Whereas Mao Zedong's contribution to modern China is universally understood, the Qing dynasty's contribution receives far less attention. When the period is mentioned it is usually in negative terms — offered as the counterexample to the dynamic modernism of the Communists and nationalists. But the Qing played a pivotal role in contemporary understandings both of what constitutes China and what it means to belong to the Chinese nation. The dynasty ruled from 1644 to 1912 and built an empire they called Zhongguo, meaning the central kingdom. The dynasty's founders, ethnically Manchu, are today often regarded as the outsiders against which Han identity formed, but they were actually crucial to making China the multiethnic nation it is today.
The Qing legacy is most readily apparent in the current extent of Chinese territory. Without the Qing, the nation would be far smaller. China under the Qing nearly doubled in size from what it had been under the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), and it even expanded to include territory beyond the borders of modern China, including much of Mongolia, Taiwan, parts of Siberia and Kazakhstan as well as the borderlands of Myanmar and Thailand. Were it not for the Qing, Beijing would not have control over Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, much of Manchuria or perhaps even large swaths of southwestern Chinese provinces such as Sichuan and Yunnan. The Qing accomplished feats that would have been unthinkable for the rulers from the sedentary population of China's Han core, who had never managed to conquer the buffer regions crucial to protecting the heartland.
The Qing dynasty's varied legacies continue to influence Beijing's actions and to inform how the nation's leaders choose to navigate China's path to great power status. The focuses of the current push to manage ethnic tension in regions such as Xinjiang and to integrate the nation's vast borderlands with the developed core come straight out of the Qing playbook: development, infrastructure, internal migration and education. The dynasty's massive expansion and humiliating fall also provide a note of caution for today's Communist Party leaders, cementing their commitment to sovereignty and to the principle of nonintervention in the domestic affairs of other states.
