Chapter 8

Now of all the countries and nations we have talked about thus far,China had the greatest chance at becoming  a nation that ruled all of Asia. I mean for crying out loud they had EVERYTHING and even found the time to invent things like gunpowder and paper that still has a large impact on life today. They acknowledged thair superiority and had a hold on early nomadic nations. After a while however it turned out that more nations were extorting China and really didnt fear them as much as a nation like Rome or even Athens wouldve been feared. The ending of the Han dynasty seemed to  be the ending of a strongly feared nations as the Tang and Song dynasties focused more on attempting to unify all of China. Out of their reign came an emergence of a state structure and a political presence that nations from all over eastern Asia would come to adopt. Civilizations like Korea and Vietnam were victms of conquest but slowly got their freedom as time progressed. They used this freedom to come into China's tribute system and allowed them to access goods and adopt their rendition of the Chinese political system. They differ from each other in ways that made vietnam more independent and allowed for women to be more free. Vietnam was able to obtainirrigation systems from China before having their own unique identity, they had their own language and placed women at a high role than in the more confuscian Korea. Japan voluntarily yielded to Chinas's tribute system and for the same reasons as most nations; to exploit goods and services from China. Being an island of the coast, Japan beilieved they had no immeadiate threat from China allowing them to be more risky with adopting their polotical systems and beliefs. One idea that varried from nation to nation was the acceptance of buddism. Because of the silk road buddism was able to make it all the way to China but didnt really sit well with cinfuscian views of native China of all nations has been the one that couldve had the most power yet continually be taken advantage of? Maybe that could be a new research topic.