Sinicization of the Manchus

The bureaucratic system, land management, military establishment, and culture of the Qing Dynasty were all subject to drastic changes due to the prevalent influence of the Central Plains region in China.

Due to the long-term wars between the Ming and Qing dynasties, large numbers of Han farmers were forced to leave their hometown and move to other places.

It transformed the Manchus from a tribal to a bureaucratic society, helping them further carry out administrative practices in accordance with the experience of the Han people.

[8] However, according to the social environment at that time, the Manchus were sparsely populated, and when they first arrived in the Central Plains, the language and geography were unfamiliar.

Therefore, the Manchu people adapted to new forms of social organization and absorbed and learned from the advanced political, economic, and cultural systems of the Central Plains.

The following points can be summarized on the development of the Manchu-Han relationship and integration during the Qing: In summary, after long-term mixed living, mutual learning and intercommunication, the consistency of the production mode, class structure, language and customs between Manchu and Han increased, and the original differences became significantly reduced.

[citation needed] Despite the past status of Manchu as a royal language, it is declining drastically and faces the risk of extinction.

In 1996, Evelyn Rawski, a prominent scholar of the school criticized the question of the "sinicization" of the Qing that had been raised by the Chinese-American historian Ping-ti Ho in his 1967 article "The Significance of the Ch'ing Period in Chinese History".

In a response to Rawski’s challenge, Ho Ping-ti ardently defended the sinicization thesis as he saw it, albeit in a very strong language.

According to the school, from the 1630s at least through to the early 19th century, Qing emperors developed a sense of Manchu identity and used traditional Han Chinese culture and Confucian models to rule the core parts of the empire, while blending with Central Asian models from other ethnic groups across the vast realm.

[12] Professor Yang Nianqun has tried to analyze the weaknesses of both the New Qing History and sinicization theory, in the hope to avoid a binary opposition between them.

He prefers the term "Hua-ization" to "sinicization" by arguing that it represents a blending process of a diverse ethnic community.

[13] On the other hand, according to the scholar Yuanchong Wang, the mainstream explorations of the concept so far have focused either on how the Manchus were assimilated by the Han Chinese or on how they tried to preserve their ethnic identity.

Rather, he used the term "sinicization" in a different sense in his work, in the hope to show how the Manchu regime, instead of the ethnic Manchus, promoted itself as the exclusively civilized Middle Kingdom or Zhongguo.