Originally posted by: magomago
You are right that the Qing conquered China - which is why they became the next dynasty. But they tried also very hard to prevent assimilation. This is why they never encouraged migration into these territories (and even the bloody highlands) for a VERRRRY long time. They were even ridiculously stubborn about Manchuria and BANNED immigration up there until the 1850s they started to fear that they may lose the territory to Russia because it was sparsely populated (To them it was to be a pristine land where the imperial household could go relax...kind of like Camp David Today).
You are right MOST of China was han chinese, but areas like Tibet, Mongolia, Xing Jiang, etc are NOT Chinese in both ethnicity and culture and
never fell under the same bureaucracy that existed prior to the Qing - the bureaucracy that you refer to as "China's Government". They were ruled SEPERATELY by the Manchus - hence why I emphasize that these areas really belonged to the MANCHU Dynasty as opposed to the Chinese Empire. They DIDN'T allow Chinese to move into many of these areas till the 1800s (when other pressures were simply too great to prevent migration anymore), and these new lands were ruled by the
Imperial Household which was complete SEPERATE from the governing civil service. The funds tied to the economic activities were kept seperate from the funds for China Proper. This expansion of the empire was about preventing attacks - they wanted to control enough to prevent invasion...They didn't want another "Genghis Khan" to appear per say, and that was really the extent of their control. You try to make it sound otherwise.
I did give you a book (and just to pre empt your laziness here is a google link
http://books.google.com/books?...c&source=gbs_summary_r ) and suggest you read it as it is a very good .
To call the Qing empire "Chinese" as if they are 100% synonymous ignores a lot of the Qing's unique bureaucracy applied only towards the New Territories, Qing rulings to maintain these lands separate from where the Han lived , the Qing's own desire to attempt to prevent assimilation (didn't work well in the end...there is something about tea houses and prostitutes that even battle hardy soldiers found too irresistible
), and a lot of Chinese history that you simply cast aside.
In the end - almost all Manchus DID assimilate (Although by then Han were calling for the ejection of the Qing because "Even if they act like us, they really can't be Chinese!" But the average Manchu assimilated in so well that they just melted into the population easily)...but you are ignoring a huge part of the picture as to what happened...especially with your insistence on "how you see China"