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Everything Under the Heavens: how the past helps shape China’s push for global powerKindle Edition
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An incisive investigation of China’s ideological development as it becomes an ever more aggressive player in regional and global diplomacy.
For many years after Deng Xiaoping initiated the economic reforms that began in 1978 and led to its overtaking the USA as the world’s economic powerhouse, China maintained an attitude of false modesty about its ambitions. That diffidence has now been set aside. China has asserted its place among the global heavyweights, revealing its plans for pan-Asian geopolitical dominance by building up its navy, fabricating new islands to support its territorial claims in areas like the South China Sea, and diplomatically bullying smaller players.
Underlying this shift in attitude is a strain of thinking that casts China's present-day actions in historical terms. China is now once more on the path to restoring the glories of its dynastic past. Howard W. French demonstrates that if we can understand how that historical identity informs current actions — in ways ideological, philosophical, and even legal — we can learn to forecast just what kind of global power China intends to become — and to interact wisely with the superpower.
PRAISE FOR HOWARD W. FRENCH
‘A deep historical and cultural study of the meaning of China’s rise … Fascinating … Convincing.’ The New York Times Book Review
‘[An] essential reminder about the unparalleled influence of the past on China’s political present … One of the most lucid and illuminating books on China’s conception of power and its place in the world … Fascinating.’ The Times Literary Supplement
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File Size: 3330 KB
Print Length: 352 pages
Publisher: Scribe (April 3, 2017)
Publication Date: April 3, 2017
Editorial Reviews
Review
“A deep historical and cultural study of the meaning of China’s rise… Fascinating… Convincing.” —The New York Times Book Review (cover)
"Stimulating... This book is a reminder that China’s international relations take place in a historical context going back centuries if not millennia, and Mr. French is an engaging guide through that deeper history." —The Wall Street Journal
“A look at China from the inside as well as from the outside. French knows the country well… He stresses a political history that helps illuminate territorial conflicts between China and its neighbors.” —The New Yorker
“[An] essential reminder about the unparalleled influence of the past on China’s political present… One of the most lucid and illuminating books on China’s conception of power and its place in the world… Fascinating.” —The Times Literary Supplement
“Provocative… Clearly argued… Filled with memorable sentences.” —The New York Review of Books
"Lively and illuminating." —The Guardian
"Impressive... Masterful... An excellent introduction to the complex issues of East Asia and the potential for conflict in this critical region of the world." —New York Journal of Books
"Howard W. French makes it clear China’s sense of national superiority is of more than historical significance... Chilling." —The Globe and Mail
“Compelling… Fluent and interesting.” —Financial Times
“French combines wide scholarship with the instinct of a dogged reporter... Fascinating.” —The Irish Times
“French has curated a history of China’s foreign relations by the light of which current events can be read… A valuable resource for the continuity in the Chinese approach over time.” —The Japan Times
“Nuanced… The detail of [French’s] scholarship and reporting is matched by the suppleness of his prose… This will be a useful, and necessary, starting point for informed discussion.” —Publishers Weekly
"Howard French has tackled what is perhaps the most important issue of our time, and of many years to come, with the vivid prose of a first-rate reporter, the scholarship of an excellent historian, and great human sympathy.” —Ian Buruma, author of Year Zero: A History of 1945
“Everything Under the Heavens is the most persuasive account I’ve ever read of how China's history shapes its foreign policy and that of its neighbors today. A subtle and beautifully written book that offers surprising lessons for how Americans and Asians should respond to China’s rise. Strongly recommended for policy makers and citizens alike.” —Susan Shirk, chair of the 21st Century China Center, University of California-San Diego
“Taking full account of China's achievements and ambitions, without being panicked by them or losing sight of China's vulnerabilities, will be a major challenge for the next generation in the rest of the world—and in China itself. Howard French very lucidly lays out a guide to thinking about the next stage in China's evolution, and the positive signs and danger signals to be watching for.” —James Fallows, author of China Airborne
“In the brilliant Everything Under the Heavens, Howard French offers a sweeping historical view of China’s relentless attempt to build an Asian world order around its unchallenged authority. French’s meticulously reported and beautifully written book is disquieting but essential reading.” —Nayan Chanda, former editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review
“In Everything Under the Heavens, Howard French has written an absorbing and penetrating dissection of the deep roots of China's claims to large swathes of the oceans off Japan and south-east Asia, with profound implications for control over vitally important global trade. French understands that China's sense of historical entitlement is both deeply emotional and crudely political, and allows Beijing to pretend to stand with Asia, while standing over it at the same time.” —Richard McGregor, author of The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers
“With Everything Under the Heavens, Howard French brings us a wonderfully well-researched and elegantly written book about what we might call China’s ‘shape memory.’ If you’re wondering why this singular country acts as it does, this volume will go a long way to explaining it." —Orville Schell, Arthur Ross Director, Center on US-Relations, Asia Society
"Stimulating... This book is a reminder that China’s international relations take place in a historical context going back centuries if not millennia, and Mr. French is an engaging guide through that deeper history." —The Wall Street Journal
“A look at China from the inside as well as from the outside. French knows the country well… He stresses a political history that helps illuminate territorial conflicts between China and its neighbors.” —The New Yorker
“[An] essential reminder about the unparalleled influence of the past on China’s political present… One of the most lucid and illuminating books on China’s conception of power and its place in the world… Fascinating.” —The Times Literary Supplement
“Provocative… Clearly argued… Filled with memorable sentences.” —The New York Review of Books
"Lively and illuminating." —The Guardian
"Impressive... Masterful... An excellent introduction to the complex issues of East Asia and the potential for conflict in this critical region of the world." —New York Journal of Books
"Howard W. French makes it clear China’s sense of national superiority is of more than historical significance... Chilling." —The Globe and Mail
“Compelling… Fluent and interesting.” —Financial Times
“French combines wide scholarship with the instinct of a dogged reporter... Fascinating.” —The Irish Times
“French has curated a history of China’s foreign relations by the light of which current events can be read… A valuable resource for the continuity in the Chinese approach over time.” —The Japan Times
“Nuanced… The detail of [French’s] scholarship and reporting is matched by the suppleness of his prose… This will be a useful, and necessary, starting point for informed discussion.” —Publishers Weekly
"Howard French has tackled what is perhaps the most important issue of our time, and of many years to come, with the vivid prose of a first-rate reporter, the scholarship of an excellent historian, and great human sympathy.” —Ian Buruma, author of Year Zero: A History of 1945
“Everything Under the Heavens is the most persuasive account I’ve ever read of how China's history shapes its foreign policy and that of its neighbors today. A subtle and beautifully written book that offers surprising lessons for how Americans and Asians should respond to China’s rise. Strongly recommended for policy makers and citizens alike.” —Susan Shirk, chair of the 21st Century China Center, University of California-San Diego
“Taking full account of China's achievements and ambitions, without being panicked by them or losing sight of China's vulnerabilities, will be a major challenge for the next generation in the rest of the world—and in China itself. Howard French very lucidly lays out a guide to thinking about the next stage in China's evolution, and the positive signs and danger signals to be watching for.” —James Fallows, author of China Airborne
“In the brilliant Everything Under the Heavens, Howard French offers a sweeping historical view of China’s relentless attempt to build an Asian world order around its unchallenged authority. French’s meticulously reported and beautifully written book is disquieting but essential reading.” —Nayan Chanda, former editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review
“In Everything Under the Heavens, Howard French has written an absorbing and penetrating dissection of the deep roots of China's claims to large swathes of the oceans off Japan and south-east Asia, with profound implications for control over vitally important global trade. French understands that China's sense of historical entitlement is both deeply emotional and crudely political, and allows Beijing to pretend to stand with Asia, while standing over it at the same time.” —Richard McGregor, author of The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers
“With Everything Under the Heavens, Howard French brings us a wonderfully well-researched and elegantly written book about what we might call China’s ‘shape memory.’ If you’re wondering why this singular country acts as it does, this volume will go a long way to explaining it." —Orville Schell, Arthur Ross Director, Center on US-Relations, Asia Society
About the Author
HOWARD W. FRENCH wrote from Africa for The Washington Post and at The New York Times was bureau chief in Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan, and China. He is the recipient of two Overseas Press Club awards and a two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee. He is the author of A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa and China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa; he has written for The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, and Rolling Stone, among other national publications. He is on the faculty of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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Biography
Howard French is a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Prior to joining the Columbia faculty, in 2008, he was a reporter and senior writer for The New York Times, where he worked as a foreign correspondent for more than two decades. During this time, French served as the paper's bureau chief in Shanghai, Tokyo, Abidjan and Miami (covering Central America and the Caribbean).
French's documentary photography has featured in solo and group exhibitions on four continents, and collected by the Mildred Lane Kemper Museum in St. Louis.
For more information about his work, please visit his website: howardwfrench.com or follow him on twitter: @hofrench.
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tian xia howard french china sea united states foreign policysoutheast asia global power south china easy to readtributary system well researched vietnam and the philippinescenter of the world push for global belt one road east asiajapan vietnam well written must read position in the world
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Foreign Correspondent
5.0 out of 5 starsDeep insight on China, its history, and the recent, troubling restoration of its empireApril 7, 2017
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
The book ties China's hyper-drive present to its intricate past, combining deep scholarship, hard-reality reporting and elegant writing. "China's conceptualization of power" is one phrase the author uses, and in many ways it sums up this brilliant book. It has a superb analysis of the history and current status of the Ryukyu Islands, formerly a kingdom, now the Okinawa islands of Japan. The small island kingdom kept its quasi-independence for centuries, even as it exhibited loyalty to both Chinese and Japanese emperors. The Ryukyu/Okinawa Islands are in focus again today, as they are part of the militarizing fault line between China under Xi Jinping and the middle kingdom's neighbors-- but the Ryukyus are just one part of a larger and ominous fault line that is exposed and investigated in this book. If you have any interest in East Asia, today's global power shifts, or the rise and fall and rise of nations, this is a must-read.
18 people found this helpful
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wsmrer
3.0 out of 5 starsTwo very different books hereSeptember 3, 2017
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
The author is an incredibly well informed journalist and a masterful story teller but difficult to read after a point because he is captured with the concept of tian xia one under heaven the ancient Chinese concept of the Emperor being the centre of the universe and all subservient to him, the broader reading being the Middle Kingdom is paramount others owe tribute.
For French this concept as he mentions has ancestral roots flowing back to his grandfather and father and “although it was not a guiding motivation in my research,” he carries that perception as driving Chinese actions in past and contemporary settings and this heavily colors his analysis. Add to this the subtitle ‘China’s Push for Global Power’ and you have a negative reading of Chinese actions as self centered threatening and ominous. Book One.
This part is slow going at times and you may want to skim for the unifying ‘tian xia’ summaries.
Book Two is his Conclusion.
He lets go of trying to show the historical China and settles into an insightful rendering of China as it is and as it likely will be in coming decades and the interactions with its many neighbors in the pursuit of Xi Jinping’s ‘One Belt One Road.’*
For those who are concerned with China’s impact on America as China moves into position as another world power his analysis should be comforting, America will do well he believes.
*There are two other works that covers the topic without an ideological cover than are compliments to French’s and focuses on China’s role in its current scheme for leadership: China’s Asian Dream: Empire Building along the New Silk Road by British journalist Tom Miller. Excellent coverage of details and possible conflicts.
And a most recent release: Asia's Reckoning: China, Japan, and the Fate of U.S. Power in the Pacific Century, by Richard McGregor that covers French’s Book One history without the driving ‘tian xia’ overlay, for often very different outcomes worth knowing.
16 people found this helpful
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Tet Vet
5.0 out of 5 starsHow To See ChinaAugust 24, 2017
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
This is the best introduction to China that I have read. Howard French is a journalist so it is easy to read and entertaining. Yet he is very good at including insights from Western and Chinese experts. His view of the looming confrontation between the United States and China is clear and encouraging. His chapter on Vietnam's thousand-year struggle to maintain its independence from its egotistical and encroaching neighbor offers a valuable perspective for our current evaluation of our war there. As a Chinese sage said, "To be successful in war, you must know your adversary." This book helps us do that.
3 people found this helpful
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Top Dawg
5.0 out of 5 starsChina for SmartiesSeptember 13, 2017
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
With China emerging as a world power capable of competing with the USA, I wanted more insight into what drives its leadership. This book was an excellent choice. It is clearly written, well organized, and comprehensive. It provides a historical perspective on China and its perception of its relationship to the rest of the world (the "barbarians"), especially its immediate neighbors. It certainly enlightened me about its relationships with Japan, Vietnam, and Korea. It also covers developments in the last 50 years as China has marched onto the world stage as a major player. The book doesn't cover its industrial and commercial growth very deeply or its social makeup, but it does enough to be appropriate. You can't go wrong reading this book. Three thumbs up!
2 people found this helpful
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CTSO
4.0 out of 5 starsTour de ForceAugust 14, 2017
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
An important book for anybody trying to understand the underlying guiding principles behind China's actions in Asia. It outlines the Chinese understanding of self and their assumed inherent leadership of their sphere based on a sense of cultural superiority. This is the organizing principle that interprets their quest for economic and cultural dominance among its ancient tributary states. To accomplish their aim, they seek to exclude the United States from the region and reassert primacy.
The book is a bit long on a hard to follow history which sets the context for the present but because of its unfamiliarity, is a bit dense.
The takeaway is hat China is reassuming and reassertimg its role as a great power, and in doing so will inevitably attempt push aside all others in Southeast Asia, including the United States. Whether it succeeds depends on the staying power of each great power in the struggle.
One person found this helpful
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Glenn Heidenreich
4.0 out of 5 starsThoughtfulOctober 25, 2017
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
The author provides a thoughtful analysis of contemporary China. He illustrates how China’s history has shaped current strategy and policies. Readers without considerable specialist knowledge will find this readable book to be very insightful.
2 people found this helpful
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Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power
by
3.95 · Rating details · 313 ratings · 54 reviews
An incisive investigation of China’s ideological development as it becomes an ever more aggressive player in regional and global diplomacy.
For many years after Deng Xiaoping initiated the economic reforms that began in 1978 and led to its overtaking the USA as the world’s economic powerhouse, China maintained an attitude of false modesty about its ambitions. That diffidence has now been set aside. China has asserted its place among the global heavyweights, revealing its plans for pan-Asian geopolitical dominance by building up its navy, fabricating new islands to support its territorial claims in areas like the South China Sea, and diplomatically bullying smaller players.
Underlying this shift in attitude is a strain of thinking that casts China's present-day actions in historical terms. China is now once more on the path to restoring the glories of its dynastic past. Howard W. French demonstrates that if we can understand how that historical identity informs current actions — in ways ideological, philosophical, and even legal — we can learn to forecast just what kind of global power China intends to become — and to interact wisely with the superpower. (less)
For many years after Deng Xiaoping initiated the economic reforms that began in 1978 and led to its overtaking the USA as the world’s economic powerhouse, China maintained an attitude of false modesty about its ambitions. That diffidence has now been set aside. China has asserted its place among the global heavyweights, revealing its plans for pan-Asian geopolitical dominance by building up its navy, fabricating new islands to support its territorial claims in areas like the South China Sea, and diplomatically bullying smaller players.
Underlying this shift in attitude is a strain of thinking that casts China's present-day actions in historical terms. China is now once more on the path to restoring the glories of its dynastic past. Howard W. French demonstrates that if we can understand how that historical identity informs current actions — in ways ideological, philosophical, and even legal — we can learn to forecast just what kind of global power China intends to become — and to interact wisely with the superpower. (less)
Showing 1-30
This book reviews history leading into current events which together with commentary attempts to explain the motivations leading to current tensions between China and its neighboring countries. It provides a prospect for a future with many challenges that will require wise diplomacy if military conflict is to be avoided. (Is "wise diplomacy" an oxymoron? Or does it just seem that way?)
From China's perspective the current international order that mantains equality of sovereignty among nation sta ...more
From China's perspective the current international order that mantains equality of sovereignty among nation sta ...more
Apr 07, 2017Pedro L. Fragoso rated it really liked it · review of another edition
I postulate that this is an essential book for anyone interested in understanding one of the most fundamental drivers of all our futures in this planet.
“The human mind finds it hard to resist organizing history into discrete periods, but a sense of the transitions from one era to another usually only takes firm root with the distance of time. Nonetheless, events in Asia in recent years make it very tempting to declare that a new era is upon us. One could take as its starting point the moment in 2010 when China surpassed Japan as the world’s second-largest economy. Or one could just as easily go back a couple of years earlier, to the onset of a global financial crisis centered in American markets but that quickly spread throughout the West. China’s response at the time included notes of triumphalism and outright schadenfreude, as commentators in state media crowed about the debility of Western democratic capitalism and the inevitability of China’s rise to preeminence, premised explicitly or implicitly, as the case may be, on the presumed superiority of China’s political economy. In the post-Mao era, that was certainly new, and what followed was a period filled with other examples of unaccustomed Chinese assertiveness, acts that seemed to mark a sharp break from the guiding axiom of Deng Xiaoping, which called upon China to hide its capabilities and bide its time.” And “An old era is passing, even if the contours of what is yet to come have not truly announced themselves. We cannot fully imagine them in part because of the sticky weight of the present. But even if the quotidian blinds us, an age of substantially redistributed global power is fast approaching. A time when China will be able to keep the United States at bay is rapidly drawing nearer. A time when, by virtue of its new wealth and rapidly increasing military strength, it can hold at mortal peril the United States’ most precious symbols of national power, military assets like the aircraft carrier, may already be upon us.”
The book contextualizes China’s increasingly triumphant reappearance in the world stage under the light of the country’s long and convoluted history.
“China was pursuing a strategy that has been widely described as creating facts on the ground, or, better perhaps, creating facts at sea. It was the approach of a civilization with a very long-term perspective on time, a civilization that imagines itself as accustomed to gradually bringing smaller neighbors around to the idea of deferring to it in favor of their broader interests.” And: “In this forum, the Chinese leadership stressed the need to oblige the country’s neighbors to accept China’s “core interests” as a bottom-line condition for peace in the region, which amounted to terms for a new Pax Sinica.” And “With the pursuit of ideas like this, China in the early twenty-first century is reaching back to its roots as the Central Kingdom, the world divided into China and non-China, a hierarchy between the two, with China, of course, at the summit.”
The issues facing the challenge of World domination by China are dully explored (“Then there is the matter of geography. With its One Belt, One Road scheme, Beijing is striving mightily to integrate on favorable terms its most broadly defined neighborhood, a space ultimately stretching from littoral Southeast Asia as far west as Europe, via immense new infrastructure projects and the business deals it will hopefully generate, but this changes nothing about the fundamentals of its physical disposition in the world, which seen objectively is chock-full of challenges.”; and “Looking back, what is most striking about this forecast is how dramatically it falls short of taking the full measure of China’s demographic crisis. Increasingly nowadays, even within China, the country’s demographic situation is being spoken of in terms of a crisis. According to the South China Morning Post, “the authorities expected twenty million new births in 2014, but only 16.9 million babies were born. By May 2015, only 1.45 million couples—out of 11 million eligible ones—had applied to have a second child. The figures reflected a surprisingly low level of interest.”), even if, in what concerns the United States in this equation, well, the author maybe brilliant and extremely knowledgeable, but he is American…
We get: “Beyond this powerful story of numbers, the United States has at least one other formidable asset that will provide it crucial ballast during the risky and uncertain two to three decades ahead: values.” Ah, yeah, the country that destroyed Iraq and Libya, that loves Saudi Arabia unreservedly, that created one of the biggest refugee crisis in History, that engages in civil asset forfeiture with a passion, that imprisons more people than any other nation on Earth, that keeps reinforcing the most militarised police force of the planet, that elected Donald Trump as President (just bombarded a Syrian airfield with 59 bombs, of which only 23 more or less on target…), that country of “values”. Nevertheless, we’ll have a United States of 450 million people soon enough: “The number of young males in the country has begun to decline, and between now and 2050 the number of men between twenty and twenty-five, that is, of prime military recruitment age, will fall by half. The aforementioned expression “getting old before getting rich” has become a popular journalistic catchphrase about China, but even it fails to capture the full weight of the challenge that lies ahead for the country. Over the past thirty years, the total fertility rate, or the number of children born per woman, has fallen from a fairly robust 2.5 to 1.56, which is well below the replacement rate, and the UN Population Division predicts it will continue falling, reaching 1.51 by 2020. America’s rate, by contrast, is 2.08, and rising. At this rate, as a consequence, China’s population is set to fall below one billion by 2060. By that time, America’s, by contrast, will have grown to over 450 million.” So, “As these numbers help reveal, while American politics, especially at presidential campaign time, often veer into delusional negativism over immigration, it has been and will remain one of this country’s most important competitive assets, constantly replenishing the U.S. population with eager, energetic and ambitious people—especially young people—who will drive enterprise and innovation, along with economic demand, in the decades ahead, while flattening out the stark aging curves that will afflict China (and Japan and Europe). Ironically, a great many of these newcomers will be Chinese, who are already the third-largest source of immigration to the United States. The absorption of these newcomers is as key to the sustenance of the U.S. Social Security system as it is to the future of American economic growth, as well as to the staffing of what will remain a large, dynamic and technically advanced American military.” Maybe not so much now, the way things are configuring themselves in the United States, but we’ll wait and see.
I really like this: “As even Yan Xuetong, one of China’s most well-known international relations theorists and an unabashed advocate of his country’s pursuit of geopolitical preeminence, has written, ‘an increase in wealth can raise China’s power status but it does not necessarily enable China to become a country respected by others, because a political superpower that puts wealth as its highest national interest may bring disaster rather than blessings to other countries.’” Really? Fortunately, that’s not at all the paradigm of the United States, ruled as she is by “values”, or we’d all be living in a quagmire, surely.
500 million Americans in a country ruled by Finance, Insurance and Real Estate: what will the unfunded liabilities for this population going to be? The increase in the already out of this world deficits? Food for thought. On this note, I close with Paul Theroux, his last page of the “The Shatabdi Express to Chennai” chapter of “Ghost Train to the Eastern Star”, a few paragraphs that have stayed with me since I read them, years ago:
“I finally left Trichy, and India. What sent me away was not the poverty, though it was pathetic and there was plenty of it. It wasn't the dirt, though it sometimes seemed to me that nothing in India was clean. It wasn't the pantheon of grotesque gods, some like monkeys, some like elephants, some wearing skulls as ornaments, some in a posture of repose under the hood of a rearing cobra—terrifying or benign to the believers propitiating them with flowers. It was not the widow-burning or the child marriages or the crowds of the cringing and the limbless, the one-eyed, the stumblers, the silent ones who hardly lifted their eyes. An experience of India could be like entering a painting by Hieronymus Bosch—among the deformed, the fish-faced, the crawling, the flapping, the beaked, the scaly, the screaming, the armless, and the web-footed.
“Not the heat, either, though every day in the south it was in the high 90s. Not the boasting and booming Indians and their foreign partners screwing the poor and the underpaid for profit. Not the roads, though the roads were hideous and impassable in places. Not the fear of disease or the horror of the obscenely wealthy, though the sight of the superrich in India could be more disquieting than the sight of the most wretched beggar.
“None of these. They can all be rationalized.
“What sent me away finally was something simpler, but larger and inescapable. It was the sheer mass of people, the horribly thronged cities, the colossal agglomeration of elbowing and contending Indians, the billion-plus, the sight of them, the sense of their desperation and hunger, having to compete with them for space on sidewalks, on roads, everywhere—what I'd heard on the train from Amritsar: "Too many. Too many." All of them jostling for space, which made for much of life there a monotony of frotteurism, life in India being an unending experience of nonconsensual rubbing.
“And not because it was India—Indians were good-humored and polite on the whole—but because it was the way of the world. The population of the United States had doubled in my lifetime, and the old simple world that I had known as a boy was gone. India was a reminder to me of what was in store for us all, a glimpse of the future. Trillions of dollars were spent to keep people breathing, to cure disease, and to extend human life, but nothing was being done to relieve the planet of overpopulation, the contending billions, like those ants on the rotting fruit.
“I had not felt that way in India long ago, but I was younger then. I took the short flight over the Palk Strait to Sri Lanka, into a different world.”
A different world... coming sooner rather than later. (less)
“The human mind finds it hard to resist organizing history into discrete periods, but a sense of the transitions from one era to another usually only takes firm root with the distance of time. Nonetheless, events in Asia in recent years make it very tempting to declare that a new era is upon us. One could take as its starting point the moment in 2010 when China surpassed Japan as the world’s second-largest economy. Or one could just as easily go back a couple of years earlier, to the onset of a global financial crisis centered in American markets but that quickly spread throughout the West. China’s response at the time included notes of triumphalism and outright schadenfreude, as commentators in state media crowed about the debility of Western democratic capitalism and the inevitability of China’s rise to preeminence, premised explicitly or implicitly, as the case may be, on the presumed superiority of China’s political economy. In the post-Mao era, that was certainly new, and what followed was a period filled with other examples of unaccustomed Chinese assertiveness, acts that seemed to mark a sharp break from the guiding axiom of Deng Xiaoping, which called upon China to hide its capabilities and bide its time.” And “An old era is passing, even if the contours of what is yet to come have not truly announced themselves. We cannot fully imagine them in part because of the sticky weight of the present. But even if the quotidian blinds us, an age of substantially redistributed global power is fast approaching. A time when China will be able to keep the United States at bay is rapidly drawing nearer. A time when, by virtue of its new wealth and rapidly increasing military strength, it can hold at mortal peril the United States’ most precious symbols of national power, military assets like the aircraft carrier, may already be upon us.”
The book contextualizes China’s increasingly triumphant reappearance in the world stage under the light of the country’s long and convoluted history.
“China was pursuing a strategy that has been widely described as creating facts on the ground, or, better perhaps, creating facts at sea. It was the approach of a civilization with a very long-term perspective on time, a civilization that imagines itself as accustomed to gradually bringing smaller neighbors around to the idea of deferring to it in favor of their broader interests.” And: “In this forum, the Chinese leadership stressed the need to oblige the country’s neighbors to accept China’s “core interests” as a bottom-line condition for peace in the region, which amounted to terms for a new Pax Sinica.” And “With the pursuit of ideas like this, China in the early twenty-first century is reaching back to its roots as the Central Kingdom, the world divided into China and non-China, a hierarchy between the two, with China, of course, at the summit.”
The issues facing the challenge of World domination by China are dully explored (“Then there is the matter of geography. With its One Belt, One Road scheme, Beijing is striving mightily to integrate on favorable terms its most broadly defined neighborhood, a space ultimately stretching from littoral Southeast Asia as far west as Europe, via immense new infrastructure projects and the business deals it will hopefully generate, but this changes nothing about the fundamentals of its physical disposition in the world, which seen objectively is chock-full of challenges.”; and “Looking back, what is most striking about this forecast is how dramatically it falls short of taking the full measure of China’s demographic crisis. Increasingly nowadays, even within China, the country’s demographic situation is being spoken of in terms of a crisis. According to the South China Morning Post, “the authorities expected twenty million new births in 2014, but only 16.9 million babies were born. By May 2015, only 1.45 million couples—out of 11 million eligible ones—had applied to have a second child. The figures reflected a surprisingly low level of interest.”), even if, in what concerns the United States in this equation, well, the author maybe brilliant and extremely knowledgeable, but he is American…
We get: “Beyond this powerful story of numbers, the United States has at least one other formidable asset that will provide it crucial ballast during the risky and uncertain two to three decades ahead: values.” Ah, yeah, the country that destroyed Iraq and Libya, that loves Saudi Arabia unreservedly, that created one of the biggest refugee crisis in History, that engages in civil asset forfeiture with a passion, that imprisons more people than any other nation on Earth, that keeps reinforcing the most militarised police force of the planet, that elected Donald Trump as President (just bombarded a Syrian airfield with 59 bombs, of which only 23 more or less on target…), that country of “values”. Nevertheless, we’ll have a United States of 450 million people soon enough: “The number of young males in the country has begun to decline, and between now and 2050 the number of men between twenty and twenty-five, that is, of prime military recruitment age, will fall by half. The aforementioned expression “getting old before getting rich” has become a popular journalistic catchphrase about China, but even it fails to capture the full weight of the challenge that lies ahead for the country. Over the past thirty years, the total fertility rate, or the number of children born per woman, has fallen from a fairly robust 2.5 to 1.56, which is well below the replacement rate, and the UN Population Division predicts it will continue falling, reaching 1.51 by 2020. America’s rate, by contrast, is 2.08, and rising. At this rate, as a consequence, China’s population is set to fall below one billion by 2060. By that time, America’s, by contrast, will have grown to over 450 million.” So, “As these numbers help reveal, while American politics, especially at presidential campaign time, often veer into delusional negativism over immigration, it has been and will remain one of this country’s most important competitive assets, constantly replenishing the U.S. population with eager, energetic and ambitious people—especially young people—who will drive enterprise and innovation, along with economic demand, in the decades ahead, while flattening out the stark aging curves that will afflict China (and Japan and Europe). Ironically, a great many of these newcomers will be Chinese, who are already the third-largest source of immigration to the United States. The absorption of these newcomers is as key to the sustenance of the U.S. Social Security system as it is to the future of American economic growth, as well as to the staffing of what will remain a large, dynamic and technically advanced American military.” Maybe not so much now, the way things are configuring themselves in the United States, but we’ll wait and see.
I really like this: “As even Yan Xuetong, one of China’s most well-known international relations theorists and an unabashed advocate of his country’s pursuit of geopolitical preeminence, has written, ‘an increase in wealth can raise China’s power status but it does not necessarily enable China to become a country respected by others, because a political superpower that puts wealth as its highest national interest may bring disaster rather than blessings to other countries.’” Really? Fortunately, that’s not at all the paradigm of the United States, ruled as she is by “values”, or we’d all be living in a quagmire, surely.
500 million Americans in a country ruled by Finance, Insurance and Real Estate: what will the unfunded liabilities for this population going to be? The increase in the already out of this world deficits? Food for thought. On this note, I close with Paul Theroux, his last page of the “The Shatabdi Express to Chennai” chapter of “Ghost Train to the Eastern Star”, a few paragraphs that have stayed with me since I read them, years ago:
“I finally left Trichy, and India. What sent me away was not the poverty, though it was pathetic and there was plenty of it. It wasn't the dirt, though it sometimes seemed to me that nothing in India was clean. It wasn't the pantheon of grotesque gods, some like monkeys, some like elephants, some wearing skulls as ornaments, some in a posture of repose under the hood of a rearing cobra—terrifying or benign to the believers propitiating them with flowers. It was not the widow-burning or the child marriages or the crowds of the cringing and the limbless, the one-eyed, the stumblers, the silent ones who hardly lifted their eyes. An experience of India could be like entering a painting by Hieronymus Bosch—among the deformed, the fish-faced, the crawling, the flapping, the beaked, the scaly, the screaming, the armless, and the web-footed.
“Not the heat, either, though every day in the south it was in the high 90s. Not the boasting and booming Indians and their foreign partners screwing the poor and the underpaid for profit. Not the roads, though the roads were hideous and impassable in places. Not the fear of disease or the horror of the obscenely wealthy, though the sight of the superrich in India could be more disquieting than the sight of the most wretched beggar.
“None of these. They can all be rationalized.
“What sent me away finally was something simpler, but larger and inescapable. It was the sheer mass of people, the horribly thronged cities, the colossal agglomeration of elbowing and contending Indians, the billion-plus, the sight of them, the sense of their desperation and hunger, having to compete with them for space on sidewalks, on roads, everywhere—what I'd heard on the train from Amritsar: "Too many. Too many." All of them jostling for space, which made for much of life there a monotony of frotteurism, life in India being an unending experience of nonconsensual rubbing.
“And not because it was India—Indians were good-humored and polite on the whole—but because it was the way of the world. The population of the United States had doubled in my lifetime, and the old simple world that I had known as a boy was gone. India was a reminder to me of what was in store for us all, a glimpse of the future. Trillions of dollars were spent to keep people breathing, to cure disease, and to extend human life, but nothing was being done to relieve the planet of overpopulation, the contending billions, like those ants on the rotting fruit.
“I had not felt that way in India long ago, but I was younger then. I took the short flight over the Palk Strait to Sri Lanka, into a different world.”
A different world... coming sooner rather than later. (less)
Oct 17, 2017Zhiyi Li rated it really liked it
A prescient book for understanding current Chinese foreign policy, especially the most recent messages from 19th National Congress of the CCP.
As a native Chinese, the theme of the book is not new to me. After all, I was indoctrinated with the Under the Heavens (天下) philosophy before I came to the US. And because I came to the US when I was relatively young, I could later saw the unreasonableness that philosophy inherently has and the uncomfortableness it may bring to people in other part of the world.
But still, I am born Chinese. I don't know what kind of a stand I ultimately would take, if I am forced to. Like Viet Thanh Nguyen said in Sympathizer.
"I am simply able to see any issue from both sides. Sometimes I flatter myself that this is a talent, and although it is admittedly one of a minor nature, it is perhaps also the sole talent I possess. At other times, when I reflect on how I cannot help but observe the world in such a fashion, I wonder if what I have should even be called talent. After all, a talent is something you use, not something that uses you. The talent you cannot not use, the talent that possesses you—that is a hazard, I must confess."
True to that, and I can't say it any better. (less)
As a native Chinese, the theme of the book is not new to me. After all, I was indoctrinated with the Under the Heavens (天下) philosophy before I came to the US. And because I came to the US when I was relatively young, I could later saw the unreasonableness that philosophy inherently has and the uncomfortableness it may bring to people in other part of the world.
But still, I am born Chinese. I don't know what kind of a stand I ultimately would take, if I am forced to. Like Viet Thanh Nguyen said in Sympathizer.
"I am simply able to see any issue from both sides. Sometimes I flatter myself that this is a talent, and although it is admittedly one of a minor nature, it is perhaps also the sole talent I possess. At other times, when I reflect on how I cannot help but observe the world in such a fashion, I wonder if what I have should even be called talent. After all, a talent is something you use, not something that uses you. The talent you cannot not use, the talent that possesses you—that is a hazard, I must confess."
True to that, and I can't say it any better. (less)
This is a rather typical Western-biased view of Chinese "expansionism", which of course pales in comparison to Western "expansionsim" by any measures, but we won't mention that inconvenient truth. Underlying this theme is the same old regurgitation of its perceived threat to the Western world order you can find in pretty much any articles in Western media. I have expected more from this author since he has more understanding of Chinese history and culture than most, but aside of some tidbits of history and quotes, it is pretty much the standard Western view of the issue, offering no new insights. (less)
May 21, 2017Peter Mcloughlin rated it really liked it
China is entering a new expansionary era where it is starting to flex some of its might and make claims on its neighbors and grow its power in the West Pacific and Southeast Asia. It is butting heads with Japan, the Philipines, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, and ultimately the US. It has a long history and a great deal of national pride and a growing superiority complex and sense of aggrievement. It will be asserting its power in very dangerous ways in the South China Sea and Southeast Asia in the future. (less)
Apr 01, 2018Samantha rated it really liked it
This was a fascinating and incisive look into how China’s history has shaped its geopolitical strategies and future interests, especially in relation to to the East and South China Seas. I learned a lot about the concept of tian xia, disputes over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, and China’s relationships to the US but also, neighboring nations.
I’d recommend this as an introductory book for people that have never read much about China before (like myself) but are interested in politics— it is short, easy, and quite informative, although I do wish it was more chronologically ordered (it tends to skip about). My favorite part was definitely the end, which brings us up to modern day predictions about the future... I had no idea about the extent of aging China’s population is facing!(less)
I’d recommend this as an introductory book for people that have never read much about China before (like myself) but are interested in politics— it is short, easy, and quite informative, although I do wish it was more chronologically ordered (it tends to skip about). My favorite part was definitely the end, which brings us up to modern day predictions about the future... I had no idea about the extent of aging China’s population is facing!(less)
Jul 07, 2017Raghu rated it really liked it
China has emerged as a major economic and military power in the last fifteen years, surpassing Japan as the second largest economy in the world. This sudden rise of China has raised anxiety among the Western powers as to whether the future portends a peaceful China or an aggressive, militaristic one. More importantly, China’s neighbours like Japan, Vietnam, Philippines, India and Indonesia have started feeling that China is on its way to use its economic and military might to hegemonize Asia and force them into submission. China’s conduct in the Senkaku islands and in the South China sea have given them cause to re-assess China’s role in the coming decade in Asia. For policy wonks, the question to answer is ‘how do we assess China’s intentions correctly, without erring on the extreme side?’. This is because China is a rising superpower already and one has to deal with it here and now. This is where author Howard French’s book provides some key analysis and prescriptions based on the long civilizational history of China.
So, what kind of power is China likely to become? French says that we must study China’s long past to comprehend how it has conceived of and used its power historically. Even though the author discounts the concept of ‘cultural DNA’, his analysis draws strongly on the traditions and historical Chinese reflexes to understand how it may exercise its power in the coming decades. He advances two key concepts to decode the Chinese riddle. They are ‘Tian Xia’ and the ‘new patriotic education system based on hundred years of humiliation’.
Tian Xia means ‘under the heavens’ and implies that China is the center of the world and all other nations are peripheral and inferior to it. This idea has sustained China from about 200 BCE till the mid 19th century. China has particularly applied this view to its immediate neighbourhood in the East (Japan, Korea) and to the south (Vietnam, Burma..). This concept of Pax Sinica, as the author calls it, means that the other nations must accept Chinese superiority and pay tributes. In return, China will confer upon them political legitimacy, trade benefits resulting in public goods. Historically, this meant that China will police the maritime commons, mediate disputes for them and grant access to the Confucian system of learning, which is the best, in their view. Chinese values, culture, language, philosophy and religion were all regarded for millenniums as the Universal standards by the Chinese people and its ruling dynasties. This idea had come under pressure only for about a hundred years between the mid-19th century and the mid-20th century, when the West subjugated them and Japan conquered them.
The ‘Hundred Years of humiliation’ is the basis of the new Patriotic education system that President Jiang Zemin initiated in 1991, resulting in a whole new generation of young people today who have this view of their history. It is focused on the period between mid-1800s and mid-1900s when China was attacked, bullied, and torn asunder by imperialists, both Western and Japanese. The patriotic education campaign thus revised Mao-era narratives. The new narrative blamed the West rather than class enemies for China’s suffering. In teaching students about the War of Resistance against Japan, for example, the revised curriculum focused on ethnic conflict between Japan and China rather than class conflict between the Communists and the Guomindong. More than anything else it emphasized the foreign powers’ brutality against the Chinese, forcing the younger generation to confront the atrocities of the century of humiliation. This transition from China as victor to China as victim reveals a great deal about changes to Chinese national identity today.
How do these two ideas affect China’s conduct today in its neighbourhood and in the wider world? The author says that the Chinese are paradoxical in the sense that they are at once the most self-confident people in Asia but also highly insecure about their status. The superior self-confidence comes from its history of being the only nation that has never been colonized and of course, from Tian Xia. The insecurity comes from the coming to end of the historical era of miracle growth, bringing possible widespread disaffection, unrest and challenge to the legitimacy of the Communist party. Being the pre-eminent military power in Asia today, Tian Xia makes China want to displace the US from Asia and emerge as the dominant Asian power. China’s conduct in the south China sea and the Senkaku islands is the message to nations like Japan, Vietnam and Philippines that they are supposed to accept China’s superiority and be suppliant without challenging its military strength. At a security forum in Hanoi in 2010 with ASEAN, a Singaporean delegate made a statement advancing a maritime code of conduct in the disputed south China sea. China was unenthusiastic. By way of reply to George Yeo of Singapore, Yang Jiechi, the Chinese foreign minister, said, " China is a big country and others are small countries. It is just a fact". This was classic Tian Xia in practice. Historically, Tian Xia viewed Japan as a culturally derivative, subsidiary nation on the margins of China’s celestial empire and hence could not be seen as an equal. This is seen in action in the recent aggressive moves by China in the Senkaku islands.
The patriotic education campaign, based on ‘a century of humiliation’, is used today to whip up anti-West and anti-Japanese frenzy in a new nationalist China. Author French says that China’s television is inundated with war-themed movies, which focus overwhelmingly on Japanese villainy. More than 200 anti-Japanese films were made in 2012 alone, with one scholar estimating 70% all Chinese TV dramas involving Japan-related plots of war.
The author says that Xi Jinping, the president today, believes that China has arrived as a military and economic power to challenge the US as the pre-eminent power. In a forerunner to Donald Trump, Xi proclaimed soon after assuming power that it is time for China to be great again, reclaiming its eminent position in the world. Gone are the days of Deng Xiao Bing, who said to the Chinese, ‘lie low, bide your time’. Xi believes that the time has come. However, the author posits some warnings in this rush towards Tian Xia. He quotes Michael Pettis, an economist with the Peking university, that China is no longer in the economic sweet spot it was during the past 30-40 years and growth will slow down eventually to 3-4% per year before the end of Xi Jinping’s administration. However, China’s demography is such that it will grow old much before it grows rich. This will pose the challenge to the Communist party to divert ever more increasing portion of growth in a slowing economy to social security rather than to the military and internal security. By 2050, China is expected to have a staggering 400 million people above the age of 65, needing support from the system. Whereas, its rival, the US, has good prospects of growth for much longer because of positive immigration policies (in spite of Donald Trump). This will result in greater and greater gap in economic and military strengths between them in future than now. French says that the communist leadership in China, Xi in particular, understands this quite well and that may be the reason for China’s rush towards aggressive flexing of its military muscle at present, because they think that there is only a 15-year window for enhanced military spending.
I found it a compelling account of China’s history and its impact on today’s world. It amazes me that the Chinese have internalized the notion of their pre-eminence and sustained it for so long in spite of today’s world, which is so widely dominated by Western Science, technology and popular culture. The fact that Japan has almost 5-6 times China’s per capita income does not seem to affect this self-image. There have been other dominant empires across the world in the past, like the Roman empire, the Ottoman empire, the Habsburg empire and the British empire. But their modern remnants in Italy, Turkey, Austria and UK seem to have come to terms with their demise now. In China, it does not seem to be so, possibly because a hundred years of reversal is just a blip in their long history and it is easy to convince oneself that Tian Xia is the natural order of things.
It is a scholarly work but quite accessible at the same time. Even if one does not agree with the author’s analysis based on Tian Xia, I would think it is a very interesting way of looking at China today. I found it educational and well worth the time spent on it.
(less)
So, what kind of power is China likely to become? French says that we must study China’s long past to comprehend how it has conceived of and used its power historically. Even though the author discounts the concept of ‘cultural DNA’, his analysis draws strongly on the traditions and historical Chinese reflexes to understand how it may exercise its power in the coming decades. He advances two key concepts to decode the Chinese riddle. They are ‘Tian Xia’ and the ‘new patriotic education system based on hundred years of humiliation’.
Tian Xia means ‘under the heavens’ and implies that China is the center of the world and all other nations are peripheral and inferior to it. This idea has sustained China from about 200 BCE till the mid 19th century. China has particularly applied this view to its immediate neighbourhood in the East (Japan, Korea) and to the south (Vietnam, Burma..). This concept of Pax Sinica, as the author calls it, means that the other nations must accept Chinese superiority and pay tributes. In return, China will confer upon them political legitimacy, trade benefits resulting in public goods. Historically, this meant that China will police the maritime commons, mediate disputes for them and grant access to the Confucian system of learning, which is the best, in their view. Chinese values, culture, language, philosophy and religion were all regarded for millenniums as the Universal standards by the Chinese people and its ruling dynasties. This idea had come under pressure only for about a hundred years between the mid-19th century and the mid-20th century, when the West subjugated them and Japan conquered them.
The ‘Hundred Years of humiliation’ is the basis of the new Patriotic education system that President Jiang Zemin initiated in 1991, resulting in a whole new generation of young people today who have this view of their history. It is focused on the period between mid-1800s and mid-1900s when China was attacked, bullied, and torn asunder by imperialists, both Western and Japanese. The patriotic education campaign thus revised Mao-era narratives. The new narrative blamed the West rather than class enemies for China’s suffering. In teaching students about the War of Resistance against Japan, for example, the revised curriculum focused on ethnic conflict between Japan and China rather than class conflict between the Communists and the Guomindong. More than anything else it emphasized the foreign powers’ brutality against the Chinese, forcing the younger generation to confront the atrocities of the century of humiliation. This transition from China as victor to China as victim reveals a great deal about changes to Chinese national identity today.
How do these two ideas affect China’s conduct today in its neighbourhood and in the wider world? The author says that the Chinese are paradoxical in the sense that they are at once the most self-confident people in Asia but also highly insecure about their status. The superior self-confidence comes from its history of being the only nation that has never been colonized and of course, from Tian Xia. The insecurity comes from the coming to end of the historical era of miracle growth, bringing possible widespread disaffection, unrest and challenge to the legitimacy of the Communist party. Being the pre-eminent military power in Asia today, Tian Xia makes China want to displace the US from Asia and emerge as the dominant Asian power. China’s conduct in the south China sea and the Senkaku islands is the message to nations like Japan, Vietnam and Philippines that they are supposed to accept China’s superiority and be suppliant without challenging its military strength. At a security forum in Hanoi in 2010 with ASEAN, a Singaporean delegate made a statement advancing a maritime code of conduct in the disputed south China sea. China was unenthusiastic. By way of reply to George Yeo of Singapore, Yang Jiechi, the Chinese foreign minister, said, " China is a big country and others are small countries. It is just a fact". This was classic Tian Xia in practice. Historically, Tian Xia viewed Japan as a culturally derivative, subsidiary nation on the margins of China’s celestial empire and hence could not be seen as an equal. This is seen in action in the recent aggressive moves by China in the Senkaku islands.
The patriotic education campaign, based on ‘a century of humiliation’, is used today to whip up anti-West and anti-Japanese frenzy in a new nationalist China. Author French says that China’s television is inundated with war-themed movies, which focus overwhelmingly on Japanese villainy. More than 200 anti-Japanese films were made in 2012 alone, with one scholar estimating 70% all Chinese TV dramas involving Japan-related plots of war.
The author says that Xi Jinping, the president today, believes that China has arrived as a military and economic power to challenge the US as the pre-eminent power. In a forerunner to Donald Trump, Xi proclaimed soon after assuming power that it is time for China to be great again, reclaiming its eminent position in the world. Gone are the days of Deng Xiao Bing, who said to the Chinese, ‘lie low, bide your time’. Xi believes that the time has come. However, the author posits some warnings in this rush towards Tian Xia. He quotes Michael Pettis, an economist with the Peking university, that China is no longer in the economic sweet spot it was during the past 30-40 years and growth will slow down eventually to 3-4% per year before the end of Xi Jinping’s administration. However, China’s demography is such that it will grow old much before it grows rich. This will pose the challenge to the Communist party to divert ever more increasing portion of growth in a slowing economy to social security rather than to the military and internal security. By 2050, China is expected to have a staggering 400 million people above the age of 65, needing support from the system. Whereas, its rival, the US, has good prospects of growth for much longer because of positive immigration policies (in spite of Donald Trump). This will result in greater and greater gap in economic and military strengths between them in future than now. French says that the communist leadership in China, Xi in particular, understands this quite well and that may be the reason for China’s rush towards aggressive flexing of its military muscle at present, because they think that there is only a 15-year window for enhanced military spending.
I found it a compelling account of China’s history and its impact on today’s world. It amazes me that the Chinese have internalized the notion of their pre-eminence and sustained it for so long in spite of today’s world, which is so widely dominated by Western Science, technology and popular culture. The fact that Japan has almost 5-6 times China’s per capita income does not seem to affect this self-image. There have been other dominant empires across the world in the past, like the Roman empire, the Ottoman empire, the Habsburg empire and the British empire. But their modern remnants in Italy, Turkey, Austria and UK seem to have come to terms with their demise now. In China, it does not seem to be so, possibly because a hundred years of reversal is just a blip in their long history and it is easy to convince oneself that Tian Xia is the natural order of things.
It is a scholarly work but quite accessible at the same time. Even if one does not agree with the author’s analysis based on Tian Xia, I would think it is a very interesting way of looking at China today. I found it educational and well worth the time spent on it.
(less)
May 05, 2017Andi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: economics, history, non-fiction, politics, to-purchase
'Everything Under the Heavens' is ideal for anyone who, like me, does not have much, if any, knowledge of the history of China and the rest of East/Southeast Asia, but who wishes to understand more about the whys and hows of the events playing out in the Pacific. French guides readers through history with an even hand never pushing too hard in any one direction. Asia's history dates back much further than that of the West, the scope of which is something that can be difficult at times to grasp for someone from the West. Where we in the United States speak of history over a period of hundreds of years, people in China and other Asian countries speak of periods of thousands of years. Much has happened to bring the peoples of East and Southeast Asia to where they are today. Long-held beliefs and traditions play a very prominent role in their politics, economy, and military. In order to understand their motivations, perspectives, and actions now, it is essential to understand how they formed. French provides an invaluable tool to begin to do this in 'Everything Under the Heavens.' 5-stars are well deserved here, and I highly recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in the topic. (less)
Oct 03, 2017James rated it really liked it
Very interesting methodology and follow through. It was sometimes slightly disjointed (as opposed to a fluid narrative) because it jumped all around in time, but it showed immense intelligence throughout and I learned a lot.
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