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5.0 out of 5 stars
International relations, sweet and sour, July 14, 2003
In an era where America is the last remaining superpower, it is sometimes easy to feel that there are no real threats left in the world to American security (apart from the occasional terrorist, that is); it is easy to slip into a complacency a la the British Empire in thinking itself impregnable due to its relative insularity from the rest of the world (truly, for a variety of reasons, Canada and Mexico pose no real threats to America) and the power it is able to wield abroad. Of course, there are many countries, geographic areas, economic coalitions, and military alliances in the world, both real and potential, that could pose a major threat to the America. Thus, it is important that in this period of relative hegemonic success, Americans do not become insular in thinking.
This is a rather long preamble to introduce a book of importance, 'The United States and China', by John King Fairbank. When I first studied political science as an undergraduate, I had completed the requirements for my primary major without having once heard a lecture or participated in a discussion of any substance on the topic of China. Perhaps this is because the prominence of the Soviet Union in the superpower relations, and most political scientists when discussing international relations preferred to focus on economic powers (Japan, Western Europe, emerging markets and resource-rich areas), or on comparative democracies, both of which do not include China. China has been, and continues to be, a mystery in most Western eyes, including those of scholars and political strategists.
It has only been with the breakup of the Soviet Union that the prominence of China has been increased. No longer is it considered a backwater; no longer is it ignored save in relation to American interests in Taiwan. Even at the height of the conflicts in Vietnam and Korea, the West had very limited knowledge of China. As mysteriously enigmatic as the Soviet Union might have been, it was still essentially Western in orientation and ambition; the Western powers could be reasonable sure that discussions with and strategies against the Soviet Union would proceed on the same framework of thought. Despite China now being a Marxist-inspired regime, it is still essentially Eastern, with an historical and philosophical underpinning vastly different from the West. China is one of few civilisations to survive that arose as an independent urban culture from the mists of prehistory; it is the only one that has retained a powerful position.
Due to it's relative isolation from the rest of the world, and its now millennium-old concentration on the preservation of cultural integrity against outside forces (which produces a very strange dynamic with the introduction of Marxist and Western radical political ideas), China has remained focussed upon internal situations.
'The strength of China's age-old family system has made it a target of the modern revolution. New loyalties to nation and to party have countered the claims of familism, but not always successfully.'
Fifty years of Marxism still has not managed to replace the old ways. Perhaps one reason why pro-democracy ideas do not have more urgency in China is that this, too, is a foreign concept.
Bounded by the Himalayas, the vast Mongolian steppes and plateaus, the Siberian hinterlands, and the Pacific Ocean, China remains a large area of relative isolation. China has vast resources, but only recently had the capacity to exploit them in any systematic and useful way. The land is used almost entirely for grain-food cultivation, made even more necessary by the continuing population explosion. Even with this high percentage of grain agriculture focus (90% versus 40% for America), China cannot support itself. Livestock is a rarity (only 2% of farmland is used for this, as opposed to nearly 50% of American farmland for this purpose).
China had its own renaissance, several hundred years before the Italian Renaissance that sparked the development in the West that led to our present age. However (and perhaps it was due to the lack of necessity that China failed to continue this development whereas Western nations, always at threat from each other, were required to for survival) China ceased to make technological and economic advances on a significant scale, and retreated into a thousand year decline. By the time the European powers shipping arrived in Chinese ports in the 1800s, Chinese power was no match for even small numbers of these new powers.
John King Fairbank first wrote the book 'The United States and China' in 1948, recognising the lack of good information, historically and politically, about China. It has been revised a number of times, taking into account more scholarship and learning, as well as the developments in relationship with China (the Korean conflict, the Vietnamese conflict, the 'reopening' of China, continuing tensions with regard to Taiwan). Fairbank in his introduction states that he produced this work in the hopes of a greater peace between East and West; sadly, that has not been the case. With the re-emergence of China into international affairs, trade, and military consideration, there is a question which remains about future peace with China. Fairbank, who was a professor of history at Harvard, has always been regarded an expert source in Chinese history, analysis of Chinese society, and Sino-Chinese relations. This book contains elements of all of these.
For a greater understanding of China, for the interested CNN-watcher to the student of politics and international relations, this book is a valuable resource.
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