62 Boundaries and Beyond
service of ministers who follow the virtue that regards life lightly....
The wise kings in ancient times governed a land of βifty thousand
li. They saw it their duty to pacify the many states among the Xia
(Chinese) people and did not pay attention to the matters in the
frontier lands and the distant lands. It was not because they could
not subdue or inβluence them by virtue. It was because they did
not want China (Zhongguo) to be wearied by the foreign people
from all directions (si yi) and waste the useful resources on useless
things.Its compiler was especially critical of the expansionist policy during
the times of the First Emperor of the Qin (r. 221‒210 ćĈ) and Emperor
Wu of the Han (r. 140‒87 ćĈ), who were seen to have paid a high cost
for their conquest and to have caused their people suffering by such
endeavours.^11 Another compiler of a Song text also commented, “China’s
relations with the Yi and Di were based on a continuous loose rein
(jimi) only. When it is necessary to manifest power and send conquering
troops, it is to subdue the ungrateful, stop humiliation, express majestic
spirit and rid the people of calamity, but all these are the last resort.”^12
The model of the Zhou Dynasty was upheld because “the Zhou had
adopted the best approach.... Since the ruler’s name and inβluence could
not reach the distant land, he did not want to send an expeditionary
force to attack it when it rebelled; nor did he lower his guard when it
had surrendered.”^13 Although there were exceptions, on the whole China
learned the lesson that long wars damaged an agrarian economy and the
gains were short-lived because its troops were often forced to retreat
when their position weakened.^14
Although imperial China gradually expanded its domain over the
course of two millennia beginning in the Qin-Han periods, it took even
longer to consolidate China’s boundaries. There were conquests, losses,
re-conquests and voluntary abandonment of territory. Despite the Chinese
rhetoric that “all lands under the heaven belong to the imperial domain”
and the literary expression that China’s territory extended to the “four
- The above quotation is cited from Bei shi 北史 [Standard dynastic history of the
Northern Dynasties], 97: 38b–39a. The same passage is repeated in Sui shu 隋
書 [Standard dynastic history of the Sui], 83: 212b–23b. - Cefu yuanguei 冊府元龜 [Encyclopedia concerning matters of governance kept
for reference in the imperial library], comp. in the early eleventh century by
Wang Qinruo et al. 王欽若 (962–1025) 等撰, 982: la. - Xin Tang shu 新唐書 [New standard dynastic history of the Tang], 215: la.
- Morris Rossabi (ed.), China Among Equals: The Middle Kingdom and Its
Neighbors, 10th–14th Centuries (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983),
p. 2.
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