Just came across this post about the display of Kublai Khan's imperial passport and then seeing the comments, I really gotta say that this disgustingly false narrative floating around that the British was somehow trying to preserve history or artifacts, or even suggest that they have the rights to other people's historical relic due to the "white man's burden" is the biggest fking Bullshit I've ever heard.
Remember the facts: the historical sites and buildings such as the Summer Palace were completely and deliberately destroyed by them at all cost, and every single priceless artifacts and treasures that they could not loot or bring with them were all smashed to pieces and they made sure that is the case. They destroyed more artifacts that whatever internal turmoil (such as the civil war or the cultural revolution) ever did. These people are nothing more than grifters that are good at making propaganda to wash away their crimes.
People who argue otherwise are evidently those who support cultural genocide, colonialism, human right abuses, exploitation and looting others, and were clearly arguing in bad faith. Funny how these are the same people who would switch it up when they decided to project the crimes of their people onto others while pretending to be saints.
And of course in pure Reddit fashion, the facts are being downvoted while falsehoods and sinophobic sentiments are massively upvoted. The ragebait reply aside, that reply making a whataboutism about the "CCP" is particularly funny, because for 1, it has absolutely nothing to do with the crimes of the British which is what the original comment is trying to point out. And 2, it is just outright false, even during the cultural revolution (which the CCP denounced), the dumb rationale during that time was to "eradicate old ideas that brought weakness", it was never about being things being "chinese" or "non-chinese" because there was never such a distinction that even existed in the first place. This is a completely nonsensical point.
Just for clarity's sake: Anyone who tries to falsely equate "Chinese" and "Han" into a single term together, or use any similar methods to made false distinctions between "Chinese" and other Chinese ethnics are people arguing in very bad faith. They are not here to talk about facts, but to push an agenda. Chinese and Han are two different words for a reason. The modern term "Chinese" was in fact coined and invented by the Manchus during the Qing dynasty. Han people never referred to themselves as "Chinese" as an ethnic group, they just call themselves Han. And as a collective they are subjects of the Chinese Empire, which mind you consist of multiple other different ethnic groups throughout the history of Chinese civilisation. Tang dynasty for instance, is a dynasty that is one of the most ethnically diverse and vibrant period in Chinese history, so are many other dynasties such as Ming where it's most famous Admiral Zheng He is of Muslim ethnic. There was no point in history where the idea of "Chinese" could possibly equate to "Han".
(This false equivalence of very different terms and erroneous use of semantics is very similar to how bad-faith green frogs likes to falsely equate the term "China" and "PRC" intentionally to push their baseless agendas when they knew they have nothing factual to stand on.)
The modern term "Chinese" or Zhonghua mingzu might now be well known to mean the 56 ethnics. But back then when it was first coined by the Manchus during Qing dynasty, it refers to the 5 main ethnics of Manchus, Han, Mongols, Tibetans and Muslims ethnics groups as one family, which are the main progenitors that shaped Chinese civilisation. And FYI, even within Han itself, it is still very ethnically and genetically diverse.
If people still want to argue in bad faith, then I will say that since Qing is a joint manchu-mongol led empire that established and reinforced the modern concept of "chinese", Manchus and Mongols are actually even more Chinese than Han people are Chinese if we were to be technical.
