This is a popular talking point, but recently I've read a bit about Foreign Dynasties and it's very interesting. The biggest update for me was just how complex and Sinicized the last and greatest of them, the Manchu, were from the start. Not mere barbarian guys on horses at all.

it's more like, idk, educated Chechens, Soviet officers like Dudayev and Maskhadov, with the legacy of having once ruled Russia, taking advantage of the collapse of the Union and engaging in complex ethnopolitical engineering to establish a stable regime. Insider outsiders.