ABSTRACT
This chapter tries to clarify two sets of conceptual connections. On the one hand, Chinese discourses of compelled change, i.e. civilizing, and practices of conquest and colonialism are compared to the European discourses on missionizing, and their conceptual similarities are demonstrated. On the other hand, connections between Chinese ideas of a ‘Confucian civilizing mission’ as change of moral, cultural, and ethnic identity from the Ming and Qing dynasties are linked to later Chinese ideas of ‘nationizing’, i.e. integration of non-Chinese people into the Chinese nation by assimilation of language, script, way of living, and other cultural and ethnic markers.
