Interactions And Identity:Comparative Perspectives On Ethnic Identity In Classical China And Greece

From the subjective side, the formation of ethnic self-identity is achieved through the construction of barbarians. The elites invented an image as different from their own, it is the barbarian. They flaunted themselves in the material, institutional and cultural superiority, discriminated "barbarians" as savage, irrational, unjust groups, and as beasts. They recognized their own by such a strong different image. They constructed barbarians and recognized their own because they suffered invasion from surround groups and the confidence brought by repelling it. Groups around the periphery of Huaxia were "Man, Yi, Rong (some of tribes were the Scythian) and Di" that recorded in classical literature. The main threat for the ancient Greek was Persian Empire.Before or after the8th century BC, China’s climate has entered a cold phase, northern and western China was cold and dry, which have caused the nomadic tribes around the Western Zhou migrated to the south China, causing great pressure to the Central States. From the era of Duke Huan of Qi Central States began to strong counterattack the invasion of the surrounding groups. The efforts by Duke Wen of Jin and other Successor, the trend of cross-invasion were controlled.BC492to478years, two generations of the Persian Empire, Darius and Xerxes monarch launched the invasion of the Greek world war. Greece, in particular Athen, demonstrated the superiority of the system, and finally defeated Persia. Consciousness of Greek was unprecedented.Faced to the great external threat, Chinese ethnic groups and Greeks must be united together against the alien invasion. The sense of ethnic identity was inspired by these intense conflicts. Ethnic consciousness generated in this process. Politicians, historians, thinkers and literary works played an important role in the process.Ethnic Self-consciousness was achieved mainly by the elites. They have taken two means for it.One of the means is that they regarded the surrounding groups as barbarians and as a brutal people. Another means is that they found out their institutional and cultural superiority than their neighbor. Chinese elites considered that their propriety and justice(礼and义) better than barbarians, the Greeks believed their freedom and democracy better than barbarians.Although Huaxia and Greek ethnic groups have shown the ethniccentralism on ethnic identity, but both of them had a great difference. The characteristic of Chinese ethnic identity are One World (天下一体)There was thought which asserted HuaYi unified in Spring and Autumn Period, Confucius was a pioneer. For relations between Xia and Yi, Confucius’s attitude is that a foreign group willing to keep good with Huaxia and absorb her system, he is a member of the Huaxia; If a member of the Huaxia insisted on make use of alien ritual,his memnership will be canceled until he resumed Huaxia etiquette. Confucius’s main criterion for distinguishing Hua and Yi is a universal system, and the nature of this system is to maintain stability, justice, and promote common progress. Moreover, he summed up the diplomatic policy that Huaxia ethnic group dealt with foreign relations, proposed the thought of "Cherishing Men from Afar". The idea of "Wu Fu system"(五服制)and thought of "Great Unity"(大一统)arose after him. The author of Gong Yang Zhuan considered that the relationship between Yi and Xia in Spring and Autumn period gone through two stages, namely, the first stage is the period that China and the foreigners are divided into internal and external; The second stage is a period of internal and external unity, the world seems to be one, regardless of distance, nor the size, they all advocated co-human(仁) and justice.We rarely found the ideas about ethnic integration and ethnic equality from the ancient Greek thinkers. Until the Hellenistic period, it appeared the universalism, and to some extent by the impact of the East. After that, the Romans inherited the ideology of Opposition.The formation of ethnic identity is an important part of the Axial civilization. Jaspers augured that ethnic self-consciousness was the typical contents of the Axial civilization, self-conscious ethnic groups can not easily be assimilated or wiped out, with a long life, and the another groups without any contact with the Axial civilization remain the primitive way of life or to perish. Important reason causing the difference between the two is whether they completed the ethnic consciousness. To a large extent, the differences between Huaxia and Greeks in ethnic Identity constituted the culture of identity of Chinese and Western civilizations, and affected profoundly the subsequent history.