Modern China is the Roman Empire

Mao Zedong is Julius Caesar, and the Cultural Revolution was the burning of the Library of Alexandria. Japan is obviously Greece, as it's a small Islandy place often confused with the big empire right by it. Chiang Kai-shek is Cicero. This anonymous fellow is obviously Spartacus.

India, the far-off but large nation, is obviously Persia.

And America?

America is the Han dynasty of China. A prosperous, faraway empire with which the Roman Empire/Modern China tends to trade with.

What? The Roman Empire and Han Dynasty China had barely any contact. Hardly the deep, dependent, economic relationship the US and the PRC now possess.

edited 14th Apr '11 10:58:59 AM by HungryJoe

I'm talking politically, historically, and geographically, not economically. Three out of four isn't bad, right?

.......

Would Vietnam be Carthage, then? How about Russia and the Koreas?

edited 28th Apr '11 11:34:08 PM by betterthanstrawberry

I can't wait until some Axis Powers Hetalia fan makes a fan fic based on this idea. I have a feeling it would be hilarious.

^^ I thought that Carthage would be Taiwan, but Vietnam works as well.

Russia is Egypt, from which China/Rome got quite a few of their ideas.

I don't think it's a good analogy. The Romans were fiercely aggressive expansionists. China seems much more interested in maintaining its internal isolation and in keeping control of its own massive population than in expanding to new territory.

Except in the arena of business, (and pay no attention to the human rights abuses behind the curtain, thank you), I think that China just wants the rest of the world to leave it alone.

Cold War era Soviet Union would be a closer modern analogue. That political entity was demonstrably expansionist, and would have gladly "taken over the world" if it had had the power. (Like most world-empire wannabes, it did not, and collapsed under its own weight.)

One could, I think, make a stronger argument that the United States is a present-day Roman Empire wannabe, although our current historical situation is bringing to an end our delusions that we can "bring Democracy to the world."

Persia = America

Arminius = ???

??? = Taiwan

Brits/Celts = ???

Jesus = ???

Judea/Palestine = ???

Egypt = ???

edited 23rd Jul '11 2:19:29 AM by MoonFry

India is Carthage.

Philip K Dick believed that modernity was actually a collective hallucination, and we're all still living in the first-century Roman Empire.

Weren't the first ethnic-Asian settlers of Japan(the ones who displaced the native Ainu) originally from China? So wouldn't that operate kind of in the reverse of Rome and Greece?

Japan is the Gauls, I reckon. Because they succeeded in attacking China and taking large chunks of it during WWII, similar to the way Brennus trampled his way to Rome and sacked it.

Han empire has no similarly to US as far as politics goes. China was an absolute monarch since Qin dynasty. While the Chinese didn't iron out the influence of feudal nobility (in form of family clans) until mid-Tang dynasty, by Han dynasty, it is already a very centralized civilization. So it is fundamentally different from US.

Modern China also have no similarity to Romans. Romans never had any concrete control over terminal part of their territory and many of the their policies can't even make it out of Rome, nevermind Italy and the rest of the empire. Why on earth would you compare China and Rome? Especially when Han empire is there in the same time period. Rome is the origin of western civilizations, so it would be most similar to....duh duh duh, western nations. Modern China would be the descendant of ancient Chinese empires.

While I do understand what you are trying to get at, but why bother with another nation? There is already a Chinese civilization during that time period.

Apart from their abuse of Christians.

japan?