It seems you do not know that before around 2000 years ago Chinese wasn't spoken much south of the Yangtze. The Chinese have spent the last 2,000 pushing out the local tribes like the MiaoYao isolated and others speaking languages related to Hmong & Thai. China continues this same classic imperial expansion today in Tibet (never been) & Xinjiang (have been). I have talked freely with Uighurs. I would love to see you tell them to their faces that the CCP is not behaving like a classical empire.

To you, it seems that because the CCP is slower about its expansion agenda, you don't notice it. Are you like a T-Rex, you don't notice movement if it's slower than normal?