In Han Chauvinisim takes on the Manchu, “writer, traveller and thinker” Gabriel explores the “1644 historical view,” the legacy of the Qing, and what an online movement reveals about China’s ethnic relations:
Nowadays the Manchu are one of China’s most assimilated minorities, mostly indistinguishable from the Han in both look and custom. This hasn’t stopped them from becoming a rhetorical punching bag for the huáng hàn (皇汉), as Han nationalist extremists are often called in China.
Small groups of Han nationalists, for instance the ones associated with the early hanfu movement, have long circulated absurd conspiracy theories arguing that the Manchu still secretly control important state and party institutions, and that lots of high officials have undisclosed Manchu heritage.
More recently, these fringe views have been thrust into the spotlight by the emergence of the so-called “1644 historical view” (1644 史观), a viral online discourse promoted by Han nationalists. Essentially, this narrative contends that modern Chinese history begun in 1644, the year when the Manchu conquered Beijing, marking the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing.
This contrasts with official Chinese historiography, which marks 1840 (the year when Britain launched the first Opium War) as the start of the country’s modern history. This is what generations of Chinese schoolchildren have been taught.
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