shashankac655 said:
IMO, the article gets some things wrong, or says some things that are very questionable, for example:
The West's failure to understand the Chinese has repeatedly undermined its ability to anticipate their behavior. Again and again, our predictions and beliefsabout China have proved wrong: that the Chinese Communist Party would fall after 1989, that the country would divide, that its economic growth could not be sustained,
It may not be sustainable (and that's assuming it is even as high as they say it is right now, which is questionable). Every country that is growing gains an aura of invincibility initially, until it experiences a crash of some type.
that its growth figures were greatly exaggerated,
They likely are. Constantly building empty apartments and cities and various other infrastructure that is not being used, and is likely a good deal shoddy quality, is not economic growth. It counts as GDP growth, but in the end, it isn't real economic growth (this is one of the problems with how to measure a country's GDP; during the Cold War, the Soviet Union's economy appeared a lot stronger than it really was because of all the stuff they produced, the difference being that it was all of terrible quality).
The Chinese state enjoys a very different kind of relationship with society compared with the Western state. It enjoys much greater natural authority, legitimacy and respect, even though not a single vote is cast for the government. The reason is that the state is seen by the Chinese as the guardian, custodian and embodiment of their civilization. The duty of the state is to protect its unity. The legitimacy of the state therefore lies deep in Chinese history. This is utterly different from how the state is seen in Western societies.
This I don't buy for a second. The Chinese government is terrified of a major uprising occurring, that is why it has censored completely the news about the various uprisings occurring in the Middle East and why they enacted such a massive stimulus in the first place. Keeping the population docile depends on constant economic growth. If the economy tanks (which it did as Western demand dropped off in 2008), the Chinese government stepped into make up for that demand to provide the illusion of a still-growing economy. When they can no longer do this, there will be a big problem. If the Chinese people afford the Chinese government such a high level of respect, then there would be little to no fear of uprisings, and the Chinese could have let their economy cycle through the recession in a natural manner. As it is, China has a secret police, a national police force that puts down any uprisings that occur, and a state-run media.
Additionally, when one takes a look at the sheer level of corruption that occurs in China, we see that the Chinese are in many ways not much different than humans anywhere else. They pursue their own economic interests.
If we are to understand China, we must move beyond the compass of Western reality and experience and the body of concepts that has grown up to explain that history. We find this extremely difficult. For 200 years the West, first in the shape of Europe and then the United States, has dominated the world and has not been required to understand others or The Other. If need be it could always bully the latter into submission.
The emergence of China as a global power marks the end of that era. We now have to deal with The Other -- in the form of China -- on increasingly equal terms.
The West has not dominated the world for 200 years with no need to understand The Other or an ability to beat the latter into submission. Does this guy forget the 20th century? The Cold War? That little entity known as the Soviet Union which the West (primarily backed by the United States) stood as a check against for over 40 years?
The West was constantly trying to understand the Soviet Union, and had different opinions on how to handle the Soviets. The West could not bully the Soviets, if anything, the Soviets tried bullying the West. The Soviet forces in terms of sheer numbers greatly out-numbered the Western forces. As an empire, the Soviet Union absorbed by force a whole slew of surrounding countries into its sphere, crushed rebellions (in its early years anyway), and funded a slew of overseas colonies. If not for the Soviet Union, there would have been no Vietnam War, or if there was, it would've been a lot different.
China, moreover, is possessed, like the West, with its own form of universalism. It long believed that it was "the land under heaven," the center of the world, superior to all other cultures. That sense of self, which has engendered a powerful self-confidence, has been persistently evident over the last 40 years, but with China's rise, it is becoming more apparent as the country's sense of achievement and restoration gains pace. Or to put it another way, when the presidents of China and the United States meet in Beijing in 2019, with the Chinese economy fast approaching the size of the American economy, we can be sure that the Chinese sense of hubris will be far stronger than in 2009.
That's provided China's economy continues at the very high growth rates, which I doubt it even is currently (it doesn't even have enough domestic demand to support itself). I also question whether China's economy can ever really surpass the Western economies (such as the U.S.'s) because of the lack of free flow of information in China. They have a state-run media and lots of censorship. I think that would infringe on the ability of their economy to have the free flow of information and ideas that we have here in the U.S. and other such economies.
that's a joke. I leave my nationalism at home with the exception of soccer games when I enjoy it; I don't think cultures are superior with maybe the exception of Iran, and I am probably wrong there.)
