几百年的事实表明中国北方平原是无法抵挡北方野蛮人攻击的，而且中国南方也更加富有，那么为什么明朝还要将首都搬到北京呢？ [美国媒体]

With centuries of evidence that the Northern Chinese Plain was not easy to defend in the fact of northern barbarian attacks, and the fact that Southern China was clearly wealthier, why would the Ming move their capital to Beijing?

几百年的事实表明中国北方平原是无法抵挡北方野蛮人攻击的，而且中国南方也更加富有，那么为什么明朝还要将首都搬到北京呢？



Yu-Hsing Chen, Well versed on history of China, and follows its politics a bit
Answered 36m ago
It is exactly because of that that’s why the Yongle Emperor moved the capital up there.
Because unless China wants to be an empire of just Southern China, it needs to defend the Northern Plains, even though it might be less wealthy in theory, it’s also still quite wealthy and heavily populated.

正是因为这个原因，所以永乐皇帝才将首都搬到北京。因为除非中国只想在中国南方建立一个帝国，否则的话中国也需要去保卫北方平原，虽然理论上北方平原不那么富裕，但依然还是很富有而且人口众多。



Meanwhile, the South does have the rivers to defend them, but it’s been proven that this is a 1 line defense, once the first line is breached it’s basically the end, this was the case for the Wu kingdom of the Sun clan, the Southern Song dynasty, the Chen dynasty, and many others, because once you lose the front line of defense the enemy just sail downstream and will get to all your cities in a matter of days and you have to try to sail upstream to fight them. This is why when these lines collsapse it almost always ends in very quick end of the Southern dynasties as there’s just no fall back line or ways to really counter attack.

同时，虽然南方有河流可以自卫，但那只是单线防御，一旦这条线被突破，那就完了。孙权的吴国，南宋，陈朝等等都是如此，因为一旦你失去了防御前线，敌人就可以顺流而下，几天之内就可以抵达你的任何一个城市，而你不得不逆流而上进行抵抗。

The first such times when there really was a north vs south full offensive (the war that finally ended the 3 Kingdoms period, the Jin final offensive against the Wu.) pretty much already set the tone for the future, as people of the time were already well aware of the geographic issue

晋对吴国的最终攻势导致了三国的终结，这是北方对南方的一次全面战争，这基本上已经为未来奠定了基调，因为当时的人们已经意识到了南方所面临的问题。

The Jin plan was basically to attack a wide front, in the lower Yangtze the force’s main point was to keep the defenders occupied and spread out, while the main source of offense was simply going down the Yangtze river with a concentrated fleet. Despite decades and decades of defense planning on the Wu side, the war was effectively over after 2 months and the final Wu emperor surrendered within 4 months.

晋的计划是进行大范围的前线攻击，在长江下游，其主要目标是牵制住敌人，让其应接不暇。然后大部队乘长江而下。虽然吴国进行了几十年的防卫部署，战争在2个月后就结束了，最终吴国国王在四个月内投降。



Jin Yuan
Answered 8h ago
Centuries of evidence that the northern Chinese Plain was not easy to defend. Just because the northern frontier got breached occasionally, doesn’t mean that it was not easy to defend, you need to look at the full picture. Northern China had a very well situated mountain range as shielding (roughly the line of the Great Wall), if you look at a map of China. In the history before Ming moved their capital north, this line was very secure, apart from the Mongols who broke it against the Jin dynasty holding only half of China, no foreign invader was able to break and establish long term control on the other side of the wall. Another example is the Song dynasty, who never controlled the Yanyun sixteen prefecture, thus was unable to complete this line of natural defense. Consequently they were powerless against northern invasions. As a matter of fact, the Ming’s choice of Beijing as capital was not that problematic—apart from the Manchu invasion, by which time Ming had already collapsed, the only significant threat to the Ming northern border in 296 years of its existence came from Esen, who was halted under the walls of Beijing.
Another reason for Beijing to be the capital was that it was the powerbase of Zhu Di (Yongle). He usurped the throne in a civil war, so he needed to establish firmer control.

几百年的事实表明中国北方平原不容易防守。就因为北方前线被偶尔侵犯，并不意味着它不容易防守。中国北方拥有非常好的山脉防守（差不多就是长城那条线），看看中国地图就知道了。在明朝将首都迁往北方之前，这条线非常安全，除了蒙古人打破了这条防线入侵了只占领半个中国的金朝，其他的外部入侵者都无法打破这条线并建立长期的控制。另外一个例子是宋朝，从未控制过燕云十六州，因此无法建立这条自然的防守线。所以导致宋朝无法抵抗北方入侵者。事实上，明朝选择北京为首都其实没什么大问题，除了受到满族入侵，而当时明朝其实已经崩溃了。在其296年历史中，明朝北方边境受到的唯一真正威胁来自于西凉女兵，但最终被北京城墙所阻止。选择北京为首都的另一个原因是它是朱棣（永乐）的老巢。他在内战中篡夺了王位，所以他需要建立更巩固的控制。