Thread: The idea here seems to be that China's 5,000 years of history somehow is going to help it get a vaccine quicker than the US, because it has a shorter history. This is total nonsense. 1 https://twitter.com/SpokespersonCHN/status/1264923744314683392

First, China doesn't have 5,000 years of history. Prior to the 19th century, there were dynastic households. They did not rule in name of a Chinese nation or the Chinese people. The idea of a Chinese nation & Chinese people only emerges in the 19th century. 2

It is only in the 20th century that there is an active effort to try to promote mass identification with the Chinese nation. This effort is not very successful at first, and identification with the Chinese nation only becomes widespread half way through the 20th century. 3

Even then an argument could be made that is only after 1949 that a national identity became consolidated with the emergence of mass education and mass propaganda in the Mao era. 4

However, as Honig and Hershatter demonstrated in their oral history work in "Personal Voices: Chinese Women in the 1980's", even in the 1980s, familial and regional identification often trumped national identity. With caveats, the same is still true to a certain extent today. 5

Second, historians for a long time argued that the lengthy dynastic history of China led to geriatric inflexible institutions and ingrained ways of thinking that prevented scientific development, and there are still some historians who argue this point of view. 6

The MFA spokesperson seems here to be invoking an alternate understanding of how a long history impacts a place. It is an idea common to late 19th century Chinese elites - that a long history gives a country a big well of knowledge to tap into and mobilize for present advances. 7

This idea is questionable to say the least. However, just as questionable is the idea the MFA spokesperson is responding to that Chinese are incapable of invention. This is an old Orientalist trope that isn't true but just won't die. Plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose. 8 END