N OWHERE MORE than in Asia do states and their rulers tend to think they represent not just, say, defined territories or peoples with a shared language, but rather whole civilisations, often cosmically ordained. Strongmen running Central Asian states erect monuments to themselves as heirs to nomadic empires. In Cambodia the autocrat, Hun Sen, collects titles such as “Illustrious Prince, Great Supreme Protector and Famed Warrior” in conscious emulation of the former god-kings of Angkor Wat, the jungle complex which itself was built to represent the centre of Hindu and Buddhist cosmology. And in Japan next month a new emperor will be enthroned who is supposedly a direct descendant of Emperor Jimmu, whose reign began in 660 BC and whose illustrious ancestors, in turn, include the goddess of the sun. Just being a simple nation-state is not always enough these days.

No country plays up the idea of representing a civilisation more than China does. Visitors to Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound in Beijing, are rarely spared a lecture on how, uniquely, China is an “ancient civilisation with over 5,000 years of history”. Although that is an exaggeration, a continuous Chinese state has existed, by and large, since the Qin empire unified a number of warring states in 221 BC . It has shaped China’s awareness of itself—and how it expects others to treat it.

As Lucian Pye, a sinologist, once wrote, it is as if the Roman or Carolingian empire survived today in its heartland, trying to function as a nation-state. Yet perhaps a civilisation masquerading as a state, as Pye called China, helps explain the modern autocratic state’s durability in the face of many predictions of its demise. China’s affairs of state are conducted in near-total secrecy in Zhongnanhai, with dark scandals always present. Yet the projected grandeur of government gives all Chinese, as Pye put it, a right to pride and dignity. Or as Xi Jinping, China’s ruler, says, a civilisation “carries the soul of a country on its back”.

China’s sense of itself as a glorious civilisation encompasses a long history, a vast geography, a huge population and the incorporation of lesser cultures and peoples. It is also fostered as the flipside of a sense of victimhood over colonial depredations. India offers many parallels, and it is no surprise that notions of a civilisational state are on the rise there, too. In particular, they are embraced by Narendra Modi, the prime minister, and supporters of his Bharatiya Janata Party, for whom the ancient scriptures of Hinduism, above all, represent the glory and essence of India.

In India Hindu nationalists decry the Western rationalism and universal values embraced by Jawaharlal Nehru and his political heirs. In China enthusiasts of a civilisational state go further, and credit it with the country’s development success. Zhang Weiwei of Fudan University in Shanghai argues that the Communist Party’s pragmatism and its gradual approach to reforms are rooted in an ancient awareness of China’s vast size and complexity, and in a hard-wired imperial aversion to chaos. Arguments like these provide a convenient primordial imprimatur for all manner of abuses, from the suppression of civil liberties to the rejection of any external criticism.

But history is messy. Those trying to maintain a civilisational mindset must wilfully debase big portions of it. In India, it is not just colonialism and its aftermath that have distorted the true culture in the eyes of Hindu nationalists. They also resent much earlier waves of Muslim conquest and seek to expunge their legacy. Undoing 800-odd years of Islamic influence is impossible, and offensive to India’s 190m Muslims—although that has not prevented the BJP from using the idea as a successful organising principle.

The Chinese government, too, often chooses to disregard inconvenient episodes. The violent upheaval of the Cultural Revolution, for instance, sits awkwardly with the claim that the Communist Party is upholding China’s time-honoured preference for stability. Other contradictions are even more awkward. The reformist May 4th movement of 1919, which gave birth to the Communist Party itself, was profoundly critical of Confucianism and other conservative aspects of Chinese culture. As the 100th anniversary of the movement approaches, the party will have to perform intellectual contortions as both a convert to the virtues of China’s ancient civilisation and as the notional torchbearer of the May 4th spirit. Confucian ethics are not much guide there.