This is a misconception. Modern China has only existed since the communist revolution in the mid 40s. Before that were several dynasties which differed from eachother significantly in more ways than just geographically. Besides this, only the Han Chinese seem to be content living in China at the moment - that all the minorities in China were represented not by the minorities themselves but by Han Chinese dressing up as them at the Beijing Olympics in '08 is illustrative of this fact.rdx-fx wrote:
To counterbalance the above point; China will get by. China has been China for 10,000 years. They'll be there 10,000 years from now too.
10,000 years. A longer lifespan than your British Empire, by far.
Right okay, lemme correct this.Uzique The Lesser wrote:
European "World Wars" from 1915-1945? 10 million dead, including the Jewish Holocaust of 6 million.
Russia and China lost over 60 million people during WW-II alone.
For as much narcissistic 'storm and noise' as Europe makes about their self-destruction, the majority of the suffering was in Asia and Russia, NOT Europe.
30 million people died on the eastern front alone in the European theatre, of which more than half were soldiers. 5 million soldiers and an unclear amount of civillians died on the western front, (considering the 'care' that was taken to avoid civillian casualties you can probably double the soldier number). As for the holocaust, let's not forget the 3-4 million polish/romanian/bulgarian 'sub humans' who suffered and died alongside the jews in the concentration camps yet have been completely forgotten for some reason. And while the human cost may have been less at the western front, the material cost probably was equal or even greater than at the eastern front; consider all the thousands of u-boots, sea-mines, ships, V-2 rockets and airplanes which were destroyed over the english channel. The human cost on the western front was thankfully 'low' only because a sea seperated the germans and british who fought just as hard as the soviets did.
Beyond the human cost, the infrastructure in some countries had been completely and utterly destroyed in the war. Worst hit were Germany itself, which had pretty much all of its major cities completely destroyed by either bombing or fighting at the end of the war, Ukraine, Poland, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Not to mention that most countries under nazi occupation were continuously plundered for the war effort, increasingly so when germany got pressured by the allies.
Need some pictures to illustrate what 'completely destroyed' actually meant?
Rotterdam, 1940
Calais, 1940
Dresden, 1945
and many more if you want to find them. After the war, industry was non existant on the continent. Formerly more or less prosperous countries were absorbed into the Soviet-Union with the result being quite clear. Just look at the state of East-Germany in 1991. Europe had indeed completely and utterly destroyed itself. A lot of shit went down in Asia but what happened in Europe caused the definitive end of European dominance in pretty much everything around the globe. Some countries are still recovering from the effects of a war that started over 60 years ago.
Not to mention that only 30 years earlier some parts of the continent were shot to shit even worse. Can you imagine what Belgium looked like after WW1 having been in the epicenter of the trench war for all 5 years that it lasted? Or the human cost of WW1 including the many millions in Europe who died as a result of the spanish flu directly after the war?
No storm and noise here, /story.
Last edited by Shocking (2013-03-02 10:35:28)
inane little opines
