On Cherry-Picking
It appears to me that the author has a tendency of cherry-picking. In many occasions, he either mis-explained or mis-quoted. Below are a few:
On Page 250, the author wrote: "Initially, he (Dr. Sun Yat-sen) dismissed Tibetans, Mongolians, Manchus and others, ... (he) saw the Chinese exclusively in terms of Han". Due to his Chinese American background, Dr Sun knew more about democracy of that time and checks and balances than pretty much everybody in China. Dr. Sun returned China with an ambition to introduce "Democracy" to China, which he did INITIALLY and failed miserably as his call for a new republic didn't ripple much amongst most ordinary Chinese people. So he changed strategy by provoking racial divide among ruling Manchus and others, particularly the Han. "Kick out the Manchu Barbarians and restore our (Chinese) China". Please note that he didn't say "Han China". And he succeeded this time, sadly, by using racism rather than democracy. Once in power, he and his comrades (the term comrade in Chinese was invented by him even though it appears to be a communist patent) immediately corrected the mistake as they should. By the way, the Dalai Lama is applying the same strategy. The main difference is that he's been using both cards (racism and democracy) at the same time. This kind of mis-equation of "Han" with "Chinese" appears in a few other places as well. For example, in describing the war launched by the Qing government in NW China, he failed to distinguish between Machu and Han, something that may bear some implication to whether China's Rise can be peaceful.
Page 251
"Xinjiang is China's leading producer of oil and gas, they account for at least 40 percent perhaps more than half" -- to let readers know how important and resource rich Xinjiang is. Well, 3 provinces in eastern and northeastern China alone (Heilongjian, Hebei/Bohai and Shandong) account for at least 100 million out of a total of 150 million tons of annual oil production in China. Xinjiang, ranks, no better than #3.
Page 259
"In 1988, after an incident between Chinese and African students at Heihai University in Nanjing" ...., hostile towards African students ... No attempt was made by the authorities to halt or prevent the demonstrations..... , suggesting ... an official sympathy". The author mistyped the name of the university. It should be Hehai not HeiHai University. What I heard about the story is that a fight broke out between the Chinese and African students. Hehai University disciplined some Chinese students who got involved in the fight but didn't do anything about the other side. Rumors later came out that some African students laughed at the Chinese and said something like "your government dares not touch we foreigners", which put salt on the wounds. Things snowballed from that point on. Local officials were scared to death at the time to do anything. On one hand, those students were extremely angry. On the other hand, the officials knew fully well that it's almost an un-written policy that foreigners and some ethnic groups in China (particularly the Uighurs and the Tibetans) were (and still ARE) COMMONLY treated favorably than the Han by the Chinese governments at all levels in cases like that one. So those officials at the time basically dared not do anything. They're waiting for orders from Beijing. That's precisely the "Reverse Discrimination" that the author also mentioned in this book, which he also mis-interpreted.
On Racism
When it comes to racism, I do find that an average Han Chinese tends to be more racist than an average Democrat-leaning or independent-minded white American (as evidenced by the white votes Obama and McCain each got). I'm not so sure about others though. The fact that Obama got 93% of black votes and 70ish% of Latino votes (in comparison with what Bush and Kerry each got) is a proof that some of the votes are race-based that had less to do with his policies, religion and stands on issues.
Superficially, the Chinese do appear to be more racist. That's because there were no racial discrimination laws in China (not sure if it's still the case now). People up to this point are still very ignorant and/or in-sensitive to the issue. Here in the US, people carefully pick words that are politically correct in non-private conversations, for example, instead of saying, xxxxx or xxxxx, one would say "African Americans", "Asian Americans". It has a lot to do with the laws -- people simply don't want to get into potential legal troubles. What do they think deep in their hearts? Well, I don't know. Here is something that may tell you something, again, I'm not saying that it's typical. Take Yao Ming for example; he has been, at least twice, called "Chinaman" by some professional NBA commenters, one of which was by Steve Kerr on live TV. It's only because Kerr was carried away by the game and said otherwise what he dared not say in public under normal circumstances. Why didn't they have anti-racial discrimination laws in China? One possible explanation was that racial discrimination was less an issue in China for whatever the reason. As China grows more open, more people, particularly people from outside Asia will travel to, work in the country. That's when racism will become more and more a household issue. Until then, people will keep on being ignorant/in-sensitive about it. For example, the spokesperson from the Chinese Foreign Ministry called Obama a "Black President" directly in a news conference days before his 1st Asian trip as a president. Even Joe Biden once said that Obama is "articulate and clean". Because both of them are fellow democrats, it didn't stir up anything. What if the word "clean" came out of Palin or McCain? The Chinese routinely refer themselves to yellow race. So to them, black people and white people are just like yellow people. The words don't imply anything positive or negative. In most cases, racism has a lot to do with one's personal perception, which is heavily shaped by one's cultural background.
On China Rise
China is the only country in history that has risen and fallen multiple times from a superpower status (Han, Tang and Qing, and arguably Yuan and Ming for different reasons). This in itself demonstrates the strength of China as a civilization state that is unmatched by any other nation, be it a civilization state or a nation state. China's GDP had been the largest in the world for probably over 1,500 years since the day Jesus was born till the day Britain took the lead in 1820. "The Middle Kingdom Mentality" is definitely there. As people around the world know China more, it's quite possible that more and more of them would accept the idea that China's bound to be the # 1. When that happens, a tributary system will be a natural thing in at least east and southeast Asia, and it is not something totally out of question for other parts of the world.
The people of Britain (in addition to the Chinese) are in the best position to understand the rise and fall of an umpire. It's been too long for the people of Italy to understand it or they simply don't care anymore. It's too early for Americans as they've experienced only half of the cycle, the country has been in an up swing since 1776 till the Clinton Era. Except for some who are well-read, well-educated, most Americans before the Great Recession did not know/understand how it could be that the US had been falling, fast. For the Indians, Japanese, French, Germans, Spanish, Iranians and Turks, their countries have never reached a superpower status. Or even if some of them did, arguably, they didn't stay atop long enough to have lasting effects.
China is facing an imminent danger - housing bubble. Just last month, home values in 2nd, 3rd tier cities reached an all-time high. The prices have skyrocketed 200%, 300% or even more in a few years. People are buying houses like crazy, almost a re-play of what happened here in the US between 2002 and 2005. At least between late 2007 - late 2008, air was coming out of the housing bubbles in at least some of the mega-cities, like Beijing and Shanghai. Then there came the Great Recession, the Chinese government poured in trillions of RMB (1 USD = 6.8 RMB) to re-vitalize the economy, It's a safe bet that hundreds of billions of the stimulus money went to the stock and housing markets, which triggered a stock bubble and an even bigger housing bubble. It is just a matter of time when the housing bubble bursts. As the Chinese have been more disciplined in spending and taken a better care of their own financial situations. When it bursts, it probably won't be as bad as what happened in the US. However, there's got to be some kind of negative impact. How big will it be? And will it trigger some chain reactions including social unrest (the most important of all)? Uncertainties like these all indicate that there is only one thing certain: it's not going to be a smooth ride for the world, especially China, to see the days When China Rules the World. However, as long as China doesn't implode, the rise appears to be un-stoppable, irreversible. The Chinese leaders have known that for a long time, which is probably the reason they have been keeping on saying to maintain "Stability" as their task #1.
On who to blame
In my opinion, world today looks a lot like the Land Under Heaven back in the Autumn and Spring, and the Warring States time, but in a much grand scale. That would be another topic.
The American Dynasty peaked during Clinton time (8 years in office), just like the Qing China peaked at the Emperor Qianlong's late years (60-year reign). Both Qianlong and Clinton share some remarkable similarities.
1) Both of them are playboys
2) Both inherited a #1 economy in the world.
3) Both inherited a continent-sized country (with Qianlong's China a 3rd bigger than it is today) that faced no immediate threat from any country, near or far. For Qianlong, Mongols to the north (Inner and Out Mongolia), Muslim in the northwest (Xinjiang), Tibetans in the southwest were all brought under Qing's control. Korea, Vietnam, Burma all became its vassal states. For Clinton, the fall of the European communism and the breakup of the USSR made the US the lone superpower. China at the time barely survived from a political turmoil and was trying desperately to re-gain footing. Plus technological breakthroughs (dot net boom) helped new economic growth. Plus, the US was just coming out of an economic downturn and economy was on its way up, naturally. So how big a credit should be given to the Clinton Administration for the economic growth during the 1990's? Not a very big one unless Al Gore really invented the Internet.
4) With major wars were over, both of them had the luxury to divert resources to economy.
5) Neither one realized that his country was heading for the worse, or even they did, neither one did anything significant about it. Probably because they're too many beautiful ladies around?
6) People in both countries had become lazier, wanted to live in a better life without working hard compared with their parent, grandparent generations.
7) People in both countries were intoxicated by their countries' military and economic successes. They refused to learn from others as they thought they're gods, and there is nothing they could learn from others.
Overall, this is an excellent book, clearly the best book on China I've ever read that's written in English. To me, 3 books in the last 15 years that stand out, this book, together with The Clash of Civilizations and The World is Flat.
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Tsai
O livro mostra que a visão do ocidente está errada e ela não é única e nem universal como imagina
Reviewed in Brazil 🇧🇷 on March 2, 2020
