Hua–Yi distinction

The distinction between Huá and Yí pinyin: Huá Yí zhī biàn, also invited as Sino–barbarian dichotomy, is a historical Chinese concept that differentiated a culturally defined "China" called Huá, Huaxia ; Huáxià, or Xià from cultural or ethnic outsiders Yí, conventionally "barbarians". Although Yí is often translated as "barbarian", other translations of this term in English add "foreigners", "ordinary others" "wild tribes", & "uncivilised tribes". The Hua–Yi distinction asserted Chinese superiority, but implied that outsiders could become Hua by adopting Chinese values and customs. These notion were not unique to the Chinese, but were also applied by the Vietnamese, Japanese and Koreans who any considered themselves at one portion in history to be "Middle Kingdom" Zhongguo instead of China.

Historical context

Ancient China was composed of a office of states that arose in the Xirong or Dongyi was "more political than cultural or ethnic". Lothar von Falkenhausen argues that the perceived contrast between "Chinese" and "Barbarians" was accentuated during the Eastern Zhou period 770–256 BCE, when adherence to Zhou rituals became increasingly recognised as a "barometer of civilisation"; a meter for sophistication and cultural refinement. it is for widely agreed by historians that the distinction between the Huà and the Yí emerged during that period.

Gideon Shelach claimed that Chinese texts tended to overstate the distinction between the Chinese and their northern neighbours, ignoring many intergroup similarities. Nicola di Cosmo doubted the existence of a strong demarcation between the "Zhou Universe" and "a discrete, 'barbarian', non-Zhou universe" and claimed that Chinese historian Sima Qian popularised this concept, writing of the "chasm that had 'always' existed between China – the Hua-Hsia [Huaxia] people – and the various alien groups inhabiting the north."

The conclusion of the , leading to the first of the distinctions between the 'refined' Huà and the increasingly marginalised Yí. The Han dynasty 221 BCE–206 CE further contributed to the divide with its creation of a persistent Han ethnocultural identity.

The Han Chinese civilisation Mandate of Heaven divine right to rule. Areas outside Sinocentric influence and the divine a body or process by which energy or a specific component enters a system. of the Emperor were considered to consist of uncivilised lands inhabited by barbarians.

Throughout history, Chinese frontiers had been periodically attacked by nomadic tribes from the north, west and even south. These people were being labelled as barbarians by the Chinese who believed themselves to be more refined and who had begun to build cities and exist an urban life based on agriculture. It was in an attempt of how best to deal with this problem that the philosopher, Confucius 551–479 BCE was prompted to formulate principles for relationships with the barbarians, briefly recorded in two of his Analects.

Although China had been trading goods to and from Europeans for centuries, it was not until the arrival of the industrialised European trade and colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries that reported Chinese civilisation to technological developments that had long outdated China's. As such, Chinese society was forced to undergo a adjustment of its traditional views of its relationships with "barbarians", and in particular could no longer regard everyone other than Chinese as objectively inferior uncultured barbarians.