When Worlds Collide

China has survived the global contagion of 2008. That is no surprise to anyone. As it was written in 2007, "Today’s China, Communist though it may be, is playing the U.S. game. They have even modified their ideals to match the capitalist system." This discussion is about how the world comes to this point in history. 

 Cliff Potts
September 27, 2014


When Worlds Collide

 In the days of the Nixon White House, in the attempt to unravel the Watergate scandal, a phrase emerged as a national idiom: “Follow the money!” It means that to find who is involved in some activity one needs only to find out who paid what to whom. This detective work has successfully led to more than one conviction.
Even before Watergate, tracking the accounting trail led, eventually, to the only crime ever hung on the notorious Alphonse Gabriel Capone (or Al "Scarface" Capone, as he was better known). His conviction? Tax evasion!  The one time crime lord and reprehensible boss of Chicago’s underbelly went down hard because he did not give Uncle Sam a cut of his illegal action. Had Capone paid his taxes, when prohibition was finally repealed, the self described Used Furniture Dealer, the kingpin of the Chicago Outfit, would probably not have spent a day in Federal Prison. He died in prison on January 25, 1947 of complications due to third-stage neurosyphilis.[1]
Another maxim is equally valid: “Watch what they do.” When dealing with political situations where oral deception and rhetorical slight of hand are so common that it is assumed and overlooked, this axiom is even more important. When watching China and the European Union  (or any country, for that matter), the rhetoric is far less important than the actions.
There has been discussion on the left that the globalization is a fancy word for Pax Americana Imperialism. For the sake of argument, within the discussion in this section, let us assume that the accusation has some validity. It will provide a platform from which to build a framework for events in the world today.
Empires are arrogant entities. Not only do they develop the colonies at the expense of the homeland, but they export to the colony the cultural distinction of the Mother Country. Further, they reward the colonies which best exemplify the culture of the Imperial Center. This is how Paul’s home city of Tarsus became a free Roman city before Paul was born. This is how much of the New World was given the fullness of the Hispanic heritage and culture from Spain. This is how Great Britain influenced the globe. Not discounting Dutch and French imperialism, for the past 400 years the Anglo-Saxon blood line has held the world in its grasp.
The domination of the British Empire was inherited by the United States following World War One when the United Kingdom, suffering from cultural fatigue, abdicated the Super Power position. The United States, as the only Western nation to survive virtually unscathed from World War Two, initially stood in opposition to Communism. Recently, according to critics and proponents alike, the United States has worked with great diligence to spread it form of democratic capitalism around the globe. Those who have bought into this economic expression (i.e. Russia, China, Vietnam, India, and the greater part of the European Union) are reaping the rewards for aligning with the U.S. economics. The Islamic world, which is violently resisting the presence of U.S. occupation forces, is suffering from that resistance.
To compare the Democratic Republic of the United States of America to any previous empire may seem distasteful. That is because the average citizen of the United States does not understand what has been inherited. We can refer to the U.S. as a Super Power, we can call her a Global Leader, but at the opening of the 21st Century, the United States is an Imperial force. It is well past time for the citizens of the U.S. to accept what has been formed and act responsibly.
The U.S. has softened the hard edges with the adoption of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States in 1865, the 14th Amendment in 1866, and the 15th Amendment in 1870. It further softened its hard political edges in 1920 with the passage of the 19th Amendment allowing woman to vote in national elections, eradicating the Poll Taxes in 1964 under the 24th Amendment, and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Of the Asian countries, the only one who seems to be attempting to export their culture is Japan. From the 1960s through the 1980s, Japan experienced phenomenal economic (10% in the 1960s, 5% in the 1970s, and 4% in the 1980s) growth to the point that it was addressing the U.S. on equal terms.[2] One of the best works to illustrate this point is the Japanese best seller The Japan That Can Say No.
This work detailed how Japan was culturally and economically independent of the United States. It set the tone for much of the rhetoric of the late 1980s until the “Peace Dividend” recession under George H.W. Bush slowed the U.S. buying spree in Japan and subsequently burst the Japanese housing bubble.
Through much of the 1990s, Japan made few statements. Lately, with the manufacturing power of China behind them, Japan is attempting to establish, a cultural foothold in the United States, using anime in television, books, and internet. Anything Asian is mystically better than anything western in the popular young U.S. mindset. The distinction between China and Japan is entirely lost in the current, popular world view.
Google’s Youtube.com is full of Japanese animation free to whoever can find it. Japanese animation began in the 1980s as an export with the full support of the Japanese Government. Japan, in spite of the trappings of democracy is still a nationalistic empire. While their cartoons are entertaining the youth today, they have yet to come to terms with any admission of any wrong doing in Asia during World War Two. This has been noted by China, both North and South Korea, and Singapore.
India, whose recorded history predates Egypt’s Old Kingdom, with its fist known settlement dating to around 7000 B.C.E., has not made any attempts to export their culture. They have a strong media presence through the Hindu film industry, but this is predominately for internal consumption. It could be that the West has already absorbed much of the Indian culture through Great Britain’s occupation of India dating back to 1856. It could be that India, like ancient China, with a long proud culture views Western culture as barbaric.
Kashmir is the region in the northwestern Indian subcontinent. It is bounded to the northeast by the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang and to the east by the Tibet Autonomous Region (both parts of China), to the south by the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab, to the west by Pakistan, and to the northwest by Afghanistan. The region, with a total area of 85,806 square miles (222,236 square km), has been the subject of dispute between India and Pakistan since the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. The northern and western portions are administered by Pakistan and comprise three areas: Azad Kashmir, Gilgit, and Baltistan, the last two being part of a territory called the Northern Areas. The southern and southeastern portions constitute the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian- and Pakistani-administered portions are divided by a “line of control” agreed upon in 1972. In addition, China became active in the eastern area of Kashmir in the 1950s and since 1962 has controlled the northeastern part of Ladakh (the easternmost portion of the region).[3] 
As much of the power shift discussion revolves around China. China has an established culture which dates to before the first century C.E. The Shang dynasty, the second dynasty in Chinese history, dates from around 1700 B.C.E. China discovered gunpowder in 142 C.E. during the time of the Roman Empire in the West. China was making paper around 150 C.E. The compass was developed in China between 1040 and 1044 C.E. The world’s first known moveable type was invented in China around 1040 C.E. One has to wonder what the world would be like today had Rome and China engaged in free-trade. How a Rome equipped with cannon and rockets would fare against invading barbarians? Buddha, the enlightened one, came out of India around 138 B.C.E. China, for all her civilization and glory, was “discovered” by Marco Polo.
China was not as isolated as was once taught. Marco Polo was dispatched to serve as ambassador to the Grand Khan Kublai in 1264, after the Mongol Army sacked Soldaia and took control of it in 1239. Soldaia, sitting on the North Shore of the Black Sea, is called Sudak today. However, the East-West exchange began in earnest at the behest of the Khan. China, at that time, was roughly the size of the U.S., and they considered themselves the “giver of culture,” or “the seat of culture.” Their confidence in their superiority was  confidently expressed. If anyone wanted to be truly civilized, that person could immerse themselves in the Chinese way. This, of course got them into difficulties when the British took over. This resulted in the Opium Wars in 1834, and 1856, and the Boxer Rebellion in 1899.
With the exception of Korea and Vietnam, Tibet, and recently Kashmir China has not been inclined to mobilize their vast population in an effort to engage in regional domination let alone global domination. The four nations mentioned above are within the sphere of influence of China.
It was the Japanese whose invasion and occupation of mainland China finally dislodged Imperial Great Britain. The Chinese republic established in 1912 was hard pressed to deal with the Japanese aggression in 1937 even with the help of the United States and Great Britain. An aggressive China, as seen during the Korean Conflict, could have mobilized the manpower needed to invest one million men to invade Japan. However, China did not have the industrial base to launch any significant attack against Japan.
The Chinese cultural propensity towards tolerance is also noticeable concerning the state of Taiwan. Taiwan belongs to China, yet the government of China in Beijing has allowed Taiwan a certain reluctant independence since Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek fled Mao Zedong in 1949. The Chinese intervention in the Korean Conflict was only due to U.N. forces sitting on the Chinese-Korean border. The Chinese considered this intolerable and a precursor to a larger war with the U.S and the West.
Korea, being an exception and not the rule, one has to think that China will not willingly engage in an attempted global coup. It does not seem, based on 2000 years of history, to be their style. They might become more imperialistic should some stimulus force a change, but it is hard to envision what that would be. China has not acted aggressively even when invaded. They did fight the Japanese to a standstill, but did not prosecute the war following the Japanese retreat. Since 1978, when they privatized farms, to the present day, their economy has been steadily strengthening. China managed to survive the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis without much of an internal crisis.
Today’s China, Communist though it may be, is playing the U.S. game. They have even modified their ideals to match the capitalist system.
Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping on June 30, 1984 said:

"What is socialism and what is Marxism? We were not quite clear about this in the past. Marxism attaches utmost importance to developing the productive forces. We have said that socialism is the primary stage of communism and that at the advanced stage the principle of from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs will be applied. This calls for highly developed productive forces and an overwhelming abundance of material wealth. Therefore, the fundamental task for the socialist stage is to develop the productive forces. The superiority of the socialist system is demonstrated, in the final analysis, by faster and greater development of those forces than under the capitalist system. As they develop, the people's material and cultural life will constantly improve. One of our shortcomings after the founding of the People's Republic was that we didn't pay enough attention to developing the productive forces. Socialism means eliminating poverty. Pauperism is not socialism, still less communism."[4]

The Chinese are learning English; they are not asking us to learn Mandarin. They are tying their development to our technologies, not surpassing and replacing them. They are doing all they can to accommodate our culture within their nation. They are playing the good host.
Much of the talk in academia, politics, and “on the street” concerns a shift in global domination from the U.S. to Asia or to the E.U. However, based on current cultural flow, it does not look like that is happening. As romantic a notion as the global power shift heading back to the European Union may be, the E,U is not positioning itself to take on global political domination. The failure of to ratify the single European Union Constitution, and the painfully slow and cautious addition of new countries into the EU, one might suspect they are resisting their own unification. Whatever else one can say, they are indeed being very careful about the process. Right now, they are quietly growing, telling us we are full of ourselves, and doing everything they can to take over the World Bank, thus taking control of the globalization process. Follow the money, right?



[1] This is important in our discussion only because the charge of Tax Evasion was the fourth charge of the Articles of Impeachment of Richard M. Nixon. Verifying that following the money trail is legitimate when trying to follow a given set of activities.

[2] Economy of Japan. (2007, May 5). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:28, May 7, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Economy_of_Japan&oldid=128455805
[3] Kashmir. (2007). In Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved May 7,  2007, from Encyclopedia Britannica Online

[4] Economy of the People's Republic of China. (2007, May 7). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 21:03, May 7, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Economy_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China&oldid=128841461
Location: Hayfield, MN 55940, USA

Comments

Post a Comment