Posted on 05/27/2006 1:06:52 PM PDT by UnklGene
The future is spelled C-H-I-N-A
We're awash with books on China -- minutes after finishing one, you're hungry for another
MARK STEYN
Arthur Henry Ward was a penniless young Irishman living in lodgings in south London when he bought a planchette (or Ouija) board to cheer himself up. That night -- 1912 or thereabouts -- he asked the planchette in what direction he would find success. It spelled out the word C-H-I-N-A-M-A-N.
Hmm. What could that possibly mean? "We asked it again," he recalled, "and still the answer was definitely and unmistakenly 'Chinaman.' I couldn't understand it at all for I knew nothing in those days about China or Chinamen. I must have remembered that when I sat down to write a book some time afterwards. All the usual types had been worked to death and so I lighted on the idea of a Chinaman. . ."
Young Ward called his Chinaman "Fu Manchu," adopted the nom de plume of "Sax Rohmer," and the rest is history, or at any rate the enduringly stereotypical inscrutable Oriental pulp version of history.
These days, half the planet seems to be doing what Sax Rohmer did -- getting the old Ouija board out and discovering that, no matter what question you ask about the century ahead, the answer always comes back C-H-I-N-A. I seem to get a new China book in the mail every 48 hours or so. Ten minutes after finishing one China book, you're hungry for another: China, Inc: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World. China the Balance Sheet: What the World Needs To Know Now About the Emerging Superpower. China Shakes the World : A Titan's Rise and Troubled Future -- and the Challenge for America.
You get the picture. That's not to say the fellows with the Ouija board aren't posing different queries. Europeans (and many Canadians) want an answer to the question: what will save us from the hell of a second American century? Answer: C-H-I-N-A. No one can stop the rise of the Chinese behemoth, but fortunately Jacques Chirac has volunteered the wise old European Union to serve as Greece to Beijing's Rome, and together they will rule the world. It's not entirely clear what the EU brings to the table in this deal. Nonetheless, in Britain's Guardian, Martin Jacques was panting orgasmically for 2050, when China will bestride the planet and America will be a wheezing lardbutt unable to rouse itself from its rusted-up EZ Boy recliner. Jacques' reasoning rests on the fact that the Chinese are an "ancient civilization," whereas America is a mere "settler society," which sounds awfully like the line the Germans used to take when they compared their ancient volk with America's "half-degenerated sub-race" (as Kant put it). Or the argument of French philosophers such as Cornelius de Pauw that Americans were physically "stunted," and "in a fight, the weakest European could crush them with ease." Two centuries later, Europeans still believe America's stunted sub-race can be crushed with ease, but they'd rather leave the actual crushing to Johnny Chinaman while they hold his coat and coo appreciatively from the sidelines.
By contrast, the Americans want an answer to the question: who'll launch the next war? Answer: C-H-I-N-A. See America's Coming War with China by Ted Galen Carpenter, and The Coming Conflict with China by Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro, and Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United States by Jed Babbin and Edward Timperlake. The last is the best, if only because it has an ingenious form: a series of brisk, vividly written scenarios for half a dozen possible wars with China over Taiwan, Korea, Japan, oil and "the so-called Assassin's Mace (sha shou jian) programs." No need to wait till 2050, they're all ready to roll in the next five years:
"The White House
20 January 2009
1635 Hours
'The what islands?' Standing in the Oval Office for the first time as president, the newly inaugurated commander in chief didn't bother to hide her exasperation . . ."
The islands Madam President has never heard of are the Senkaku Islands, which belong to Japan -- currently. Babbin was deputy undersecretary of defence in the first Bush administration, and Timperlake's an ex-fighter pilot, so they're not winging their war-game scenarios. What's fascinating is the subtitle: "Why China wants war." From Canada's natural resources to California's ports to Iran's oil, the politburo is hoovering up strategic assets around the world. If they were savvy enough to stick to Cold War Lite, they'd stand a chance of winning. But Babbin and Timperlake make the case that China's structural defects will propel it into a hot war sooner rather than later.
In 1932, back in the Fu Manchu days, when the inscrutable Oriental had a powerful grip on occidental culture, Perry Mason's creator Erle Stanley Gardner wrote a story called "The Danger Zone," and observed en passant:
"The Chinese of wealth always builds his house with a cunning simulation of external poverty. In the Orient one may look in vain for mansions, unless one has the entree to private homes. The street entrances always give the impression of congestion and poverty, and the lines of architecture are carefully carried out so that no glimpse of the mansion itself is visible over the forbidding false front of what appears to be a squalid hovel."
Not any more. Confucius say: if you got it, flaunt it. The glittering skylines of the coastal megalopolises ascend ever higher; on the ground, the lobbies of the chain hotels and the local franchises of the upscale boutiques are swankier than their American branches. But this is merely a latter-day form of "cunning simulation," a new "false front." Behind it lies the vast Chinese hinterland -- a billion-strong rural backwater all but entirely cut off from the showcase cities on the coast, until some rustic catches SARS from the prize pig in the rec room and decides to toddle up to town for the day. In the west there are restive Muslim populations, and in the east the so-called guang gun -- "bare branches": since China introduced its "one child" policy in 1978, the imbalance between the sexes has increased to the point where there are 119 boys for every 100 girls, the most gender-distorted demographic cohort in history. The pioneer generation of that 20 per cent male surplus is reaching manhood now. Asked about this on the radio a year or two back, I suggested that maybe China's planning on becoming the first gay superpower since Sparta, and promptly received a ton of indignant emails. But that brings us back to Sax Rohmer's planchette board. Ask a question about China's future, and the answer comes up C-H-I-N-A-M-A-N, emphasis on the M-A-N, as in millions and millions of them, with no available women: as a general rule, large numbers of excitable lads who can't get any action is not a recipe for societal stability.
The answer to many of China's problems lies just across its northern border: the fast depopulating, resource-rich Russian east, which Beijing will wind up with one way or the other. If you read Mark Bassin's masterful book Imperial Visions : Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840-1865, it's hard not to notice that the rationale behind the Russians' sale of Alaska applies just as well to a big swath of their eastern provinces today. A century and a half ago, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich, the brother of Alexander II, argued that the Russian Empire couldn't hold its North American territory and that one day either Britain or the United States would simply take it, so why not sell it to them first? The same argument applies now to the 2,000 miles of the Russo-Chinese border. Vladivostok will return to its old name of Haishenwei before too long.
And, given Russia's own gender imbalance -- between sickly men of low life expectancy and long-lived robust women -- it doesn't take much imagination to see a Sino-Russian union as a marriage of convenience in more than just the geopolitical sense. That's the key difference between transatlantic Ouija boards on China: as the cannier American analysts see it, Beijing is a threat to Washington not because of its strength but because of its weakness.
Ping, Pokey, and thank you for all your pings in the past!
Interesting, but if I remember rightly, Steyn theorized in an earlier article that China was not likely to remain a cohesive nation 50 to 100 years out, that it would break up. Certainly a different take than that being suggested here.
No nation with a falling population can sustain an upward trend. China, thanks to the one-child program and subsequent gender imbalance is heading in that direction.
By 2050, the nation with the largest population in the world will be India. While China may be tying itself to Russia (another nation with a falling population), India is getting closer with the U.S. and Israel. India has a mix of Asian and Western culture. It has something of a working democracy. It is a polyglot of languages and religions that somehow manage to work together.
China, especially in partnership with Russia, could pose a serious problem in the short-term -- the next 20 years or so. After that the future is spelled I-N-D-I-A. Quite possibly, in partnership with the U-S-A.
Any known breakup of it has been short-lived: it would break up, and then reunite again.
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That would only accelerate China's ambitions. To use the George Orwell formula to hold things together.
Just a brilliant piece of writing. We sometimes take Steyn too much for granted...but he clearly has a real genius. The way he draws on history, literary as well as geo-political, demonstrates real genius.
Not to worry.
Under the new Senate Immigration Reform Act, there will be plenty of jobs and women for them here. All they have to do is come.
Perhaps, China will import Mexican Women?
There's no shortage of Asian Women in the US....
Not a problem. China will have to deal with Mexica by 2050.
Huge assumption there.
That point where Malthus got it wrong is also huge. Granted, explosive growth can be a problem. But if technology cannot improve to sustain a slow, steady growth, then there is a problem with the technological progress of the nation.
China's one-child per household program (and I think there was 2-children per household program before it) is a necessity in a society that isn't free enough to technologically innovate.
They are freeing up some now and they may recover yet. But right now, the medium-term future looks better for India.
Caused by vodka.
BFLR.
LOL!
The men are drinking themselves to death, and most of the women and anyone with any ambition is trying to get out!
I recently came across the fact that the late Roman empire had 30% more males than females. The Lucifer Principle by NYU professor is a very interesting and exaustive survey of research findings on what to expect from surplus young men.
It's been suggested that's already the case.
Apparently the Indian census-taking process isn't very accurate.
Nobody knows how many of them there are.
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