Chinese Empire Quotes

The great wall of China was built just as much to keep the Chinese in as to keep the barbarians out.

The question is not whether Tibet should be independent but the extent of the autonomy that it is allowed. Tibet has been firmly ensconced as part of the Chinese empire since the Qing dynasty's military intervention in Tibet in the early 18th century.

China has existed within very roughly its present borders for over two millennia and for virtually the whole of that period saw itself as a 'civilisation state.' It was only when it was too weak to resist the western powers in the early 20th century that it finally acquiesced in an arrangement that was alien to it.

Never should the word peace fall from the mouths of our highest officials.... With such a country as ours, with her vast areas ... her immense natural resources, and her hundreds of millions of inhabitants, if all would prove their loyalty to their emperor and love of their country, what indeed is there to fear from any strong invader? Let us not think of making peace, nor rely solely upon diplomatic maneuvers.

While the Chinese people, as a rule, are good people, my business dealings with Communist Chinese officials have left me disturbed and concerned about the rise of the Chinese Empire.

It's never happened in history that every region in the world could affect every other region simultaneously. The Roman empire and the Chinese empire didn't know much about each other and had no means of interacting. Now we have every continent able to reach every other.

When in August 1793 a British delegation showed their hosts a terrestrial globe, it turned into a diplomatic incident, for the Chinese were furious to see that their empire covered so little of it. For centuries the Chinese had thought of themselves as 'The Middle Kingdom', that is the centre of the civilized world. To see otherwise was a shock.

But a multitude of people, even the two hundred million of the Chinese empire, cannot subsist without civil government.

Every empire suffers from hubris, arrogance and condescension, and therefore a moral blindness. That's true of the American empire, it was true of the British Empireearlier, and it will certainly be true of the Chinese Empire in the future.

At the same moment your Majesty has brought to a triumphant issue two gigantic operations, one in the center of Asia, the other in the heart of the hitherto unapproachable Chinese Empire. In the former, past disasters have been retrieved; a signal victory has been achieved on the very spot memorable for former failure and massacre; the honor of the British Arms has been signally vindicated; the interests of humanity have been consulted by the rescue of the whole of the prisoners; and, after a series of victories, the Governor-General of India is free, without discredit, to enter upon measures of internal improvement, and having established the supremacy of British power, to carry on henceforth a more pacific policy. In China a termination has been put to the effusion of blood by the signature of a treaty which has placed your Majesty's dominions on a footing never recognized in favor of any foreign Power--a footing of perfect equality with the Chinese Empire; which has obtained large indemnity for the past, and ample security for the future, and which has opened to British enterprise the commerce of China to an extent which it is almost impossible to anticipate.