I refer to the letter from Lau Han-tao (South China Morning Post, January 16) regarding the term 'Han Chinese'.

It is extraordinary to find that some Chinese people now consider the Mongols to be Chinese, when any student of Chinese history will know that the Chinese spent centuries bitterly fighting to expel their Mongol overlords from China. I doubt that if those many thousands of Chinese who gave their lives in this cause were with us today they would thank Mr Lau for describing their sworn enemies as his countrymen. It is a similar case with the Tibetans, who also invaded China in years gone by. I suggest Mr Lau looks a little more deeply into Asian history before he repeats the mendacious propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party on these matters.

As regards his argument that because there are 'African Americans' and 'Native Americans', this means that there are also many types of Chinese, of which 'Han' is just one - in the case of African Americans, their forebears were originally brought to America as slaves, and Native Americans were dispossessed of their lands by European settlers. These cases, though tragic in their own way, are surely in no manner analogous to the conquest of Tibet in 1950 by the PLA which was illegal under international law and stands condemned by the UN General Assembly.