This paper involves an syncretic study of the structural characteristics, semantic stratification, graphical evolution and contextual analysis on a chronological base of the perplexing graphs and words which designate the Chinese, such as xia, hua and zhongguo, non-Chinese, such as yi, di, rong, and man, in early palaeographic and documentary sources. It shows how these terms evolved to distinguish between the two distinct ethnographical concepts in the early mind.

The study shows that the conception of Hua-Xia and Zhongguo carried different connotations in the Western Zhou period from that defined in Spring and Autumn philological sources. The relocation of the Zhou capital to the east during the transition from Western to Eastern Zhou had generically diffused the concept of Xia and the elegant Ya culture. The conception of Xia and Yi, which had formerly distinguished between the Zhou elites and the non-Zhou people, came to distinguish between the central states and peripheral groups in the geographical sense, as well as between the Zhou subjects and the non-Zhou subjects in the political sense. Thus the conceptualisation of the so-called “Chinese-ness” postdates the actual formation of the ethnographical bulk of the Chinese people.