The NP’s Answer:

I once debated the Chinese ambassador to the U.S. on this topic. The very first (and really only) thing he brought up: the marriage of a Tang princess to Songtsen Gampo, the king of Tibet, way back in the 600s. A pretty tenuous basis for claim to a country the size of Western Europe! But this claim is pushed constantly. When I was in Lhasa in 2017 (before I was banned for life), the Chinese government was hosting a theater performance dramatizing the life of this princess and her union with Songtsen Gampo as symbolic of Tibet’s union with China. Forgotten is the fact that Songtsen actually demanded the princess from China, or that Songtsen’s Yarlung dynasty frequently invaded and even conquered parts of China (sacking the capital, Chang’an)—not really the actions of a unified empire. Forgotten are the many centuries of complete and utter Tibetan separation and independence. Forgotten is the fact that the first Chinese army to ever enter Tibet didn’t do so until the 1700s—and it was a Qing army (i.e. not Han Chinese, but Manchu!). Forgotten is the fact that the Manchus never controlled much of Tibet outside of Lhasa itself (that’s like controlling Paris but not the rest of Western Europe, then claiming it all later). Forgotten is the fact that the Tibetans drove out the Qing themselves—even before they’d been toppled in China. Forgotten are the decades of complete independence before 1950, not to mention the fact that, until then, you could have counted the number of Chinese people in central Tibet on one hand until Mao’s troops showed up—contested by a Tibetan army and, for years, Tibetan freedom fighters.

But one time, a millennium-and-a-half ago, a Tang princess married a Tibetan king.

By that rubric, I wonder how many countries could lay claim to China!

My two cents. 🙂