The theory of “double borderland”, introduced by Owen Lattimore, mainly emphasized differences in productive means, ethnic and culture, totally neglecting the “state” as a rigid condition in the concept of borderland. This offers little help in explaining involved borderland problems in ancient China. In old days, there were two different types of “double borderlands” in China’s domains, “one type” between borderlands of different borderland sovereigns and that of China “the other type” between internal borderland and external- borderland. Coincidence and deviation were found between “borderland of China” and “those of different sovereigns”, whose borderlands did not represent the borderland of China but only part of it in times of separation of different sovereigns until the great unification in the Yuan and Qing Dynasties when different borderlands coincided with the borderland of China and were completely equivalent to it.

China’s borderland; anient borderland; “internal borderland”; “externalborderland”; theory of “double borderlands”