Disclosure, like the blog says, i could care less if they are underage or not…its just interesting how the Chinese press/gov’t predictably and categorically deny the truth.

But I’m still wondering whats worse: this or a congressional hearing to determine if/why baseball players were going on Trenbolone benders.

I’d also note that mere “conflict” is not an excuse for technological backwardness. Conflict in fact is often a spur to technical innovation, particularly military innovation. After all, that period around 1600, when Europe was as riven with internal religious and political conflict as it’s ever been, saw an explosion of military innovations that persisted with little change till the mid 19th century.

I’m not disputing the particular policies you cite, Anon, but asking you to see them in a larger context and cease to use them as labels for a culture. If China, for example, had maintained a major fleet after 1450, this would have done NOTHING to defend their interior border except drain significant sums of money from that latter effort in a country where tax collection was collapsing and misspent when received. Chinese naval capacity in the 1600s was from areas hostile and resistant to the Manchu occupation—and a capacity which was crushed after long conflict. Thus, the lack of Chinese military naval capacity in 1700-1900 had more to do with foreign occupation and the stinting of a potentially hostile power base than an assessment of a _cultural_ decision. See these issues in their political context without culturally generalizing them.

There are multiple levels in Chinese society; this is not well described by outsiders who focus on Imperial policy and politics. Technology and commerce have been driven ‘from below’ for 1500 years, and are very much so now. Unless policy from ‘the center’ prohibits actions, modern Chinese society innovates and trades, and with very considerable success historically and presently, I might add. That is the record as I see it. Official policy from the center to suppress commerce and innovation at times has everything to do with domestic politics and historical tradition and little to do with the _culture_ AS A WHOLE. I think you grasp this from your last comments, Anon, so accept the conclusion: it is not the Chinese as a people, or Chinese society as a collective enterprise and tradition which have ‘failed to innovate’ but self-interested and at times parasitic central elites who have interfered. The reasons for this ‘interference’ are not all of them bad, but they cannot be used in and of themselves as determinative indicators of the society as a whole. Particularly when the government of the center for really the last five hundred years has been _inimical_, repressive, and burdensome to the Chinese as a people. The present government of China is the most responsive and cooperative seen in that country for centuries, look at it that way. And their greatest contribution, one whose continuance is far from assured, is simply to get out of the way of their own people and let them achieve. Yes, lassiez faire (of which I’m no great fan, but), had been a blessing to China, and something historically new as a government policy, very new.

China did cripple itself, badly and on its own initiative. These were the actions of an inward-looking, complacent empire that truly thought it had nothing to fear from the outside world, and which therefore could pretend that its internal power struggles were all that mattered.

It was a mistake, or rather a series of mistakes, with staggering long-term consequences.

Oh, really? Then why did they destroy Cheng Ho’s (or whatever romanized version you prefer) seagoing fleet in the early 1400s? And then ban seagoing ships completely? Yes, it was a consequence of an internal power play; but destroying such a capability requires an unusual degree of hubris on the part of the leadership.

Around the same time China had an embryonic iron industry that was ahead of any in the world. They also throttled that capability, as I recall because the emerging merchant/industrial class was perceived to be too much of a threat to the bureaucracy.

As you note, ca. 1500 Chinese technology was the equal of any in the world. By 1600 they were demonstrably behind, largely because of their own actions. That was _long_ before the serious European military pressure on China in the 19th century!

Here are two other things to consider, just for starters. As of c 1500, Chinese technology was at least on par and in many respects superior to European technology. Within a hundred years, China’s government was in collapse, and in 150 they were occupied by a parasitic foreign conquest state. That is not even the most important reason China ‘didn’t keep up.’ I can demonstrate WHY China did not, but that’s a long argument involving models and theory not published. But the takeaway here is that China’s context was different, worse, and not of their own making at least.

Another point, little understood, is that from the standpoint of having a developed financial economy China in the 18th century was in many ways as proficient as Europe. There were not equities, but lending was very sophisticated, and trade was international at the regional level, profitable, and growing. What happened? Europeans took over the China sea and effectively neutered the sweet spot of China’s trade network, which capped a very low ceiling on China’s ability to modernize itself financially and economically. This information is available, but not widely understood even by China scholars. Europe killed Chinese competition regionally, then occupied the seaboard and tried to cannabilize the Chinese domestic economy. It is not an issue of China ‘failing’ ON THEIR OWN ENDEAVORS; they got kicked down the stairs. There is a great deal more here.

China does not have ‘an inferiority complex.’ The Chinese are not ‘insecure.’ I understand why those phrases were chosen in the context of these comments, but they are a serious misreading of this issue in Chinese society. Consider k.’s point: the Chinese generation under 35 are _highly_ optimistic, and confident of their ability personally and as a society to achieve. I also agree with k. that Schell rather overemphasizes ‘humiliation’ in his discussion, though I think deliberately as a means to draw out a thesis rather than an out and out misreading. As I tried to emphasize in earlier comments, the historical and social inputs to this mood in China are difficult to articulate exactly because they do not have a single, clear, root cause. Schell probed the issue, and I think in good faith.

China has a pronounced cognitive dissonance between a very long position of assumed intrinsic cultural supremacy and recent historical execration. There is no good ‘explanation’ resolving this belief in efficacy and evidence of inefficacy, so a sense of blame is attached to obvious if narrower grievances. I think a sense of diffuse grievance is a clumsy but more accurate description than ‘humiliation.’ Only success will relieve that, but success is coming.

I’ve found Fairbanks’ work very insightful myself.

To Anon of 4:19, Germany’s inputs to both World Wars are considerably deeper and more complex than your characterization. In that light, it is unsurprising that your dismissal of the societal impact of generations long _subjugation_ doesn’t seriously engage with that issue, either. You’ve read the abstract on these issues; I suggest you read the ‘book’ as well, and better yet several.

(Note: I’m not here to defend Chinese government or its policy, just to point out superficiality I regard in Schell’s argument.)

Also, Orville Schell maybe a fine scholar and has extensive experience and connections in the region, but a leading expert on China? I don’t think so. My limited reading suggest his books are not widely cited among academic Sinologists, and among contemporary China observers, well, we all have our own preference. (Interestingly, some American Chinese history scholars have quite a large following among Chinese history buffs, precisely because their work has a different take on Chinese history. John Fairbank(deceased) from Harvard, Jonathan Spence from Yale, their (translated) works are quite popular among Chinese young college students.)

Now back to games.

As for the “westerners don’t get occupation and defeat,” spare me. What was World War II about? Hitler took advantage of the damage done by punitive reparations imposed by the Allied powers after WWI. And Germany thought it was a second-class European citizen because it didn’t have a colonial empire (hence the call for lebenstraum).

There is a lot more to WWII than that, but Hilter had smoldering resentments and got an entire nation to adopt his world view.

You also miss the point re China. As you suggest, plenty of cultures and peoples have suffered at the hands of colonizers and been on the losing side in war. But China obsesses over these indignities. This seems to put them apart.

Public schools are the vehicle for imprinting a country’s version of its history. The Germans reportedly do not flinch from recounting their WWII atrocities, while Japan won’t acknowledge the Rape of Nanking or its use of comfort women. I am not endorsing the Japanese approach, but the point is if they can choose to bury something that recent and verifiable, it is far from inevitable that the Chinese should wallow in past failings and make them central to their sense of cultural identity. This is a choice, not a given.

The article was not written by me, but by Orville Schell. I made no statements regarding Chinese history, merely pointed out that the Vietnamese, who had have suffered far longer periods of occupation than the Chinese, did not choose to focus on the theme of humiliation.

If you had bothered clicking on the link, you would have learned that Schell is the former Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and currently the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on US–China Relations at the Asia Society in New York City. Asia Society, if you don’t know, is a very connected, high power organization.

His books are:

Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangri-La from the Himalayas to Hollywood (2000)
Mandate of Heaven: The Legacy of Tiananmen Square and the Next Generation of China’s Leaders (1995)
Mandate of Heaven: A New Generation of Entrepreneurs, Dissidents, Bohemians, and Technocrats Lays Claim to China’s Future (1994)
Discos and Democracy: China in the Throes of Reform (1988)
Modern Meat (1984)
To Get Rich Is Glorious: China in the Eighties (1984)
Watch Out for the Foreign Guests!: China Encounters the West (1980)
Brown (1978)
In the People’s Republic: An American’s First-Hand View of Living and Working in China (1978)
In the People’s Republic: An American’s First-Hand View of Living and Working in China (1977)
The Town That Fought to Save Itself (1976)
Modern China; The Making of a New Society, from 1839 to the Present (1972)
Modern China: The Story of a Revolution (1972)

And you contend he doesn’t know Chinese history?

The search for reclamation from defeat is natural course of action for any culture. What is unnatural for the West and specifically America is: 1. The lack of history for horrendous defeat and enslavement. 2. A utter lack of comprehension for the significance of history. Being on the giving end of violence, the west is unable to truly understand the horrors of its actions. The average westerner knows colonialism is bad, but not how bad. This blind spot in history cause the west to wonder around believing everything is alright when in fact they are not. The west does not question its beliefs but instead simply assume them to be universal. When this is applied to cultures that have faced past transgression from the west (Namely Middle east and China) the reaction is like the response from rubbing salt onto the wound. So when you question how long till China heals itself by having the west poke around it. The answer is quite obvious: Why is the west still poking around it.