by Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker blog
Europe is a continent and China is not only because the winners write the history books.
There is no scientific reason Europe is a continent: Europe is not a separate land mass, nor does it even sit on its own tectonic plate – we may as well call Canada a continent. China’s land mass area is nearly identical with Europe’s. What makes West Eurasia more special than East Eurasia?
Anyway, China is far more than just a country – it’s better to think of it like the Islamic World: “Chinese” is really a signifier of a common culture which transcends ethnicity, language, geography, an individual nation, an individual church, etc.
It’s absurd to think of China as homogenous: China has nearly 60 officially-recognised minorities today, and that’s after a couple millennia of consolidation. There are about 100 Indo-European languages (if we rightly exclude the Indo-Iranian branch – neither of which are in Europe, LOL), but hundreds of Sinitic languages still exist (and that’s even after excluding the Tibetan, South and Southeast Asian branches).
No Western dynasty or power could compare with the combined size, scope and duration of their Chinese counterparts. In the US they say, “Everything in bigger in Texas” – I have been to China, and they should say: “Everything is 10 times bigger than in Texas, in China”. Stand before the terracotta warriors at Xi’an and you’ll see what I mean.
Is it because Europe’s geography made it as isolated as a Greek island, and thus culturally unique? China has been far more isolated than Europe: it wasn’t accessible for sea trade until later in its history, most Chinese lived in only the northern plains until 1000AD, and there wasn’t sustained, firmly-intellectual contact with non-Chinese until the 7th century (Read Pepe Escobar’s fun, culturally-sprawling book 2030, which includes fascinating historical information about Xuanzang, who served the same “East-West” uniter role that Escobar does today, thankfully.)
Anyway, I think that Europe as an idea is bogus: it’s all about Mediterranean versus non-Mediterranean (Northern European) culture, and that was certainly their own view for many, many centuries.
Who is arrogant, who is defensive, who is right?
The arrogance of the West is that they believe they have the best system.
The arrogance of the Chinese is that they believe they are the best people.
(The arrogance of the Iranians is that they believe they are the best martyrs, when they are really just the best at believing that everyone else is the worst martyr!)
I would say the Chinese are closer to their goal than the West, because there’s absolutely no doubt in 2018 that the West European system (bourgeois capitalism) is not the best – even Westerners are revolting in White Trash Revolutions across the bloc.
The Chinese have always had an apparent disinterest in the rest of the world, and that seems to imply an arrogant self-glorification.
But they have some grounds for their belief: Their millennia-old meritocracy – the Civil Service Examination – made public service the highest good, was open to all, but tapped only a few. It’s a bit intimidating to think that one must compete with 1500 years of cumulative efforts of their best and brightest, no? Also, their neo-Confucian hierarchy of “scholar, farmer, tradesman, merchant, soldier” is such a high-minded inverse of the Western view that one surely does a double-take when learning about it for the first time. (China shows that such a system is actually feasible!)
And it’s especially hard to counter the arrogance of China in 2018, as they are the world’s most successful socialist country ever, and also the most successful country today in a host of key areas.
Perhaps it is because I hail from a humble, small, self-denying people who only live to serve God and his children with good works (I’m such a good martyr!) that I have no sour grapes for China’s apparent victory over the West. Anyway, since 1979 Iran is, I am extremely proud to say, neither East nor West (bad martyr – so arrogant!).
White Trash conundrum: Where do humble people learn when no learning is available?
The problem is: Since 1949 it has been virtually impossible to find any English-language studies of China which did not primarily exist to elevate the West over China.
All the West has – or wants – when it comes to China analysts is either an alarmist or a denier. So from academia to journalism – prior to the internet – you had no chance to find honest reporting on China or from China.
The average Westerner knows seemingly nothing of Chinese history other then the idea of an imperial emperor and a farmer in a huge bamboo hat…and China is a continent!
Ignorance is dangerous: Even if the West wanted to defeat China – and Obama’s (failed) “Pivot to China” shows that they do – they could not, because they do not even know their enemy. Such ignorance has already led them to catastrophic bloodletting in Indochina and Korea (and Afghanistan, Iran and elsewhere).
The alternative to scholarship which exists to elevate the West over China is a scholarship which sympathetically tries to understand China on its own terms and merits. Thankfully for those who want to learn about China – in 2018 we finally have this option.
How does one become a ‘doyen’ on China? You don’t get honest, dammit!
This is the first of a 8-part series which compares the West’s old scholarship on China with the new scholarship which…it just can’t suppress anymore.
Being interested in China, many years ago I asked a professor-friend in academia who taught Chinese history for a top comprehensive history on that little hamlet. He suggested: China: A New History by John King Fairbanks (2nd edition 2006).
I can see why this is a standard university-level textbook – it ticks all the establishment boxes: Fairbanks was educated at Exeter and Oxford, became Harvard’s first-ever China scholar, was known as “the West’s doyen on China”, and this book was his “masterwork” which killed him – he died of a heart attack the day he submitted it to his publisher.
My condolences. But while it may be fine on the bone oracles of the Shang Dynasty, it is rather pure junk when it comes to dealing with modern China.
But I figured that going in: I did not expect anything but a rabid fear of Red China, the casual arrogance that the Western model is superior and a total glossing over of both Communist China’s successes & the West’s crimes in China.
I wanted the academic viewpoint because I didn’t expect much from Western journalists, who I know already genuflect at the altar of the Fairbanks-types (dead or alive).
If you do look to journalists, the only comprehensive history on China which is ranked more popular (just slightly) on Amazon than Fairbanks’ academic work is John Keay’s China: A History. Keay is a longtime reporter for The Economist, which is as editorially-sympathetic to Red China as is the CIA (or as is Harvard’s establishment).
Clearly, selecting Fairbanks as a “standard bearer” for Western scholarship on China is fair and appropriate for a series such as this one.
On the other side, open-minded readers finally have new, better, accurate resources, but it is best exemplified by Jeff J. Brown’s truly indispensable China is Communist, Dammit! (2017).
Brown comes from two fundamentally different places than Fairbanks: the outside and the inside.
Brown is not trying to join the establishment, apparently feels no responsibility to unquestioningly uphold it…and thus has all the editorial control of an outsider; Brown is also living inside China, and it seems fair to assume that he has to actually be sympathetic and understanding of those around him, in order to avoid repeated bouts of culture stock and homesickness.
People will say that Brown’s title shows his bias…and I see nothing wrong with that accusation nor the title itself. “Objective journalism” is equal parts goal and myth: “One person’s ‘freedom fighter’ is another person’s ‘terrorist’”, and I learned that on the very first day of journalism school.
I actually object to Fairbanks’ title far more. It should have been: China: A Rewritten History, because it certainly is not the history the Chinese know and believe – it’s the Chinese history the West wants to believe. And that is unfortunate for Fairbanks and his readers…but it is also exactly why Fairbanks gets the laurels while Brown is probably hoping just a few people actually buy his book, dammit!
(Is Brown secretly 1/8th Iranian or something? What a martyr! Sell out already, sheesh!)
The beauty of Brown’s book is that it helps provide a balance which anyone interested in China has long been lacking and desiring. It is truly a one-of-a-kind book, and I would not be surprised if it gets translated widely because it is so very necessary in 2018. In short: the book contains truly excellent analysis, but it’s especially unique because of the sheer number of monumental facts and in-depth anecdotes which non-Chinese refuse to admit or discuss – where else can they be found but in this book? (Indeed, how can one ever have “excellent analysis” if they don’t have all the facts?)
Brown does not work for The Economist, so the mainstream media is never going to review his book. Yet he will go down as one of the “first movers” in the development of a new trend: Western analysts who gave up on attacking China.
Why you should read all 8 parts – think of what you’ve been missing!
Even before reading either Brown’s book or this series, I think must one concede: Year after year and decade after decade, the West has underestimated the vibrancy, stability and success of the Chinese model.
It is therefore fair to conclude that their analysis is fundamentally flawed in some way, so it would be useful to you to re-examine their foundations.
The aim of this series is two-fold:
Firstly, it will compare how the two very different authors analyzed the three primary events of modern China – the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the legacy of Mao – and secondly it will synthesise the very different groups of facts, anecdotes and analysis presented by these two authors in order to arrive at: modern analytical conclusions about China, possible parallels of the Chinese experience with other countries, and continue with the ongoing modern debate of socialism versus capitalism.
In short, by holding up the old and new scholarship on China one can see which is accurate and which is not, and why. By unlearning bad scholarship on China and learning new, good scholarship on China, we can confidently move forward towards greater global understanding.
China is daunting – after all, how can the West understand a China which has been culturally anti-capitalist since ’49…BC? True, modern, unbiased understanding of any continent is a major task, but quite an edifying one.
The bottom line is that the Western establishment’s view is so ideologically-driven, so unsympathetic, so wilfully opposed to accepting the native’s view of themselves, that it can fairly be called “extremist”. (An irony is that some will view this statement as unfair, yet will will label Brown’s work “extremist” without hesitation….)
Ultimately, extremism is a tactic used to confuse the issue and deliberately reduce understanding…and that’s what this series tries to subvert.
The credit goes to the modern scholarship of those like Brown’s, which does something which 20th century scholars did not want to do: clarify the impressive humanity of 21st century China.
The reality is that the West has a huge “mutual knowledge gap” due to their vast anti-Communist China campaign. Rest assured that China knows all about the last 500 years of Western history, which it experienced first-hand during their 110 years (1839-1949) of Western & Japanese control (many include Japan with the West, quite fairly) which they remember as the “century of humiliation”.
That’s a a pretty harsh assessment of themselves for the Chinese to carry around, no?
But China is serious business….Thankfully, today we can finally access authors like Brown, who have compiled superb, comprehensive scholarship to allow today’s readers to grant China the seriousness and honesty it deserves. And the Fairbanks’s of the Western world are everywhere else…providing copy and rubber-stamping diplomas.
Whether or not we choose to apply modern China’s solutions to our native problems is another question, and up to the reader, but wilfully ignoring their solutions is so prejudiced that it cannot honestly be called “scholarship”.
***********************************
This is the 1st article in an 8-part series which compares old versus new Western scholarship on China.
Here is the list of articles slated to be published, and I hope you will find them useful in your leftist struggle!
Old vs. new scholarship on the continent of China: an 8-part series
Daring to go beyond Western propaganda on the Great Leap Forward’s famine
When Chinese Trash saved the world: Western lies about the Cultural Revolution
Mao’s legacy defended, and famous swim decoded, for clueless Western academics
The Cultural Revolution’s solving of the urban-rural divide
Once China got off drugs: The ideological path from opium to ‘liberal strongman’ Macron
Prefer the 1% or the Party? Or: Why China wins
China’s only danger: A ‘Generation X’ who thinks they aren’t communist
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television. He can be reached on Facebook.
“Since 1949 it has been virtually impossible to find any English-language studies of China which did not primarily exist to elevate the West over China”.
Does that assertion include the work of Joseph Needham?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Needham
I would say that Needham and collaborators in Science and Civilization are too specialized to be considered comparable to a general “History of China” book.
I started with Leonard Cottrell’s ‘Tiger of Ch’in’, about the First Emperor, in primary school, and was hooked. Then Edgar Snow’s ‘Red Star Over China’, and a steady supply of ‘China Reconstructs’ magazines etc. China’s rise has not surprised me, and the turmoil that it has induced in Western racists and civilizational supremacists has been IMMENSELY satisfying.
Surely it does not include Needham. But Needham’s work, though profoundly important, is not well known. One assumes that Ramin Mazaheri will learn of Needham from you.
Good catch though!
@Ramin,
I am sorry to be a pain in the …., but what you said here:
“Europe is a continent and China is not only because the winners write the history books.”
The continents were defined in Greek mythology, and had nothing to do with modern times and history in particular. Believe it or not but the Greek forefathers known as “Pelazgoi” created these names. Olympian Gods were Pelzgoi, and Europe in particular was the daughter of one of them. Also, Pelazgoi, a not a very publicized fact, but documented by the Greek linguists and historians dealing with very old Greek language if the prehistoric times. (note: one if the archeologists from India found Greek writings in the ruins on the bottom of the sea going back well beyond 7000BC. Pelazgoi also known as Sea people, who while traveling all over the world created and named many cities in Sumer as well as Persia or parts of India to name the few. And yes this history goes back as far as tens of thousands of years ago. I will demonstrate couple of things from Greek Mythology, that might be of interest to you. The wife of the God of the underworld known as Adis ( Hades in Latin) was called Persephoni (the name means sounding (speaking) Persian). Another Demigod whose name was Perseas (known as Perseus in Latin) meant none other but Persian. Iasonas (Jason) from Thessally (the name came from the Pelasgos named Thessalos (the forefather of all Thessalians)) traveled to the far end of Black Sea and had dealings with Persians and took Medea for wife, she was a Persian woman).
I am back to do some, archaic propaganda. People in China, are dancing Greek Pontic (Black sea Greeks) dances. These people use it as their heritage, as a result of Greek contacts with them since 3000BC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVmVDzR76Iw
The video is of very poor quality.
Russian famous singer, sings in Greek (Pontian dialect). Dancing people are (Russian Pontians?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrbwLMmudY4
At least in USSR essential schools Europe was never a continent. Eurasia is continent. Europe is “part of the world” and so is Asia. Those are different classifications.
I am sorry, you must have missed some schooling. Because in Russia like in many other countries, Europe ended on Urals and Caucasus. Asia always started East and South of those mountains. Euro-Asia, if there ever was such an expression, referred to both continents. On the top of that, Asia was always split into two sections, not continents though. Small Asia – Middle East or near East (West of and including Mesopotamia). East of that was the Main Asia. The reason for this split was also thanks to Greeks, who considered Near East or as they called it Mikra Asia (Asia Minor) as their domain. The others were just Asia, Greeks did not have any interest in Asia Major (if you will) other than the trade.
Good try, but No go (get back to reading bud).
Ah, the rich spiritual, cultural, political, philosophical, psychological flavors, aromas, and resonances of the early twenty-first century!
Ramin travels East and Strikes the Bell of Peace and Love.
As a fellow martyr (born of American parents just across the Gulf of Martyrs…..Persians…..that is the southwest shore opposite the northeast shore where Ramin was born….I’ll take the chance that it wasn’t London or Paris!) of a generation prior to his, I must say these words will surely resonate deeply until his next installment, the second of this series.
I think of the Shia Arabs of Bahrein, Al Khobar, Dammam, and Ras Tanura….. (let’s forget Dhahran, which always struck me as an Oil Patch town from Oklahoma, planted smack on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula complete with Little League baseball, soda fountains, movie theaters, and streets of suburban homes with American families within…..and a large US Air Force base on the perimeter!) and wonder if the Mild Moisture of Martyrdom evaporating off the Persian Gulf and wafting South West is the secret to them surviving a Century of the Sunni/Wahabbi Sauds!
But back to Jeff B and Pepe E.
I wish I could have a beer with one of those East West Bridges one day…or an Iranian coffee with Ramin, near a Persian Highspeed Rail Terminal of the New Silk Road!
More later on that, but for now, back to another beer I had in Manhattan not quite 50 years ago, with Another East West Player. OMG! Is that him, now one of two Asia Times owners that Pepe wrote for recently…..maybe still does???
I speak of one David P Goldman, until the early to mid-eighties, an Economics Editor of the Executive Intelligence Rreview…..and one of the authors of Dope Inc…which of course begins with that Episode of British Benevolence….the Opium Wars.
Wow! Holy Microcosm Within the Macrocosm.! Small World just Got Smaller and at the same time exploded into infinite reaches of the Universal Principle of Correspondence!
With Ramin’s article greeting me this morning.
Ego is the Enemy. And the Western Infantile Ego is World Renowned:
“0h, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;”
Rudyard, meet Ramin. And Jeff and Pepe. And other members of the Society Of Intercontinental Bridge Builders.
But back to DPG. His picture didn’t look like the same DPG I lifted one with in Manhattan nearly a half century ago. Could it be he?? Without a doubt, when I read his biography. And that opens some more terrific egoic cans of worms that call for inspection and review and reflection…… another day.
So many rich veins to mine! So little TIME!!!
I get this conservative fairly intellectual magazine from Hillsdale College, Imprimis. I don’t know how. I never attended class there or gave them any money. Holy Synchronicity! This Month’s Issue is by David P Goldman himself!
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/how-to-meet-the-strategic-challenge-posed-by-china/
Hmmm! That sounds more like a Continental Divider than a Bridge Builder. Unless he comes around to a Win-Win-Win Solution, after calming the fears of his conservative audience. “We shall shortly see!” I told myself, as I began to read.
Fifth paragraph:
“China, on the other hand, is an empire based on the coercion of unwilling people. Whereas the United States became a great nation populated by people who chose to be part of it, China conquered peoples of different ethnicities and with different languages and has kept them together by force. Whereas our principle is E Pluribus Unum, the Chinese reality is E Pluribus Pluribus with a dictator at the top.”
Rich Vein of Irony and Ego Indeed!
What would Asia Times contributor Pepe Escobar have to say about DPG???
I continued to read:
“China, like Russia, responds to its past humiliation by challenging American power. It would be naïve to expect the Chinese or the Russians to be our friends; the best we can hope for is peaceful competition and occasional cooperation in matters of mutual concern. But it is also important to recognize that American policy errors exacerbate their suspicion and distrust. For example, our decision to impose majority rule in Iraq created a Shi’ite sectarian state now allied to Iran, and it left Iraq’s Sunni minority without a state to protect them. This drove the Sunnis into the hands of non-state actors and unintentionally helped al-Qaeda and ISIS……..
Stop Bullshitting People David! You know all about the British and the Great Game. That may have been a mistake some Americans made, but there was no mistake in Whitehall! Oh,pardon me. Something surfaced in mid paragraph and destroyed my mental traquility!
The paragreaph continues, and ends thusly:
“Sunni jihad is a serious security threat to Russia and China, and Russia’s intervention in Syria is, in part, a response to our mistakes.”
Our mistakes are nearly endless, David. And most come from the immaturity of our egos and how we are played by Masters of Occult Manipulation.
Here’s how he ends the article:
“I’m a free marketer. ” (Well, he certainly wasn’t when he was Economics Editor of the Executive Intelligence Review, and Lyndon LaRouche was his Senior Contributing Editor…….but clashes of egos are a common phenomenon of human beings everywhere…..)….” But the one thing markets cannot do is divorce themselves from culture. It is when we have a national security requirement, forcing us to the frontier of physics to develop weapons that are better than those of our rivals, that we get the best kind of innovation. So the government has a role—a critical role—in meeting the Chinese challenge.
If the Chinese are spending tens of billions of dollars to build chip fabrication plants and we come up with a better way of doing it, suddenly they’ll have a hundred billion dollars’ worth of worthless chip manufacturing plants on their hands. But you can’t predict the outcome in advance. You have to make the commitment and take a leap of faith in American ingenuity and science. We can meet the strategic challenge of China, but we have to meet it as Americans in the American way.”
This is more intelligent, nuanced arguments than you might get from Alex Jones or Steve Bannon, but IMHO we still have a problem at Hillsdale College.
And the Asia Times??
Or does DPG just change his tuning depending on audience and concert hall venue???
David P Goldman blathers and pontificates as ‘Spengler’. A brief perusal of his output, I would confidently assert, reveals a true Zionazi racial and cultural supremacist, a type that LOATHES China because no Judaic Fifth Column will ever control China the way they do the West and the Anglosphere stooges in particular. The Chinese have the ‘antisemitic’ audacity to treats Jew as fellow human beings, nothing more or less, and not the ‘Gods Upon the Earth’, in Begin’s fine Talmudic usage, that Goldman and his Chosen ilk see themselves.
It remains to be seen what Ramin would have to say about Jews in Maoist China. But I think prudent to inform yourself prior to that about an Israel Epstein, a Sidney Rittenberg (aka Li Dunbai), Jakob Rosenfeld, David Crook, Mikhail Borodin (Gruzenberg), Grigori Voitinsky (Zarkhin).
I am aware that not all Jews act, think or interact with others alike. Goldman, in my opinion, represents a type of human of which I do not approve. Others Jews, like those active in supporting the People’s Republic are more to my liking.
You would like then what Muhammad Asad (aka Leopold Weiss), “Europe’s gift to Islam”, Bolshevik cum Zionist and ‘confidant of Ibn Saud, did for Political Islam.
If he worked with the Saud Mafia family, the patrons of the genocidal Wahabbist cult, I’m afraid I’d probably not approve.
Mulga, it is not a bad kind of default hypothesis, as a first approximation, but let’s go deeper into the issue here that others have chimed in on.
You do realize, do you not, that more than one of our Moveable Feast regulars has convinced him or herself that most of what is China should be suspected of being a Zionist Plot or at least something to be far more feared and resisted than to be appreciated …or co-operated with.
And here is a Jew I know a bit more about than you could know from one or two articles.
Appreciate the irony of these Zio-Sino conspiracy theorists, coming around to an opposite conclusion as yours, regarding CHINA….and agreeing, most probably with Dave Goldman (how I knew him, more familiarly), who you peg as “a true Zionazi racial and cultural supremacist,”
That’s a bit rich in conceptual contradictions, wouldn’t you say??
I don’t approve of Goldman’s propitiating the “Murican” egos of his Imprimis audience of conservatives nor of his at least semi-abandonement of a more universal outlook I know that he at least partially adhered to in the mid seventies to the mid eighties.
But my comment isn’t about one article neither of us like, or the Jewishness of its author. It has more to do with the fact that David P. Goldman is a co-owner of the Asia Times, that If I am not mistaken Pepe Escobar (who Ramin tips his hat to, along with Jeff Brown) was a major contributor of articles to…..and may STILL be, for all I know!
Isn’t THAT more interesting, ironic?? By the way, I know the other co-owner as well. Uwe Henke Von Parpart. He had a lot more to do with the SDI than Goldman did, by the way. So that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms! German, non-Jew.
But another day for that discussion. Gotta keep this of short story length, not a novel. LOL.
Goldman still is using his association with SDI (which is very real, I assure you…) with that conservative Imprimis audience he is writing for.
No, I think it is much more of a case of losing “the fire in the belly” Dave had more of in association with Lyndon and the Silk Road Lady in his twenties and thirties than he does now.
For example, Dave managed to get an audience, in a castle in Regensburg, Bavaria, back in his younger years with the patriarch of the old Venetian conspiratorial family Torre i Tasso. When they transplanted themselves to Bavaria, their name became Turn und Taxis. For a millennia they have been central to oligarchic evil in Europe, South America, and other parts of the world. In Europe for centuries they owned the postal service concession and put it to good use in spying (opening the mails, then resealing with various copies of seals, presumably) to better aid in coups, plots, assassinations, and launching of wars… etc.
Dave was a upstart that boldly informed the owner of the castle that his oligarchic ways of confounding and exploiting humanity would be coming to an end in the near future. He was coldly shown the door, as you can imagine.
But he’s no run of the mill Zionist. He’s a Jew that had the courage, once upon a time, to work hand in hand with other Jews and Gentiles whose main day to day adversary here was the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith, which Dave and co-author Jeff Steinburg (a Jew of perhaps more moral stamina!) exposed as being the protection racket for Meyer Lansky….in the polemical (and true!) formulation ADL = American Drug Lobby.
Also, on China, I suspect he has more admiration than he lets on. Consider this paragraph in his Imprimis article:
“China’s Communist Party government is a merciless meritocracy, which is one reason the Chinese have difficulty understanding American politics. If you’re in the Chinese leadership, you made it there by scoring high on a long series of exams, starting at age twelve—which means you haven’t met a stupid person since you were in junior high school. The fact that democracies can frequently advance stupid people—we are entitled to do that if we wish—doesn’t make sense to the Chinese. The one thing President Xi Jinping cannot do is get his child into Peking University unless that child scores high on his exams. Here in America, you can buy your way into Harvard. You can’t do that in China. So while the Chinese Communist Party is not a particularly efficient organization, and is certainly not a moral one, it has a lot of incredibly smart people in it.”
I think Dave is just propitiating his audience of “Murican” dummies for narrow monetary, ego and career reasons, but knows better.
Great read, Bro 93! Quite inspired, and I’d like to hear what you come up with after a strong coffee or two, indeed!
Happy to be a Bridge Builder than a Continental Divider. If I could dissolve my infantile ego once in a while, maybe I could lay a small section or two?
Many thanks for the posting – again, great read.
I know Goldman only from his Spengler tripe, hence my low opinion of what he appears to be now-not in the past. David Horowitz was a Leftist once. I still have an excellent volume by him regarding US State crimes. And the Zionazi ‘neo-conservatives’ were mostly Trots at one stage. I like his assertion that Xi is attempting to get his child into ‘Peking’ University, an institution whose Orientalist name, redolent of nostalgia for the good old days of the ‘sick man of Asia’, which I would love to see confirmed.
Look forward to reading this series, Ramin. Great idea! Thinking back to the pre-unipolar days, the alliance of sorts (kind of a ‘strength in numbers’ bloc of equal nations) that I remember was New Zealand, Canada, Cuba, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and maybe Finland? Not sure where Finland fits in exactly. Presuming world war can be avoided, it will be interesting to see if some of these cooperative relationships (what to call them?) around the globe reemerge.
looking forward to read the next one:)
I discovered Edgar Snow’s series of books about China and beginning with Red Star Over China avidly read them only to discover that what he described clashed with views of Fairbanks, et al. I did my best to try and attain balanced information, which led me to produce a paper in 1999 proving that the vast majority of foreign investment in China’s remarkable industrialization was coming from the Chinese Diaspora, not western corporations as the stories published by the Propaganda System proclaimed. After that 1999 post-grad seminar, it was clear to me that the 21st century would be either China’s Century, Asia’s Century, or Eurasia’s Century, easily truncating Henry Luce’s American Century after just 80 years.
I eagerly look forward to Ramin’s series; and given his writing style, I’m sure it will be entertaining and educational simultaneously.
Um, Ramin, your link to Jeff Brown’s book is a little garbled. The following link should work:
https://www.amazon.com/China-Communist-Dammit-Dawn-Dynasty/dp/6027354380
I hope this is the same book.
In case Jeff Brown is reading this comment, I have a question for him. I notice that the book is only available in paperback. Unfortunately, my bookshelves are full. They hold literally tons of dead trees, and they are totally out of room. Is there ever going to be an electronic edition of your book?
It is the same link. It was mistakenly dropped into another url “www.apple.com”.
I am certainly with you Ramin on Europe: it is in fact a Mediterranean versus North European divide or more brutally put a Greek/Roman South and a ‘Barbarian’ North. Alas, the barbarians took us out, then imposed their worldview first by way of the Frankish order, now by way of Anglobalization. The Frankish managed to control Christianity and colonize the First Rome to fight the Second Rome; the Anglos are using “soft power” superstition (Russofobia, prior and post the anticomunist fraudster trick of the Soviet period) to fight the Third Rome, ie Russia.
NATO was born of British minds and holds by US muscle.
I think “white trash” is referred to as “populism” by the serfs of the Anglo powers in Southern Europe. Doesn’t seem to gain them much sympathy among their masters though since they still refer to us as PIGS and like in all colonial situations force us to bleed against our own interests (war in Lybia, Syria, destabilization of the Mediterranean Basin, sanctions against Russia, etc).
The series on China seems interesting, though as you know I have serious doubts when the sources are only in English. Given the track record of world champions at piracy, slave trading and colonialism the Brits have, it is only honorable to suspect the sincerity of what is penned by native speakers of the English language off the bat.
Ohh I wish had been thinking along these lines all along…
Americans will hate me for this but in terms of political culture I think the US and the Brits are like chiken and egg, not in terms of which comes first or what is worse, but simply as two different stages of the same thing. The former will always lay the latter, and the latter will always hatch into the former. That said, I hope this last endevor on China will be as fun as the first I ever read, one dictated by a Venetian merchant called Marco Polo to a Tuscan scribe called Rusticello of Pisa, during his stay in a Genoese dungeon many moons ago.
Cheers buddy.
Hi Roberto,
And the Mediterranean culture included Egypt & all of North Africa for far longer than it has not.
White Trash is indeed denigrated as “populism” – never understood why popular rule was so despised, but I’m a democrat. That, combined with an enlightened vanguard party, has proven to be the recipe for success in the modern world.
It’s true my sources are not in Chinese, but Brown is a guy who has lived in China for 20 plus years in 2 different spans, IIRC? He is fluent in Chinese, he refers to work from those like Dongpin Han, etc. I certainly don’t hold up my work as some sort of super, perfect, uber-comprehensive thing: it’s focusing on just two books. I am not talking about Chinese popular culture, either, which certainly requires native-level intelligences, but political-factual-historical culture, so I think the lack of my Chinese is mitigated here. It is what it is: 2 books, both polar opposites, laying out their views of key subjects, and then my 2 cents thrown in.
Won’t be as fun as Marco Polo I bet – no sensationalism – but I hope you enjoy it!
Important topic but also important to point out errors. China had contact with India thousands of years before 7th century CE/AD. There’s trade links through south east Asia to Yunnan that are from ancient times. As well as sea routes. If we are talking intellectual contact, whatever that means, then Buddhism is a link one can cite. And the dating of Buddha is around 1600BCE, although not according to Wikipedia.
Contact is different from sustained, firmly-intellectual grappling. That did not occur until Xuanzang – humanly and interestingly rendered in Escobar’s book – who wrote the first serious account of India in China, and was the reason hundreds of texts were translated into Chinese. That allowed for major integration of foreign ideas into Chinese culture on the 1% and 99% level – “globalisation”.
Prior to that intellectual contact was sensationalistic – akin to Marco Polo – or religious monks & trade.
One thing I took from Escobar’s book and Xuanzang is: the Gobi, Hindu Kush, Himalayas, etc. – all these provided a huge geographic barrier which sheltered China far longer than the Alps did for Rome. I think that’s a very significant point, and I used that in the context of how some Europeans claim that Europe’s “isolation” allowed it to develop a unique culture. If that’s accepted, then a similar Chinese claim is equal or superior.
The arrogance of the Portuguese is that they believe they are the best brokers.
As in, they have broken a lot of stuff in the past but have stopped doing it, no people have surpassed their historic ability yet. Due to such experience, they are undoubtedly the best fixers nowadays!
But let me proceed with the rest of the article. :)
Anyway, I think that Europe as an idea is bogus: it’s all about Mediterranean versus non-Mediterranean (Northern European) culture, and that was certainly their own view for many, many centuries.
Who is arrogant, who is defensive, who is right?
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Its not the Europeans its the British
sorry mod – I should have put this all on one comment –
Hi Ramin – thanks for another article – I like your articles.
your quote –
The problem is: Since 1949 it has been virtually impossible to find any English-language studies of China which did not primarily exist to elevate the West over China.
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impossible to get any english studies in the west too –
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here’s a link for the environment of the OBOR
here’s the problem and the solution as I see it – https://www.facebook.com/DavidAvocadoWolfe/videos/10154269334556512/
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your link to Jeff’s book is not available but thanks for the heads up about it – wish I could afford a book right now.
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When a Chinese tells you “You speak Chinese very well” what do you answer?
If you answer “Thank you” your Chinese is poor.
“how can the West understand a China which has been culturally anti-capitalist since ’49…BC?”
I think the Chinese are uber-capitalists culturally and perhaps by gov’t “communist”. Few people do business like the Chinese, from the sidewalk businesses to State corporations.
I would suggest 1421 and 1434 by Gavin Menzies for an interesting view of a small but significant slice of Chinese
history/accomplishment.
1421 and 1434 by Gavin Menzies are definite eye-openers, worth of reading.
Europe can call itself sucker-me-blue for all anyone not of it cares. It’s not a continent – just part of one.
Just like they and their Waspy cousins across the pond aren’t the world, the known world, the civilised world or the international community – they’re just a … (soon to be insignificant) … part of it. Who cares if they don’t like it.
MacKinder’s “Heartland”- the Earth Island, and then there are the island peoples…who are naturally the sea peoples, the pirates people…just now, more or less, Anglosaxon” peoples, and their client states of course, applied at the several weak axial points of Heartland.
Europe and Asia and so forth are simply jargon terms for geographers…
I always respected Fairbank. I felt his scholarship on Dynastic China and his respect for Mao’s scholarship on Dynastic China somehow were in sync. That is a gross simplification, but yes, Fairbank imparted to me a deep and abiding respect for China.
My suspicion is that since 9-11 the neocons have eliminated any competition from old money sources. Fairbanks death in 2006 tells me this. Fairbanks being old money not neocon. I could be wrong. Just my gut talking.
The Saker or somebody should help Mr. Mazaheri get these published in a longer single format, a ! book ! There are so many pseudo socialists in this country arguing about what Lenin said or meant and other minutia who will at the same time discredit the socialist efforts and concrete realities of Iran and China, while at the same time living in and unable to effect the most monstrous Imperialist aggressor nation in the history of planet earth. LOL. I really like thus guy, Ramin, terrific writer and thinker, also his buddy Jeff Brown, two solid chips in the efforts toward world peace and understanding.
Che, this was published into a book!
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/6025095434?pf_rd_p=1cac67ce-697a-47be-b2f5-9ae91aab54f2&pf_rd_r=VD45AQ2HHJZQ0DQS7XVA
I bought a copy to support such good work.
Old vs. new scholarship on the continent of China: an 8-part series. Why you should read all 8 parts – think of what you’ve been missing!
Well sure, but how and where? Was this part 1? Where can I ‘get the other seven parts?