Posted on 10/23/2021 8:31:36 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat
China’s rise presents the US with a rival that is harder to understand than any who came before. China, with its challenging language, thousands of years of civilization, and bespoke mixture of Marxism with local innovations, is far more alien than Britain, Germany, or Russia could ever be. Even Japan, with its aggressive adoption of Western mores since the 1860s, is far more comprehensible than “The Middle Kingdom,” as the Chinese call themselves.
It’s no surprise then that Western takes on China, its goals, and its priorities often feel more like guesswork than substantive analyses.
But Americans hoping to understand the new global superpower have one excellent asset: a hitherto unknown power behind Xi’s throne has written an entire book revealing exactly what he thinks of America.
The book is America Against America by Wang Huning, the secretive grey eminence of the Chinese Communist Party.
Anybody who wants to understand modern China, how it sees America, and how it plans to overtake America by avoiding America’s mistakes, has a duty to familiarize themselves with this book. And anyone who wishes to reverse America’s decline would be well-served studying Wang’s thought....
Impressively, Wang is enormously well-read on American culture. At the time he wrote America Against America, he had clearly read more about American politics and society than most American PhDs. Wang’s book is littered with summaries of American books that the typical Chinese reader has likely never heard of.
Near the end of his book, Wang speaks positively and at length about Allen Bloom’s book The Closing of the American Mind, and mulls whether a “spiritual crisis” exists at the heart of American society, even as America externally seems at the apex of its success....
(Excerpt) Read more at revolver.news ...
They are "inscrutable".
Interesting...As Xi’s top foreign policy aide, he has been described as “China’s Kissinger” by South Korean newspaper The Hankyoreh.
It’s no surprise then that Western takes on China, its goals, and its priorities often feel more like guesswork than substantive analyses. ...Nonsense. The Naked Communist bottom-lined the motivation of commies: they are condtioned to think as criminals do.
First Putin and now Xi’s philosopher.
People are starting to notice that we’re losing it here.
Toys in the attic.
Gone fishing.
Out to lunch.
I have read about a third of an amateur translation of the book, and it is pretty interesting. Some of it is dated, since he was in America in 1989-90, but a lot of it isn’t. It’s pretty telling that there’s no English translation at all by any major publisher with how myopic Academia is.
They're easy to understand. Think of them like lawyers, if their lips are moving, they're lying.
And the USA never lies , right ?
We just need to quit liquidating our country to buy cheap chinese goods.
We need to raise the tariffs until the trade goods deficits is eliminated.
We have forgotten the wisdom of our founding fathers who put in place high import tariffs to tax any foreigners wishing to sell into our markets.
I think we’re looking like the fall of the Roman empire.
Nations have a pattern in history. They go from masculine and aggressive - to success/dominance and then to comfort - to being run/influenced by women with a whole different set of values that brought the success. The latter leads to failure.
We are degenerate now - reality doesn’t matter (actual sex of a person is an example) - we murder the innocent and protect the guilty. To me - by any measure - we are falling apart at a rapid rate.
If you want to overwhelm the Americans, you must do one thing: surpass them in science and technology.
To be sure, many people in Silicon Valey and urban woke affluent Masters degree holders will wet themselves if this happens.
But with apologies to Marx, technology has become the opiate of the masses. It is plausible that if China surpassed America technologically, it could also crash and burn faster.
In addition, it's one thing to have superior anything. It's what you do with that superiority that matters. Hillary had a superior analytics team and the media. The Patriots were better than the Giants teams in both Super Bowls. Japan, Inc. had superior automobile manufacturing processes etc in the 80s.
Real Americans work harder, out produce, out think, and have lifespan-shortening drive that outstrips others. Yes, that work ethic is under fire. But it will ultimately overcome any other malady.
Agreed.
The same issues that corrupted the Roman Republic also corrupted us.
The only thing that can save us now is if our own Caesar has been born among us.
I agree with your post.....and 3 more years of Biden isn’t helping the situation either. Not sure we’ll recover from all this or even possible with the trajectory we’re currently in....and moving fast.
>> I’m shocked at how many really did vote for Biden
Prolly less than 60 million. Still too many.
Where can someone read this book? Or PDF?
“Where can someone read this book? Or PDF?”
The Shadow knows.
It’s a fascinating piece. I don’t know whether the most salient points were from Wang’s book or from the analysis of Wang’s book. A couple of tangential thoughts: In 2012, Rush stated that America could survive four more years of Obama but he wasn’t sure America could survive being a country that would reelect Obama. In a way, this says it all. A second tangential thought; I also was surprised to see that a book entitled “America against America” wouldn’t foresee wokeness with more clarity. America often prides itself in not hating the general populations of countries we’ve considered our enemies (e.g., the general populations of the USSR, Iran, North Korea, China, Iraq, etc. ). But Blue America views America as our greatest enemy yet allows itself to hate the citizens of its enemy: Americans.
Is he like an Arexis DeTocquevirre?
Oh wow. Chicoms reading Allan Bloom? BLM is gonna have a fit. Bloom is the first guy who attacked affirmative action and Rock stars…
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