Historically, neighboring states and peoples of China were often given exonyms or descriptions that were pejorative in nature.
For instance, the first exonym for Japan from the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 24 CE) was the Chinese Wo or Japanese Wa 倭 meaning "submissive; dwarf barbarian"; this was replaced by the endonym 日本 (rìběn) by the 8th century.
[1] Early Chinese exonyms for the Netherlands in the 17th century included 红毛番 (Hóngmáofān, Red-haired foreigners), and 红夷 (Hóngyí, Red Easterners or Red barbarians),[6] before it was changed in 1794 to the modern phonetic transcription 荷兰 (Hélán, lit.
[8] Countries had been founded or had gained independence after 1949 (the year Kuomintang had exiled to Taiwan after losing to the Communist Party) often have different exonyms used in mainland China (PRC) and Taiwan (ROC) due to differences in official standards resulting from the split in government.
The exception to this are exonyms for Japanese and Korean place names, which are written in traditional Chinese.