The Opium Wars Still Shape China’s View of the West
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The Opium Wars Still Shape China’s View of the West
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Re: The Opium Wars Still Shape China’s View of the West
#2Communism will win
Re: The Opium Wars Still Shape China’s View of the West
#3China history is a warning sign against centralism and the ability of humanity to get stuck in loops, economic and culturally - where it from a ruling partys point of view doesn't make sense to do anything to escape the loop.
Impressive is that china at least kept- enforced by the layout of the country, a centralized state. At least it did not decay as much as the middle east or africa - after reaching peak people.
Re: The Opium Wars Still Shape China’s View of the West
#4It is not true. It's just that politicians need official reasons to do what they do. And it's a great thing to use historical reasons because nobody can really counter them. Not a single Chinese person I know thinks about Westerners as sources of the Opium Wars and therefore as enemies. The opinions move between "West is so rich, let's be more like them" and "We are nearly back to our old glory, now also learn some of our culture!"
Re: The Opium Wars Still Shape China’s View of the West
#5China history is a warning sign against centralism and the ability of humanity to get stuck in loops, economic and culturally - where it from a ruling partys point of view doesn't make sense to do anything to escape the loop. Impressive is that china at least kept- enforced by the layout of the country, a centralized state. At least it did not decay as much as the middle east or africa - after reaching peak people.
This is so western propaganda boilerplate. What is the warning sign? China lifted more people out of poverty than all other countries combined. Actually the whole world is recognizing how centralism seems stronger than western federalism, and many western populations complain about their governments moving their power into a more and more centralized system.
Have you for instance seen how Philipines and Turkey have moved away from a pro-western position?
Re: The Opium Wars Still Shape China’s View of the West
#6China history is a warning sign against centralism and the ability of humanity to get stuck in loops, economic and culturally - where it from a ruling partys point of view doesn't make sense to do anything to escape the loop. Impressive is that china at least kept- enforced by the layout of the country, a centralized state. At least it did not decay as much as the middle east or africa - after reaching peak people.
The counter argument is that post-1949 communist rule has been an aberration in the amount of central control that the Communist Party has been able to exert. In Chinese, there is a saying, “the mountains are high, and the emperor is far away”.
If you took a hard look at Chinese history, I think you’d find that there has never really been central control. Governors and bureaucrats of the various provinces and regions have long been able to defy directives from Beijing, Nanjing, or wherever else the dynastic capital happened to be at the time. The sheer size of China, and the dizzying differences in language and culture, made true central control a fantasy until 1949.
In a sense, maybe the greatest gift to the Communist Party was the outbreak of WW2 that set the stage for the subsequent civil war. Instead of dozens of regional warlords, you had a “clean” battle between two sides. When the Communists won, they finally assumed more or less total control of the country.
Contrary to there being some kind of group think that dooms China every century or so, the more proximate causes of political turmoil have been intense, irresolvable infighting that occurs contemporaneously with a natural disaster or foreign invasion.
Re: The Opium Wars Still Shape China’s View of the West
#7It is not true. It's just that politicians need official reasons to do what they do. And it's a great thing to use historical reasons because nobody can really counter them. Not a single Chinese person I know thinks about Westerners as sources of the Opium Wars and therefore as enemies. The opinions move between "West is so rich, let's be more like them" and "We are nearly back to our old glory, now also learn some o…
Oh yea, there are over a billion Chinese people in China alone and because not a single Chinese person you know has told you they think that, it must not be true!
Re: The Opium Wars Still Shape China’s View of the West
#8Yet its the same problem today that prompted the Opium Wars as back then: The West buys more from China than China buys from The West.
Hopefully that colours the decisions made to rebalance the trade system.
Re: The Opium Wars Still Shape China’s View of the West
#9China history is a warning sign against centralism and the ability of humanity to get stuck in loops, economic and culturally - where it from a ruling partys point of view doesn't make sense to do anything to escape the loop. Impressive is that china at least kept- enforced by the layout of the country, a centralized state. At least it did not decay as much as the middle east or africa - after reaching peak people.
This is so western propaganda boilerplate. What is the warning sign? China lifted more people out of poverty than all other countries combined. Actually the whole world is recognizing how centralism seems stronger than western federalism, and many western populations complain about their governments moving their power into a more and more centralized system. Have you for instance seen how Philipines and Turkey have m…
Turkey indicted 30k people and ruined lots of lives, just because someone hacked their wifi and added a link to some gullen (made up state enemy) website app, and just visiting that app website would put you in jail, but their didn't even do that. Philipines is worse with drugs regular killings, you must be quite an idiot to say this.
Re: The Opium Wars Still Shape China’s View of the West
#10China history is a warning sign against centralism and the ability of humanity to get stuck in loops, economic and culturally - where it from a ruling partys point of view doesn't make sense to do anything to escape the loop. Impressive is that china at least kept- enforced by the layout of the country, a centralized state. At least it did not decay as much as the middle east or africa - after reaching peak people.
This is so western propaganda boilerplate. What is the warning sign? China lifted more people out of poverty than all other countries combined. Actually the whole world is recognizing how centralism seems stronger than western federalism, and many western populations complain about their governments moving their power into a more and more centralized system. Have you for instance seen how Philipines and Turkey have m…
It was the mistakes of a highly centralized government that helped thrust those same people into poverty in the first place. Why should centralism be credited for helping pull them out but not for putting them there in the first place?
Meanwhile the West long ago eradicated the kind of poverty that still persists in China. Is that to be credited to our system of government too?