GGS - Chapter 16

China is the next case study to apply to Diamond's thesis. One important note is that China is the only large nation to not be a melting pot and who has been poltically unified for centuries. Why was it so homogeneous? Looking at the modern distribution of language, it is reasonable to assume that the Sino-Tibetan languages of the north (including Chinese) overtook and spread into south China (which explains the "island" distribution of the other three main language groups Austroasiatic, Tai-Kadai and Miao Yao). This, the diversity was unified much earlier than other nations.

North china was the site of independent plant domestication. China also developed animal domestication (water buffalo as a labor animal), writing, bronze metallurgy and stratified society. It's major east-west axis allowed for ecological diversity and diffusion of plant/animal species (helped by the two major rivers: the Yellow and the Yangtze). Diamond suggests that the large area of China probably fostered many seperate societies and the ease fo diffusion east-west allowed for exchange of technology as well as intense competition between societies, culminating in the advent of a highly centralized government much sooner than everyone else.

This explains why China seems so homogeneous now: intense competition between different types of political organizations produced political unification earlier on. One of the my complaints is that Diamond didn't do a good job of explaining why the north expanded and dominated the south. It is apparent from the modern distribution of languages, but the only explanation he offers is the food production and ideas diffusion much easier north-south in China than in other places because there weren't any ecological barriers.