They have “autonomous regions”, but not republics. China is not a federation. Rather, it’s a Unitary state.
But USSR was a Federal state, a union of multiple Soviet republics, and one of the republics (RSFSR) was also a federal republic. Each republic had its own flag, state emblem, anthem and communist party (except RSFSR, which didn’t have its own anthem and party). They did it all according to Lenin’s formula of “The Right of Nations to Self-Determination Up To And Including Secession”. It was the only country in the world to include that in their constitution.
But China doesn’t have all that. Why?
P.S. I’m looking for answers, not confrontation.
Most of China have been part of China for centuries while a lot of the non-Russian parts of the Soviet Union came from much more recent conquests. To give two examples:
Tibet has been continuously part of China since the Qing dynasty around the 17th century on top of being formally part of China during the Yuan dynasty.
Kazakhstan existed as an independent polity called the Kazakh Khanate, which was a successor state of the Golden Horde, until it was annexed by the Russian empire by the mid 19th century.
Tibet has been continuously part of China for three centuries before the overthrown of Qing while the entirety of Kazakhstan was only part of the Russian empire for several decades before the Romanovs were overthrown. You really can’t claim Kazakhstan is Russian in the same way you can claim Tibet is Chinese.
There’s also the fact that the Qing dynasty worked hard to decouple Chinese civilization from Han since the emperors had to juggle their legitimacy of being the rightful heirs of Chinese civilization with being Manchu (various conquest dynasties like Northern Wei and Yuan also did this), so saying Tibet is Chinese doesn’t carry some weird ethnonationalist or chauvinist connotation but merely a statement of fact that Tibet has been part of various Chinese polities and contributed to Chinese culture like every other Chinese ethnic group. The Han do not have a monopoly on Chinese culture. Tibet is Chinese because Tibetans are Chinese.
The Soviet Union (and Yugoslavia) tried to create a Soviet (and Yugoslavian) identity that encapsulated all of the various ethnicities under one Soviet/Yugoslavian umbrella, but they didn’t have the benefit of 3+ centuries like the Chinese had. Mix in some borrowing of European understanding of nationalism and you get people who think that each major ethnicity having their own nation-state for the sake of combating Great Russian chauvinism united under a federation was a good idea. But a federation is inherently less stable than a unitary state.
Counter point : Tibet was also it’s own empire long ago, it also was unstable during most of the Quin rule, kept it’s own political class since it’s medieval times, rebelled against and expeled ethnical chinese several times in its existence and was mostly a tributary of the several political entities that are seen as the precursor of modern China.
Llhasa was always it’s own thing under the mongolian rule, the quin dynasty rule, the gelug rule, ect… With their own tribal leaders, sub religions (from bon to all the flavors of buddist they had) perpetuating their own peculiar brand of rule on their people.
Three centuries are nothing compared to the thousand year history they had before the quin, and claiming that Tibet is chinese at the very least, a very large simplification, if not an outright attempt at disinformation.
Tibet is culturally, religiously, legally (in the sense that they had their own code of law) distinct from China and has been for next to always.
What you are claiming is akin to saying that Quebec in Canada always was Canadian because their indigenous tribes contiously were conquered by the English and French colonist in the 15-16-17 centuries…
It stopped being a truly independent empire after Tang. Post Tang, it hovered between being a tributary state and being formally part of China.
Yuan also had a special imperial office for the head Tibetan Buddhist. This office was also the titular head of all things Buddhist within China, not just Tibetan Buddhism. So this imperial office, which had to be staffed by a member of the Tibetan clergy, was the final say with regards to Buddhism regardless of whether you were a Tibetan who practiced Tibetan Buddhism in Tibet or a Han who practiced other schools of Buddhism in other provinces. If people outside of Tibet had to subscribe to Tibetan religious customs, then you can no longer claim separation between Tibet and the rest of China.
Now that’s just silly. Tibet’s incorporation in Yuan was completely peaceful, mostly because the Mongols didn’t want to wage war and the Tibetans didn’t want to be waged war at. Tibet’s incorporation in Qing was a struggle between the Dzungar Khanate, a Mongolic polity. and Qing, a Chinese polity, over Tibet. While Qing would go on to ethnically cleanse the Dzungars, Tibetans were left alone.