And what explains how it looks today?
Posted on 09/02/2008 10:30:09 PM PDT by robertvance
Most of my Chinese friends as is the case with many Americans, know very little about Governor Sarah Palin, John Mcain's choice for running mate in the 2008 Presidential Election. When they do learn more about her, there is one aspect of her life that will undoubtedly catch the attention of many people here. Earlier this year, Governor Palin gave birth to a baby boy despite the fact that doctors told her that he would have Down syndrome. Making the same choice in China is nearly unheard of. If a Chinese mother finds out that her unborn baby is afflicted with a deformity or other abnormality, it is standard procedure to have the baby aborted...
(Excerpt) Read more at teachabroadchina.com ...
Since China’s government only allows a couple in China to have 1 child, can force women to have abortions against their will, and can sterilize women against their will, this sounds like a reasonable question to ask.
No, there is no question. It is true that the majority of Chinese believe in social engineering and centralized political control. China has never had anything but this type of government even before the communists took over and ruined entire generations of Chinese.
From the average Chinese's perspective, their level of freedom may appear close to absolute, but that is only in comparison to what they have had before, which was zero freedom.
I agree that China seems to be moving in the right direction, but most individual Chinese are still proudly, even militantly authoritarian in mindset. They are proudly collectivist, happily sacrificing the hopes and dreams of the individual in the quest for patriotic collectivist glory.
Culturally they are as different from the west as Muslims are.
“Chinese are cold and inhuman to a degree that is difficult for Americans to appreciate.”
You could say that too, from a certain point of view. From my point of view they are much closer to being pure realists than we are, way over the line by our standards. But so it is, people are different.
Western liberals are by their nature fantasists. They like the idea of “social engineering” but they have no idea what it really is, or when there are certain messy details, hide from them. This is possible if they have only limited success in achieving their fantasies.
I am reminded of the saga of the “progressive” Russian intelligentsia in Orlando Figues great histories “A Peoples Tragedy” and “Natashas Dance”. These are people who got their fantasies fulfilled and then had time to repent before their fantasies swallowed them.
The Spartans died out (well the “true” Spartans, the Spartiates did), like every aristocratic warrior caste. The European nobility has turned over several times likewise, being periodically wiped out in the male lines.
They were brutal but they weren’t realists, they had a non-rational ethic that served them well in achieving power, but it had certain drawbacks with respect to long term survival.
Chinese history is one of boom and crash to a degree that is difficult to appreciate. Thats part of the Chinese problem. There have been such situations in Europe, there having been various “dark ages”, but they have rarely been universal across the continent. China saw many more dark ages, and they usually extended across the entire culture. This may be an accident of geography.
18th century China was easily competitive with contemporary Europe in terms of technology and standards of living, the only backward areas being military organization and naval technology. But when Europe entered the industrial revolution, China, being under foreign (Jurchen/Manchu) rule, entered a time of horrors.
The 19th century in China was one of a terrific population crash through famine and civil war (the Tai-ping rebellion, and others) that killed maybe 1/3 of the population - figure the time of the Black Death in Europe. Things got no better through the first 3/4ths of the 20th century. The culturally and economically retrograde China of 1979 was at a historic low.
Both and neither.
Sparta left a heritage of aristocratic rule (not Spartan-style, but these were the people Sparta backed) across the Greek world, that was co-opted by the Hellenistic rulers. This has been a default condition for many societies since - everyone from British colonialists to the Tutsi - it really is a natural form.
Athenian democracy (which was not in its origins uniquely Athenian, being carried over from many underlying traditional customs) died as a political ideal, it became old-fashioned and was crushed by wars and poverty. There weren’t any such powerful Greek democracies in the third century, it was a time of empires.
Rome picked up the elements of democracy from the same cultural substrata that Athens did (these were NOT copied from Athens), and went on to become the model for such political forms through classical literature - though it too lost democratic reality long before it also lost democratic forms.
I'm well aware of the history of the British in China. They had much of the country hooked on opium.
As to your point about how it looked and why, what exactly are you saying?
And what explains how it looks today?
If China was so strong why did a large country of hundreds of millions of people get conquered by a few hundred thousand Manchus?
They were a very weak civilization.
Western investments, and some adoption of western values. For example, they no longer physically cripple half of their population at the age of 5.
That was two generations ago. Does your great grandma have small feet too? How do you know all this stuff?
You think they are behind us. Certainly in the most advanced technology. But day to day, for those in what can be considered modern China, there are many instances in which they are ahead of the technology Americans see day-to-day.
Because it is easy to lose to a few hundred thousand well-led unified warriors if your government happens to be degenerate. The Manchu/Jurchen conquered the cowering Ming.
Exactly the same thing happened to the Roman Empire in the fifth century - its population and resources were much larger than that of the barbarians that “overran” it. It does not mean that ancient classical civilization was “weak”.
Foot-binding was also a practice limited to the towns and cities, among the middle and upper classes or those aspiring to that. Peasants (nearly everyone that is) on the whole were not in a position to do this.
This not true. Only the very destitute did not practice this, the majority of the population did.
To pose you a counter-question, if Chinese civilization is so very weak, why are all it’s historical enemies dust?
The Huns are dead and forgotten. The Mongols are weak and irrelevant. The Manchu have ceased to exist. The Tibetans and Uyghurs are marginalized and subjugated.
Anyway to answer your stupid question, and it is a stupid question since you obviously know little about Chinese history during the late Ming period, victory is determined by combatants and not observers. For better or worse, those tens of millions weren’t really relevant as they didn’t participate. This wasn’t a total war where all the resources of the state could be mobilized, but rather China was in a state of semi-anarchy. The Ming dynasty was already being torn apart by civil war prior to the Manchu invasion and the last legitimate Ming emperor had killed himself when rebel forces had taken Beijing. This resulted in a power vacuum where no one was sure where authority in China ultimately lay. Nurhaci was close by and acted quickly and opportunistically and gained the allegiance of several critical disenchanted Ming commanders (and their armies!) and quickly retook Beijing and proclaimed himself the new emperor. From there on, inertia took care of the rest as the remaining military forces threw in their lot with the Manchus before a cohesive Ming loyalist movement could emerge.
Most Chinese women had to work in the fields, they could not bind their feet, they would have been economically useless.
Remember that China in those days was largely a subsistence-agriculture economy, with a huge rural population of peasants (landless serfs/sharecroppers) supporting a small middle class and a tiny upper class.
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