The Sichuan Basin plays such a big role, how does it play a strategic role, and why is it related to the rise and fall of Chinese civilization?
do you know? The seemingly closed Sichuan Basin must not be closed. So besides being a place of refuge in wartime, what important value does Sichuan have to China?
If you want to choose a region that has always been very important in Chinese history, it must be the Sichuan Basin, because no matter how many times the political and economic center has changed in Chinese history, the geographical location of the Sichuan Basin has always been of great strategic value, and even related to the establishment of ancient dynasties. Rise and fall and independence and self-improvement of the modern Chinese nation.
The reason why the Sichuan Basin is so important can be seen from its geographical location. The Sichuan Basin belongs to the southwest region, but it is located in the east of the southwest region. It reaches the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in the west, connects with the Guanzhong region in the northwest in the north, borders on the Central China region in the east, and extends down the Yangtze River to the entire middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
The Sichuan Basin covers mainly the eastern part of Sichuan and the western part of Chongqing, which were collectively called Bashu in ancient times. However, such a link area connecting east to west and north to south is surrounded by mountains, which seems to be very closed. This point is reflected in the Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai's difficult road to Shu. If he did not communicate with Qin Sai, it pointed out the barrier between the Sichuan Basin and Chang'an in the Central Plains at that time.
Over the Micang Mountain and Daba Mountain in the north, there is also the majestic Qinling Mountains. The west is blocked by the Qionglai Mountains and Daliang Mountains on the edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the south is Dalou Mountain, and the south is Wushan.
Wushan Mountain, Taihang Mountain in the north and Xuefeng Mountain in the south together form the dividing line of the second and third levels of Chinese geography. To the east of the dividing line are hills and plains with an average altitude of less than 500 meters, and to the west of the dividing line are hills and plains with an altitude of 1000-2000 meters. However, the Sichuan Basin is a special case, with an average altitude of only about 500 meters. Among the mountains in the southwest, there are plains and hills with a total area of about 260,000 square kilometers. It is also destined to have an extraordinary history. fate.
Due to the geographical closure, the climate temperature in the Sichuan Basin is higher than that at the same latitude. There is almost no frost and snow throughout the year, and the frost-free period can reach up to 350 days. The average annual precipitation is about 1500mm, and the abundance of rain also made it a very prosperous ancient Shu Kingdom before the pre-Qin period. However, due to the double blow of the flood and the later rise of the Qin State, the ancient Shu Kingdom mysteriously disappeared.
The Sichuan Basin has been continuously immigrated by the Han people and mixed with the ethnic minorities in the Southwest. It is also an important settlement of the Han people in the Southwest. So far, the Sichuan Basin has officially been closely linked with the civilization of the Central Plains. It has been an excellent place to avoid wars in many historical periods. area.
The Sichuan Basin is not only China's wartime refuge, but also an important strategic rear area. How did it rise to become the Land of Abundance?
Although the Sichuan Basin has unique climate conditions, it belongs to the subtropical monsoon climate. However, due to the barriers of the mountains, the basin has formed a feature similar to that of an oceanic climate with high precipitation, resulting in high temperature and rain in summer and easy to cause floods, and warm and dry winter will cause drought. The ancient Shu Kingdom also perished under such circumstances because of insufficient natural conditions. to support social development.
When the State of Qin occupied this place during the Warring States Period, it not only brought more advanced farming techniques, but also during the period of King Zhaowang Li Bing organized the construction of the Dujiangyan Water Conservancy Project, which not only diverted floods and drained water, but also stored water to fight drought. In addition, the fertile soil in the Sichuan Basin is a special purple soil rich in organic matter, nitrogen and phosphorus, which is suitable for growing rice and cotton crops. Therefore, the Sichuan Basin has also been continuously developed and has become a famous land of abundance.
With the help of the rich and prosperous products in the Sichuan Basin, the Qin State successfully unified the six countries and established a unified dynasty with centralized power. Resources are used as logistics. On the one hand, they cross the Micang Mountains to enter the Hanzhong Plain, and then cross the Qinling Mountains to seize Guanzhong by darkening Chencang.
However, the roads in and out of the Sichuan Basin in ancient times were also very steep. In addition to the waterway along the Yangtze River passing through the Three Gorges Kuimen to connect with Central China, the most important link to the Northwest Central Plains is a long and narrow Jiange Road. This trail runs from the north of the Sichuan Basin to the It extends to the north, and the Jianmen Pass built accordingly is 300 meters high and only 50 meters wide at the narrowest point, becoming the most dangerous pass in the world guarding Bashu. Only then will there be the description in Li Bai's poems that the Jiange is so towering, and one man is the gate, and ten thousand men are not allowed to open it.
Therefore, the world was in chaos at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, but the Sichuan Basin could be peaceful. Later, Liu Bei listened to Zhuge Liang's suggestion that the Bashu regime could be established only by managing the land of Bashu, and the three kingdoms would stand with the weakest military strength. Therefore, the Sichuan Basin has become an area that military strategists must contend for, and the Bashu area has inevitably become a battlefield under attack from a strategic rear that can be settled.
How was the strategic location of the Sichuan Basin intertwined with the rise and fall of the Central Plains dynasty, and what important role has it played in strategy since modern times?
Due to the important strategic position of the Sichuan Basin, successive dynasties have used it as a strategic rear. Especially for invasion from the north, North China and East China are very easy to break through because they are plains, and the Sichuan Basin often becomes the last stronghold. When the Mongols’ iron hooves came all the way from the north, in 1227 A.D., hundreds of thousands of Mongolian troops surrounded Diaoyu City, which is now located in Chongqing, and the soldiers and people in the city resisted desperately. And it directly led to the division of the Mongol Empire.
Kublai Khan was able to inherit the eastern border of the Mongolian Empire and establish the Yuan Dynasty, and he never captured Diaoyu City, and the Southern Song Dynasty had already existed in name only, until 1279 AD, the Southern Song Dynasty regime was forced to retreat to Yashan on Hainan Island, that is, the ends of the earth and the ends of the earth. At the time of the retreat, the soldiers and civilians of Diaoyu City in the land of Bashu were still holding on, and they persisted in the struggle for a total of half a century.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, when facing the invasion of the Manchu and Qing ethnic minorities, the people in the Sichuan Basin chose to fight unyieldingly, and were slaughtered to the nines. Therefore, in the late Qing Dynasty, in order to stabilize the rule, there was such a thing as Huguang filling Sichuan. A large-scale immigration operation, a large number of people migrated from the surrounding provinces of Hubei, Jiangxi and Guangxi to fill the Sichuan Basin.
The purpose is to develop the Sichuan Basin and use it as an important reserve granary and taxation center besides Jiangnan. Because the Sichuan Basin has been continuously developed since the Qin and Han Dynasties, the cultivation rate of the land has reached between 30% and 40%. It is an important rice and rapeseed production area in China, and it is also an important production area for citrus and silkworm.
Therefore, during the War of Resistance Against Japan, when large areas of the country had been occupied by Japanese invaders, the National Government at that time moved the capital to Chongqing, hoping to make the Sichuan Basin the final strategic location, because in addition to the rich agricultural products and relatively closed geographical location, The Sichuan Basin also has important strategic resources such as coal, iron, and natural gas, and the reserves of salt mines in central Sichuan are even greater.
Moreover, in order to resist Japanese aggression, a total of more than 3.5 million Sichuan troops went out to fight in Sichuan during the Anti-Japanese War, with more than 600,000 casualties, ranking the highest among all provinces. Therefore, the Sichuan Basin not only occupies an important strategic position in terms of geographical location and resources, but the Bashu people are also the indomitable mainstay of the Chinese nation.