ABSTRACT
This chapter explains past shifts within the Chinese approach to frontiers – and the growth of divergent Chinese approaches to bianjiang – with reference to the concept of Sinicization, understood as openness to not only geographic, but also temporal border-crossing. It argues that the relative mutability within the dynastic Chinese approach to frontiers was produced by Sinicization. Sinicization in history has been non-linear and multidirectional. In conceptualizing and defending the geographic periphery of the empire, politics thus created the space for the definition of what it meant to be Chinese and the limits of the empire. The approaches to bianjiang are surprisingly diverse and reveal a greater plurality of views within China regarding territory than has so far been acknowledged by students of Chinese security, foreign policy, and minorities. Such a plethora of views is also indicative of an initial opening within Chinese elite circles to both past ideas and foreign concepts that is not often recognized.
