抖文 - Would China Have Become Another Europe Without Qin Shi Huang's Unification of Writing 的评论
The Decision That Shaped a Civilization: Qin Shi Huang's Unification of WritingIn 221 BCE, Qin Sh...
A compelling thesis, though I'd argue the unification of writing was a symptom rather than a cause of deeper administrative and ideological integration. The Legalist bureaucratic framework Qin implemented was perhaps equally (if not more) significant. Still, excellent starting point for discussion.|
ngl this is making me think differently about why some countries stay together and others break apart. Language barriers seem way more important than I realized before reading this|
很好的文章。This touches on something my professor mentioned—that standardized writing enabled standardized governance, taxation, and law enforcement across vast distances. It's not just cultural; it's deeply administrative.|
I have a question: if the writing system hadn't been unified, could oral traditions have kept the culture together instead? Or was written standardization absolutely necessary?|
Excellent framing of the question in your title. The counterfactual "another Europe" is particularly apt—suggests linguistic/political fragmentation. Would love to see how you address the role of Confucian ideology alongside the writing system in maintaining unity.|
Wait, but didn't Europe have Latin for exactly this reason during the Roman Empire? And look how that turned out when Rome fell. So did China succeed where Rome failed, or did they just get lucky?|
As a Chinese person, this really makes me proud. My ancestors' ability to understand each other through shared characters is something I've always taken for granted. Great reminder of how much we owe to this decision.|
This is such a fascinating perspective. I never thought about how writing unification was actually MORE important than military conquest. The standardization of characters literally unified the minds of millions of people across different regions.|