Qing conquests

Nah. Lots of resources in modern day, and more importantly, silk road in the ancient day.

Manchuria rich in natural resources. Amongst Manchuria's resources were iron, coking coal, soybeans and salt.

>>2981513
Big tracts of empty land are great. It's only when they have disloyal people in them when they become a problem.

>>2981513
China was securing their borders to protect the populous heartland from an invasion through the north China plain:
>Himalayan mountains protect an invasion through India or Burma
>mountains on the border with the central Asian countries
>desert on border with Mongolia
>mountains on border with Russia in Manchuria
>xinjiang acts as a buffer state with kazakhstan

>>2981513
Land is never unimportant. Perhaps it is unsuitable for growing crops, but it may have useful resources underneath it. And we never know what resources will become useful later. For example, coal was superficially useful for individual heating/cooking until the industrial revolution made coal essential to all industry. A country would be foolish to give up a mountain of coal -- or tungsten, or aluminum, or some other element the use of which we have not yet pioneered -- because it does not seem to have a use today. As long as the country has a firm grip over the land, and ideally, it connects to the population center, why give it up? All the more reason for enemies not to fight you for it.

>>2981513
The geopolitical imperative of large land empires is to erect a buffer zone between them and the outside world. This ensures their security and gives them a safe base from which to project influence. If a land empire cannot manage this, it will likely collapse from foreign pressure.

China has existed as a civilization for thousands of years and has ruled the greater Chinese plain for a few millenia. It is their policy by default to project beyond their core "han" territories and establish buffers. Mongolia, Tibet, Manchuria, Xinjiang, even Dale and Taiwan, these are all examples.

The Chinese also established the tributary system which ensured good relations with neighboring countries, increasing their security even further.

>>2981908
How secure can those borders be when they are full of rebellious separatists?

>>2981513
Manchuria has a fuckton of resources. And even after the Soviets had stripped it bare, Manchuria was the only part of China that had any industry post WWII, and it's workers the only ones that knew anything about Industry.
After the Sino-Soviet split, Japan was also China key source of industrial technology and expertise and guess where all the Japs helping the Chinese had their experience from. Manchuko-I mean Manchuria.
The rest I know less about but I would assume, as other posters said, due to resources and defensive terrain

>>2983453
The thing is, they're not. Xinjiang is experiencing unrest right now, but the highest estimate puts the uighur population at 15m. That's fucking nothing.
Tibetans are even less, 7m.
Han in the PRC 1.2B.
Han are about 40% as of I think 2010 in Xinjiang, this number is only rising thanks to beijing encouraging migration to suppress ethnic nationalism.

Tibet is still vastly Tibetan, but the autonomous republic is only like 3 million people and they're all under strict Chinese supervision. The people in tibet meanwhile, no longer want to rebel for the most part. Even though China has been repressive, they just want their yaks and they're very fond of new technologies that have been brought in.

File: Commander Zhao Hui surprises the Dzungars in Oroi Jalatu.jpg (707KB, 1036x631px) Image search: [Google]

707KB, 1036x631px

>>2981513
The Qing's primary reason for conquering those territories was security. The Steppenigs of Mongolia had to be put to heel- most particulary the powerful Dzungars, whom the Manchu Court feared as Mongol Empire 3.0- and Tibetan instability could cause for a powerful enemy to conquer Tibet and then proceed to China (which nearly happened when the Gurkhas declared empire in Nepal).

The fact that modern industrial science has proved that the region is rich with natural resources such as minerals and rare earths is a bonus.

>>2984102
Lack of population didn't stop violent Irish nationalism from successfully carving off their own Irish Free State.