beijingwalker
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Chinese civilization may be the oldest continuous one in world history, and it has a number of enduring characteristics.
1) The uniqueness and distinctiveness of Chinese civilization is due at least in part to geography. It is location at the eastern end of Eurasia and is bounded by mountains, deserts, and steppes. To the north is Siberia, and to the east is the Pacific Ocean.
2) Further characteristic of Chinese civilization has been its ability to have less civilized invaders who then absorbed Chinese culture and the language rather than the other way around, as was frequently the case in India.
3) Also important was the secular nature of Chinese civilization; it never produced a priestly class that had an important political role.
4) In addition, Chinese culture stresses the social rather than the individual life of human beings, thus emphasizing, as we will see in our discussion of Confucianism, the importance of relations between members of a family or between subject and king.
5) Finally, again as we shall see, the Chinese invented (thousands of years before other nations) a unique and stabilizing institutiona civil service recruited by means of public competitive examinationsthat lasted into the twentieth century.
Hence, unlike the discontinuities and fragmentation of Indian civilization, Chinese civilization is characterized by cultural as well as political cohesion and continuity.
Lecture Notes: Early Indian and Chinese Civilizations
1) The uniqueness and distinctiveness of Chinese civilization is due at least in part to geography. It is location at the eastern end of Eurasia and is bounded by mountains, deserts, and steppes. To the north is Siberia, and to the east is the Pacific Ocean.
2) Further characteristic of Chinese civilization has been its ability to have less civilized invaders who then absorbed Chinese culture and the language rather than the other way around, as was frequently the case in India.
3) Also important was the secular nature of Chinese civilization; it never produced a priestly class that had an important political role.
4) In addition, Chinese culture stresses the social rather than the individual life of human beings, thus emphasizing, as we will see in our discussion of Confucianism, the importance of relations between members of a family or between subject and king.
5) Finally, again as we shall see, the Chinese invented (thousands of years before other nations) a unique and stabilizing institutiona civil service recruited by means of public competitive examinationsthat lasted into the twentieth century.
Hence, unlike the discontinuities and fragmentation of Indian civilization, Chinese civilization is characterized by cultural as well as political cohesion and continuity.
Lecture Notes: Early Indian and Chinese Civilizations