China's History of Conquest
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Again and again in China, I heard about China's history as the only great power never to have invaded another country - a record unfavorably contrasted with the imperialism of the United States abroad and of course the genocide of Native Americans at home. Since my return, I've begun reading a great stack of books about China and Chinese history. I've begun with the excellent and accessible multi-volume history of China published by the Belknap Press. I'm working my way backward, starting with the volume on the Qing dynasty of 1644-1911.
And I came across this, from pp. 73-74.
The Zunghar Mongols, a semi-nomadic people of the steppes of central Eurasia, fiercely resisted incorporation into the Qing empire and the divide-and-rule fragmentation that was a staple of Qing frontier policy .... By around 1660 [the Zungar Mongols] had created a formidable inland empire .... [In 1690], the Kangxi emperor declared his own personal campaign to eliminate the [Zungar kingdom].
By attacking the Zunghars food supplies, the Qing emperors forced the herdsmen to submit for a time. Then the Zunghars made one last bid for freedom in the 1750s. The revolt
prompted the professedly magnanimous Qianlong emperor to launch a genocidal campaign against the Zunghar survivors, who numbered more than half a million. It was successful and the depopulated steppes were quickly resettled with millions of Qing subjects.
The story is told unemotionally, but in those few passages you catch an echo of campaigns far more horrific - and costing many many more lives - than the worst of America's Indian wars. I'll confess: I'd never heard of the Zunghars, much less their eradication as a nation and their slaughter as a people. But I won't forget them now - and I'm primed when next challenged by a Chinese on the winning of the west to ask when we can expect any kind of Chinese apology for the subjugation of the vast empire now called Xinjiang. That word literally means "New Dominions," a title that preserves the memory of China's long history of expansion through conquest.