as gyanak gongma, the emperor of China". --Wengier (talk) 18:52, 9 December 2024 (UTC)