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China is very different from earlier Asian tigers like South Korea and Taiwan. Unlike the latter, it has never been a vassal state of the United States;
For some reason, I think this pointis going to be an important factor in the next decade.
China should not primarily be seen as a nation-state but rather as a civilization-state.
One way that China is different.
The Chinese attitude towards difference will be a powerful factor in determining how China behaves as a global power.
Something to keep in mind.
The role played by colonization, in this context, is a reminder that European industrialization was far from an endogenous process.18
Another way to describe exploitation.
Without the slave trade and colonization, Europe could never have made the kind of breakthrough it did.
Nothing to be proud of.
For roughly two thousand years, China has been united and Europe has been divided. It is this, above all, which explains why Europe is such a poor template for understanding China.
Good point.
For the elites, the state required that the Confucian classics be taught in schools as well as in preparation for the imperial exams.
A logical way of preparing children to mature into level headed adults.
These figures reveal the disastrous performance of the Chinese economy over a period of 120 years, with foreign intervention and occupation being the single most important reason.
Being exploited harms more than the economy.
From experiencing life on the land, where relatively little changes from one year to the next, or from one generation to another, industrialization marks a tumultuous transformation in people’s circumstances, where uncertainty replaces predictability, the future can no longer be viewed or predicted in terms of the past, and where people are required to look forwards rather than backwards.
And this explains why conservatives are struggling.
As discussed earlier in the prologue to Part I, modernity is the embrace of the future as opposed to a present dominated by tradition:
Ignoring this causes stagnation.
‘Seek truth from the facts’;
Words of wisdom.
The China That Can Say No
Book title
The textile industry in Italy, for instance, has progressively migrated to China, starting with manufacturing, followed by more value-added processes like design.
I noticed when I bought a lovely scarf in a boutique in Agropoli, Italy.
A trade war between the two countries is now more likely than at any time since the beginning of China’s reform period, but it is by no means inevitable. We shall return to this issue in Chapter 10.
A prediction that came true.
the main losers in the Western world have been those unskilled and semi-skilled workers who have been displaced by Chinese competition.
Current president supporters.
They were expected to conform to the highest moral standards and it was to these, rather than different interest groups or the people, that they were seen as accountable.
Wonder how many western politicians would pass the high moral standard test.
The word of the parents (traditionally, the father’s) is final and never to be challenged.
This would be a problem. Too many men abuse the privilege. Not many deserve the honour.
In the Chinese mind, stability and social order rank far higher than civil and political freedoms.
I don’t think the people of Hong Kong would agree.
Democracy should not be regarded as some abstract ideal, applicable in all situations, whatever the conditions, irrespective of history and culture, for if the circumstances are not appropriate it will never work properly, and may even prove disastrous.
A valid point.
For developing countries in particular, the ability to deliver economic growth, maintain ethnic harmony (in the case of multi-ethnic societies), limit the amount of corruption, and sustain order and stability, are equally, if not rather more, important considerations than democracy.
This could be a way of learning from the truth.
Much hypocrisy, it is clear, attaches to the Western argument that democracy is universally applicable whatever the stage of development.
Oh my!
global issue of our time betrays a highly parochial Western mentality.
And that needs to change.
There has been a formalization of procedures such that, for example, the president can now only serve for two terms.
Now abolished.
But countries naturally and inevitably see the world according to their own history and experiences,
Just found the perfect explanation for my interest in people of other countries. I want to learn more about their history and experiences.
Jesus was whitened in the Western Christian tradition.
Interesting tidbit
China and Taiwan, further reinforced by Ma Ying-jeou’s victory in the presidential election in January 2012,
Things have certainly changed since.
Finally, the Americans are intensifying their efforts to extend the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multilateral free trade agreement presently involving four countries but with another six in the process of negotiation.
Sadly, that was canceled.
Although China’s relations with Brazil,
Wonder how this has changed with current president of Brazil.
It involves a process of selective learning and cultural borrowing:
Applying this mental model to various part of your life makes more flexible and open minded.
There are certainly fundamental differences between the Chinese approach and the Washington Consensus, with the Chinese model both markedly less ideological and also highly experimental and pragmatic in approach, in a manner not dissimilar from that of the Asian tigers, with a willingness to adopt that which has worked and abandon that which has not.
Can’t argue with that logic.
During the nineties the two countries finally agreed, after centuries of dispute, on a common border, which, at 2,700 miles, is the longest in the world.
But the Canada/US border is 8,893 km/5525.85401 miles!!!
A continent which was once intimate with most of the world has retreated into an intellectual and psychological bunker in which it has become increasingly unaware of and out of touch with the way in which that world is changing. In consequence, the European mentality has become steadily more defensive.
That’s one way of putting it.
The ongoing tensions between the China and the US over currency matters are a classic illustration of this, as well as an indication of how their relationship might grow more difficult and conflictual in the future.
Good prediction.
In the longer term, as Chinese companies relentlessly climb the technology ladder, the US economy will face ever-widening competition from Chinese goods, no longer just at the low-value end, but also increasingly for high value-added products as well, just as happened earlier with Japanese and Korean firms.178 In that process, the proportion of losers is likely to increase rapidly, as will be the case in Europe too. Such a development could further undermine the present shrinking consensus in support of free-trade globalization and strengthen support for protectionism, with the main target
...more
So, I guess we are entering a new era.
The fact that the value added in China (30 per cent or much less as a rule) is only a small proportion of the total value added because of the extremely low cost of Chinese labour means that any attempt to impose sanctions on Chinese exports, for example, would inflict far greater economic harm on the many other countries involved in the production process, especially those in East Asia, than on China itself.
If more people understood this...
What will the world look like in the much longer term, in twenty, or even fifty, years’ time? The future, of course, is unknowable but in this chapter I will try to tease out what might be some of its more salient features. Such an approach, needless to say, is entirely speculative, resting on a range of assumptions some of which will inevitably prove to have been wrong.
Such an honest statement makes this book worth reading.
We have moved from the era of either/or to one characterized by hybridity.
I believe in this already.
Paul A. Cohen
Author to look up.
While the West remained relatively unchallenged, as it has been for the best part of two centuries, the price of such arrogance has overwhelmingly been paid by others, as they were obliged to take heed of Western demands; but when the West comes under serious challenge, as it increasingly will from China and others, then such a parochial mentality will only serve to increase its vulnerability, weakening its ability to learn from others and to change accordingly.
Sad but inevitable.
Hong Kong’s chief executive,
Carrie Lam. Not an easy career.
I described the Asian tigers as time-compression societies. Habituated to rapid change, they are instinctively more at ease with the new and the future than is the case in the West, especially Europe.
First part of highlighted note.
They embrace the new in the same way that a child approaches a computer or a Nintendo games console, with confidence and expectancy – in contrast to European societies, which are more wary, even fearful, of the new, in the manner of an adult presented with an unfamiliar technological gadget.
It might also explain why conservatives are fighting so desperately for they way of life.
The United States, with its ageing infrastructure
Reminds me of a scholarly article I’ve read on the decline of Rome.
Howard Gardner’s To Open Minds,
Book to look up.
Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother24
Book to look up.
Confucian societies place much greater emphasis on education than Western societies,
A major plus for them.
One of the underlying strengths of the United States is the quality of its Ivy League universities, but in the long run the school system is far more important because it is responsible for educating the whole population rather than a tiny elite.
The recent scandal proves a lack of respect for education.
Chinese government is inimical to monopolies
Wise
Compared with developing countries, it is much less clear what the West can learn from the Chinese state.
A lot
The first is ‘state competence’, a concern which has virtually disappeared from the Western agenda over the last 30 years in the face of the neo-liberal revolution and its overwhelming preoccupation with the market and privatization. A growing anti-state mentality has diverted and distracted attention from the need for a state that is competent and able to deliver. The second concerns the strategic capacity of the state, its ability to think and act in ways that address the long term. This is one of the great strengths of the Chinese state.
A role model
