*Breaking News* North Korea fires artillery on S. Korean island!

[Not_A_Llama]

China's never invaded another country in it's history. I will admit, modern China is nothing like itself even two decades earlier, so it's a different ballgame, but just a side note.

This is a joke, right? Tibet, Vietnam, India, Korea, and (kinda)Xinjiang come to mind just offhand, and those are in the last (half)century by the PRC.

If anything, modern China is remarkably dove-ish. Most of the above have been hit at least 2-3 times by China, historically. China's just now starting to shake off the damage from the Manchu invasion, western attempts at colonialism, a crippling civil war, and the retarding effects of communism.

The majority of what we call "China" today is subjugated and subsumed land and people. The "provinces" you see today are the remnants of full countries that were taken over in the past. China views countries like Vietnam, the Koreas, Mongolia, Laos, Thailand, Nepal, and Burma in the exact same way: future provinces. I don't have much doubt that's those countries' eventual fate. What you see in Tibet today has been going on for millennia.

PS: Little exercise... compare the size of Chinese provinces with the size of neighboring countries, especially to the south. Designed for easy digestion.