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Fan Wenlan’s Thoughts on Formation of the Han Ethnicity

From:社科报2021-12-7 17:11

As indicated by Luo Zhitian in Tianjin Social Sciences (5th issue, 2021), Fan Wenlan was the principal party of the debate on formation of the Han ethnicity in the 1950s; according to him,"unified transport system, single written language and same ethical standards" implemented after unification by Qin Dynasty as mentioned in The Doctrine of the Mean, corresponded to Stalin's four elements of an ethnic group, and he raised that the Han ethnicity after the Qin and Han dynasties was "a unique ethnic group formed under unique social conditions". Thinking about the "particularity" of "laws" at the theoretical level, Fan Wenlan created the innovative idea of "special laws" to distinguish between the Europe that "represents the universal" and the Europe that "expresses itself". He stressed that we should recognize "each country has its own particularity in its historical development", and demonstrated the particularity of China by comparing it with the particularity of Europe. He held that only by taking "the concrete facts of history" as "the basis of being and nought", rather than "taking the particularity of Western European history as the universal", can the Chinese history not be "misrepresented to fit the history of Western Europe".