The guiding principle of Chinese politics today is "seek truth from facts", i.e. empiricism. The government collects a lot of facts from their governing activity, and Chinese people also collect a lot of facts from their daily lives in China. On the other hand, your analysis collect facts from mostly western sources, that though numerous, essentially repeat each other and are still biased towards the same political-media social circles, with the same cultural and ideological assumptions that have made incorrect predictions about China continually in the previous decades. They form a closed loop, in which the anti-China messaging is very predictable, and each new source gives you rapidly diminishing returns in terms of actual new information entropy. Even where you quote from Chinese sources, I presume you found them *from* western media, rather than an exploration of Chinese sources from first principles. So your sources, though numerous as an academic article, is still nothing compared to the quantity of facts that the Chinese government and Chinese people must deal with over many decades and years.
The level of understanding of the average western "China watcher" is similar to that of the average Chinese in 1900 trying to understand the west. Possibly even worse, as mass media floods us with redundant information that appears to reinforce a previous belief, when it fact we merely got two copies of the same original source from two different directions.
By contrast, many Chinese people in China today have lived and breathed the west for decades, have connections with overseas Chinese, etc. This type of background understanding has been built up by now. When people form opinions on the west in China, it is not just because they read 40 articles from Chinese media saying the same thing, but because there are social connections with western life experiences backing all of it up, giving contextual credibility to the presence of sources.
In summary, you cannot hope to understand China, only by reading English-language sources. To understand China, you have to immerse yourself in Chinese-language sources, and ideally live in China from time to time. Something to bear in mind when attempting to analyse things individually from an armchair.
When I read about China, a few things come to mind which fortunately don´t require your level of insight into China.
The theory of Oriental Despotism is from the 19th century. The chasm runs through Rome. Western Rome developed into the competition of powers represented by Pope and Emperor, feudalism and bourgeois city, etc., whereas the East is dominated by a central state. No one claims this ever changed.
It is logical for China, based on its history, to favor a strong state over a weak state. Some tyranny was always endured as long as the state maintains order and wealth grows. Why should that change?
Since Fukuyama proclaimed the end of history with the victory of the West, the West has quickly morphed into Oriental Despotism. The state, some call it the Deep State, takes over at all levels and intrudes deeply even into the private sphere. Its elites despise themselves. Annual growth is close to zero, after two centuries of growth of the magnitude China enjoyed after Mao´s death. Weren´t it suicidal to copy that?
The rise of the West from the 15th to the 19th century has now been followed by a century of self-induced decline, it is marauding its heritage. Why follow that road?
Western leaders since Reagan are so embarrassingly self-indulged and incompetent, their lies so openly published, that Putin and Xi Jin Ping have a hard time not to condescend in public.
For such reasons, I cannot stop wondering about the delusions of the Old West about China – and itself.
In contrast to the West, China has never ever been a major aggressor to its neighbors. And they know their – and our – history better than we do. Anyone remember talk about Latin America being the backyard of the US, back in the early 1800´s when the French considered involvement there?
Hongkong? Not my values being now implemented, for sure. But Chinese reality. Is Afghanistan any different? If you go in and make promises, be sure you can deliver. The West never could, because something as complex as bourgeois capitalism and democracy took us more than 3000 years, too. It´s not a tradable commodity.
Uighurs? What about Guantanamo? What about Islamist terrorism in China and Central Asia until 2015? What about the formal and informal contacts of Uighurs to their Western neighbors? Are Uighurs treated much different from Han Chinese? What about the comparison to Western countries like Germany flying terrorists into Germany, letting them bomb hundreds of people at a Christmas market after the terrorist had been surveilled by secret services for years who concluded he was no risk? France, Britain? For non-Westerners with the values and robustness the West had until 1960, we look like bloody fools. And aren´t we?
We pee into our pants because China has a growth rate of 6% and we have been around 0% for decades. Well, our fault we don´t have that. Until 1914, when we were capitalist Christians, we had just that and more over centuries. We killed it. Studies such as the one from Harvard concluded under Obama that of each dollar you give the state, 2/3s are destroyed by the state. As the Western state takes around half of GDP, we annually destroy 1/3 of the results of our work. China´s markets are freer than ours, therefore they grow. And I am pretty sure they know that, and despise us. With good reason, it seems.
These are some of the points that cross my mind when I read about China, and I have rarely read anything as insightful as your two articles published yet.
Few things are as useful as taking an outsider´s look on oneself. Ironically, colonialists such as the British (and they needed a force of 10.000 to dominate the Indian subcontinent, who rarely ever had to fight, so colonialism may have to be reconsidered. India and Africa are still travelling on British railroads) were more empathetic to the cultures of the world than we today are with all our modern means.
The Westerner complaining about China to me has the attributes of a fatty spoilt couch potato complaining of the ways of the evil world while living on the heritage of his deceased parents. Or her´s, for that matter. Maybe I even need an LGB.. term for this being, but that is not of my world.
With such terms, I am not defending the ways of the West in China such as the Opium Wars and the division of the county into slices for the West. I only point out that China was self-admittedly decadent at the time. And I invite comparison to the West because we are The Decadent Empire today, ready for the plunder. Consider immigration into US and Europe, or the climate debate which in effect is a transfer of Western tax income to the 150 non-democratic states of the UN, instigated by the West itself. On top of the Development Aid which Germany for example transfers to China annually, as it is officially considered a Developping Country …
One needs to be a real fool to come up with such nonsense. And the rest of the world is less foolish than we are, they see a fool as one.
More illuminating commentary, nice. One critical factor needing consideration is the ethos and initiatives of Davos Man, which globalization and multicultural leveling will very much help tremendously to grease the skids for the CCP's economic, military and geographic expansion.
I’m sure the Chinese and Russians were instrumental in launching all manner of cyber and covert operations to help keep Trump in power. The endgame being our self-inflicted demise being their eventual global gain.
Just look at the current sad state of the USA…
Whats so united about the United States of America?! Seems to me the American democratic experiment is unsustainable as is and it’s scary to think of the possibility it’s about to crash and burn with a civil war in the not too distant future…too much anger, mistrust, conspiracy theories, violently divergent views, guns, financial greed, and on and on…and not enough common sense, willingness for compromise and to do good for the other.
Trump promised to clean the swamp….instead he turned it into a despicable and embarrassing sewer. And he’s going to run again with the backing of so many red states?! What sheer madness…it’s an American death wish, me thinks
“No, a new source of popular legitimacy is required for the modern Chinese party-state.”
A lot of that going around.
In America Wokeness as religion is the new source of legitimacy for post Constitutional USA governance. If you toss the laws then put a new religion up as your wellspring. God does beat man, and of course Wokeness is simply HR laws made Holy Writ. (The most competent move in American rule since 1945 BTW).
So - Why shouldn’t China refurbish its mandate from Heaven as well? That they have to is telling. The Tell may be they never again want to be bent over at table by their chief market squeezing them ala the USA. So they want to not be at the mercy of American Presidents is “Autarky” or “Fascism “?
That autarky = Fascism is overwrought. Was the King of Thailand “Fascist” for wanting Thailand to be as self sufficient as possible?
Taking the logic of Autarky=Fascism and extending in the same overwrought spirit a future historian could venture that the World Wars against Germany we’re about Anglo-Saxon market share.
As for the influence of mustache man, Henry CK Liu has been saying these things to China’s leaders for decades.
Schmitt et al are making a comeback Mr. Lyons. That you are published at The Bellows along with some other very new and strange comrades, while Matt Tabibbi and Glenn Greenwald are at Revolver means the Horseshoe is being forged. We must embrace this….Comrade.
Dear NS, has part three been published yet?
I was wondering the same ...
The guiding principle of Chinese politics today is "seek truth from facts", i.e. empiricism. The government collects a lot of facts from their governing activity, and Chinese people also collect a lot of facts from their daily lives in China. On the other hand, your analysis collect facts from mostly western sources, that though numerous, essentially repeat each other and are still biased towards the same political-media social circles, with the same cultural and ideological assumptions that have made incorrect predictions about China continually in the previous decades. They form a closed loop, in which the anti-China messaging is very predictable, and each new source gives you rapidly diminishing returns in terms of actual new information entropy. Even where you quote from Chinese sources, I presume you found them *from* western media, rather than an exploration of Chinese sources from first principles. So your sources, though numerous as an academic article, is still nothing compared to the quantity of facts that the Chinese government and Chinese people must deal with over many decades and years.
The level of understanding of the average western "China watcher" is similar to that of the average Chinese in 1900 trying to understand the west. Possibly even worse, as mass media floods us with redundant information that appears to reinforce a previous belief, when it fact we merely got two copies of the same original source from two different directions.
By contrast, many Chinese people in China today have lived and breathed the west for decades, have connections with overseas Chinese, etc. This type of background understanding has been built up by now. When people form opinions on the west in China, it is not just because they read 40 articles from Chinese media saying the same thing, but because there are social connections with western life experiences backing all of it up, giving contextual credibility to the presence of sources.
In summary, you cannot hope to understand China, only by reading English-language sources. To understand China, you have to immerse yourself in Chinese-language sources, and ideally live in China from time to time. Something to bear in mind when attempting to analyse things individually from an armchair.
Dear N.S. Lyons,
I am enriched by this contribution, thank you.
When I read about China, a few things come to mind which fortunately don´t require your level of insight into China.
The theory of Oriental Despotism is from the 19th century. The chasm runs through Rome. Western Rome developed into the competition of powers represented by Pope and Emperor, feudalism and bourgeois city, etc., whereas the East is dominated by a central state. No one claims this ever changed.
It is logical for China, based on its history, to favor a strong state over a weak state. Some tyranny was always endured as long as the state maintains order and wealth grows. Why should that change?
Since Fukuyama proclaimed the end of history with the victory of the West, the West has quickly morphed into Oriental Despotism. The state, some call it the Deep State, takes over at all levels and intrudes deeply even into the private sphere. Its elites despise themselves. Annual growth is close to zero, after two centuries of growth of the magnitude China enjoyed after Mao´s death. Weren´t it suicidal to copy that?
The rise of the West from the 15th to the 19th century has now been followed by a century of self-induced decline, it is marauding its heritage. Why follow that road?
Western leaders since Reagan are so embarrassingly self-indulged and incompetent, their lies so openly published, that Putin and Xi Jin Ping have a hard time not to condescend in public.
For such reasons, I cannot stop wondering about the delusions of the Old West about China – and itself.
In contrast to the West, China has never ever been a major aggressor to its neighbors. And they know their – and our – history better than we do. Anyone remember talk about Latin America being the backyard of the US, back in the early 1800´s when the French considered involvement there?
Hongkong? Not my values being now implemented, for sure. But Chinese reality. Is Afghanistan any different? If you go in and make promises, be sure you can deliver. The West never could, because something as complex as bourgeois capitalism and democracy took us more than 3000 years, too. It´s not a tradable commodity.
Uighurs? What about Guantanamo? What about Islamist terrorism in China and Central Asia until 2015? What about the formal and informal contacts of Uighurs to their Western neighbors? Are Uighurs treated much different from Han Chinese? What about the comparison to Western countries like Germany flying terrorists into Germany, letting them bomb hundreds of people at a Christmas market after the terrorist had been surveilled by secret services for years who concluded he was no risk? France, Britain? For non-Westerners with the values and robustness the West had until 1960, we look like bloody fools. And aren´t we?
We pee into our pants because China has a growth rate of 6% and we have been around 0% for decades. Well, our fault we don´t have that. Until 1914, when we were capitalist Christians, we had just that and more over centuries. We killed it. Studies such as the one from Harvard concluded under Obama that of each dollar you give the state, 2/3s are destroyed by the state. As the Western state takes around half of GDP, we annually destroy 1/3 of the results of our work. China´s markets are freer than ours, therefore they grow. And I am pretty sure they know that, and despise us. With good reason, it seems.
These are some of the points that cross my mind when I read about China, and I have rarely read anything as insightful as your two articles published yet.
Few things are as useful as taking an outsider´s look on oneself. Ironically, colonialists such as the British (and they needed a force of 10.000 to dominate the Indian subcontinent, who rarely ever had to fight, so colonialism may have to be reconsidered. India and Africa are still travelling on British railroads) were more empathetic to the cultures of the world than we today are with all our modern means.
The Westerner complaining about China to me has the attributes of a fatty spoilt couch potato complaining of the ways of the evil world while living on the heritage of his deceased parents. Or her´s, for that matter. Maybe I even need an LGB.. term for this being, but that is not of my world.
With such terms, I am not defending the ways of the West in China such as the Opium Wars and the division of the county into slices for the West. I only point out that China was self-admittedly decadent at the time. And I invite comparison to the West because we are The Decadent Empire today, ready for the plunder. Consider immigration into US and Europe, or the climate debate which in effect is a transfer of Western tax income to the 150 non-democratic states of the UN, instigated by the West itself. On top of the Development Aid which Germany for example transfers to China annually, as it is officially considered a Developping Country …
One needs to be a real fool to come up with such nonsense. And the rest of the world is less foolish than we are, they see a fool as one.
I look forward to your third article.
Best regards,
Jens Schirner
More illuminating commentary, nice. One critical factor needing consideration is the ethos and initiatives of Davos Man, which globalization and multicultural leveling will very much help tremendously to grease the skids for the CCP's economic, military and geographic expansion.
I’m sure the Chinese and Russians were instrumental in launching all manner of cyber and covert operations to help keep Trump in power. The endgame being our self-inflicted demise being their eventual global gain.
Just look at the current sad state of the USA…
Whats so united about the United States of America?! Seems to me the American democratic experiment is unsustainable as is and it’s scary to think of the possibility it’s about to crash and burn with a civil war in the not too distant future…too much anger, mistrust, conspiracy theories, violently divergent views, guns, financial greed, and on and on…and not enough common sense, willingness for compromise and to do good for the other.
Trump promised to clean the swamp….instead he turned it into a despicable and embarrassing sewer. And he’s going to run again with the backing of so many red states?! What sheer madness…it’s an American death wish, me thinks
Lyons reply
Legitimacy.
“No, a new source of popular legitimacy is required for the modern Chinese party-state.”
A lot of that going around.
In America Wokeness as religion is the new source of legitimacy for post Constitutional USA governance. If you toss the laws then put a new religion up as your wellspring. God does beat man, and of course Wokeness is simply HR laws made Holy Writ. (The most competent move in American rule since 1945 BTW).
So - Why shouldn’t China refurbish its mandate from Heaven as well? That they have to is telling. The Tell may be they never again want to be bent over at table by their chief market squeezing them ala the USA. So they want to not be at the mercy of American Presidents is “Autarky” or “Fascism “?
That autarky = Fascism is overwrought. Was the King of Thailand “Fascist” for wanting Thailand to be as self sufficient as possible?
Taking the logic of Autarky=Fascism and extending in the same overwrought spirit a future historian could venture that the World Wars against Germany we’re about Anglo-Saxon market share.
As for the influence of mustache man, Henry CK Liu has been saying these things to China’s leaders for decades.
http://henryckliu.com/
Schmitt et al are making a comeback Mr. Lyons. That you are published at The Bellows along with some other very new and strange comrades, while Matt Tabibbi and Glenn Greenwald are at Revolver means the Horseshoe is being forged. We must embrace this….Comrade.
In line with this embrace;
We in America could use a government that cared as much about governance.
The Horseshoe is the way comrade, embrace it.
As to the Republic it fell with one shot to Babbit’s throat in January.
Its dead. Move on.
The Inauguration was over a field of Flags as imagery not by accident Mr. Lyons, the Inauguration was the Republic’s State Funeral.
Let it rest, so as to let America live on.
The Constitution has been a dead letter, long before anyone knew who Ashley Babbit was.
To give but one example, just say the magic words "Muh National Security!" and watch The Bill of Rights disappear.
It’s “consumption power,” not “consumptive power. It’s a noun adjective, like HIGHWAY patrolman.
🧲