Chinese and American flags flying together
Thirty years ago I knew that China would be the next “America”. The next “Britain.” The next industrial and technological hegemon.
I wrote about this back in the early 2000s, at BOPNews, the Agonist and FDL. When the Chinese were let into the WTO by Bill Clinton their rise and replacement of the US became inevitable.
At one time the British were the greatest in the world. They were exceptional: smarter and more powerful than anyone else.
Then we had a century of American exceptionalism. The American way was the best way. Americans were superior. They were more creative. Their government system was the ideal system, etc, etc…
American exceptionalism was and is ugly. The American system was not the best of all time (contra the idiotic “End of History” thesis) and neither was the British or, more generally, European “Liberal Democracy”.
Nor is the Chinese system the greatest of all time. Chinese culture is not the world’s greatest culture. The Chinese people are not innately superior to other people.
China industrialized the same way that almost everyone did. They had support from the current industrial hegemon, same as both America and Japan did. (Japan had British help during the Meiji period and American help after WWII.) They ran a protectionist mercantile export policy. Instead of tariffs they used currency manipulation.
British financiers built a ton of American industry, because profits were higher in America than in the more mature industrial state of Britain. Americans offshored and outsourced to China because profits were higher in China.
There’s no way to do mass offshoring to a country without also transferring technology, but more than that, wherever the manufacturing floor is, the technological lead follows. It takes twenty to thirty years to gain the tech lead once you’ve gained the manufacturing lead.
China also ran the rest of the Japanese playbook: get your population educated, starting with getting everyone primary education. Then get everyone secondary education. Only then do you go all out at the university level.
This is the way almost every nation (there are less than five exceptions) has industrialized. If you want the full explanation, read “Bad Samaritans.”
What makes China different is what made the US different from Britain: it’s a continental power with a much larger population than the previous hegemonic power. So it can scale better and once it takes the leads the previous power is cooked.
This is why Japan had to cut a deal with the US: why it could be forced to give up its tech and industrial lead: it’s an island nation with a smaller population than the US. That can’t be done to China, because it’s larger and because so much of what it needs now comes from uninterruptible continental supply chains. (Plus, very soon, they will be a greater naval power than America.)
We’re going to have a “Chinese Century” and we’re going to have to put up with tons of claims of Chinese exceptionalism. Their system is innately better, they have a superior culture, they’re more creative than everyone else and heck, as a race they’re superior.
They aren’t. They don’t even have as good a claim as Britain did: they weren’t the first. They just did what a ton of other countries did, including the US, Japan, South Korean and Taiwan.
This doesn’t mean they don’t deserve admiration and credit for becoming the hegemonic power. They still had to do a lot of things right, including taking advantage of a foolish and stupid financializing elite in America, just as the Americans took advantage of a foolish and stupid financializing elite in Britain. They worked hard. They worked smart. They deserve their century in the sun, and if they’re smart and capable, maybe they’ll get two centuries if climate change doesn’t take them down.
But they aren’t innately superior. They’re following a well worn playbook, taking advantage of the usual cycle of ideological change within hegemonic powers.
The screams of America exceptionalism were bullshit. Claims of Chinese exceptionalism are also bullshit except in the sense that they are currently on top. Over time they will be corrupted from within, because this is a universal pattern which always happens and someone else will take the lead. They will remain a great power if
1) they avoid collapse into warlordism, however, because they are a continental power who will retain a large population even after the onrushing demographic collapse; and,
2) There isn’t another true revolution in production and technology like the industrial revolution, which happens somewhere other than China.
America exceptionalism was ugly and tiresome. So is Chinese exceptionalism.
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cc
We are still very much in the midst of American exceptionalism, Anglo exceptionalism, Jewish exceptionalism, and Western exceptionalism.
And German and Japanese exceptionalism were on rampant display not so long ago during WWII.
As I understand it, humility and reciprocity (the Golden Rule) are a big part of Confucianism. Hopefully that can help prevent or tamp down any exceptionalism coming from China.
Marc
“2) There isn’t another true revolution in production and technology like the industrial revolution, which happens somewhere other than China.”
Have you heard of Computational Engineering?
https://leap71.com/noyron/
https://leap71.com/#home
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXSif-_54jo
spud
i said to anyone who would listen back in 1993, that its over with. the corrupt clown bill clinton, is going to undue the new deal/fair deal. Gatt, and when his crime bill went through, the great society.
after the corrupt idiot let china in, i said i bet every member of the chinese politburo bureau, has a picture by their bedside, and when they wake up in the morning the first thing is that they see bill clintons face, and start the day out with a huge belly laugh.
now if china had to do it on their own, i would have taken much longer. but clinton super charged it for them.
bill clinton is pretty much responsible for the davos man, and there really is no way out of this for the west.
bill clinton was pretty much a creation of the southern plantation economy.
Jefferson Hamilton
I doubt Americans will stop bleating about how fucking awesome they are within my lifetime. Britain’s sense of superiority seems like it was always quite a bit more understated. Did they ever really stop thinking they were better than everyone else? Does anyone?
Ian Welsh
Nobody takes British superiority seriously any more, except a few Brits. A hundred and fifty years ago people did.
The superiority is similar to someone whose genetics make them strong and healthy. You didn’t do anything to deserve it, but you are, after a fashion, superior.
Of course there are a few Chinese who can claim responsibility, but they’ll all be dead in 30 years and Chinese will think what they inherited is due to them being better.
GramSci
I think there’s one sense in which Chinese culture *is* relatively exceptional. Despite mutually unintelligible regional dialects, a common logographic writing system and its geography enabled China to form a more deeply cohesive culture than Europe, Africa, or the indigenous Americas. It was isolated by tundra to the north, ocean to the east, desert and Himalayas to the west and south. This isolation also protected it against the ‘religious’ (but actually political) wars that perpetually fractured Europe and West Asia. Japan, as an island culture enjoyed similar exceptionality, as perhaps did Soviet Russia, at least east of Leningrad.
This is, of course, only a footnote to Ian’s larger point. China will have its century of hegemony. This will be a bitter pill for Euro-American neo-colonialists to swallow, but with UTF-8 and machine translation it will go down a little easier and might actually have a salutary effect.
different clue
The Exceptional do as they please, and the ordinary accept what they must.
Mark Level
I largely agree with Ian’s overall thesis, but will quibble with one point.
“Chinese exceptionalism. Their system is innately better, they have a superior culture, they’re more creative than everyone else and heck, as a race they’re superior.
They aren’t. They don’t even have as good a claim as Britain did: they weren’t the first. They just did what a ton of other countries did, including the US, Japan, South Korean and Taiwan.”
A couple of commenters beat me to the punch, thank you to cc especially. spud remains the expert on The Clintons’ (plural) treasonous behavior. LAS was bemoaning Trump’s “Treasonous” sucking up to Evil Putin, but they are not collaborating, as I already noted, US still enables drone attacks, including likely the attempted assassination of Vlad at his remote estate some months’ back. The Clintons were as treasonous as Trumpy, gutting Americans’ wages & prosperity, starting endless wars in the now gone Yugoslavia (the first one was a “victory,” nearly none have been since.
Yes, I have studied both Western Hermeticism and Taoism for 3-4 decades, and they are far superior to the Brits. Ian mentions Scaling power. Yes, what the British did given their size was amazing. But they were always arrogant Cunts (I’m using the Scottish term, not being misogynist), forget where I read it recently but some of them were negotiating with the Venetians in the 15th Century, their host observed they were the most arrogant, “exceptional” twats imaginable, condescending to an older richer culture.
Aleister Crowley loved the Chinese, translated some of their canonical texts (he was not fluent in any Chinese language, but reworked other translations in French, German, Spanish, English, or other languages he knew.) He respected the Middle Kingdom as genuinely so, the most ancient culture known on Earth. He stated that China was essentially a culture related to the zodiacal sign of Libra, it would always move to a Middle Path after deviating in one way or another.
I have an old interest in divination that actually works, and the Yi King is nonpareil, it has told me the truth repeatedly over many years (I am careful not to overuse it), it might’ve saved my life, not being too hyperbolic, or at least my career when an angry administrator was coming after my head.
I have slight familiarity with Chinese Literature, am most familiar with Journey to the West, The 3 Kingdoms, and Dream of the Red Chamber. Brilliant stuff. The West stole some of it, as did many others, since its earlier than practically anything else. The Epic of Gilgamesh might be nearly as old.
Ian says Britian “the first” to design a brilliant Imperial Playbook for a small island nation, but this is not so. They might’ve been the first since the Greeks, Rome, the Persians, the French, Alexander, and many, many others, hell even the Akkadians and Babylonians. But they were not doing anything actually original, just weaponzed “Divide and Conquer”, well known from ancient times. And used their island status (as Japan copied later from them) to swing way outside of their weight class.
China is great as a culture. I will not say it is the GOAT. There is no way for me or really anyone to make such a judgment, there are just too many metrics to look at. But yes, they will get arrogant and piggish, just like the Brits, “Exceptional” Muricans, Napoleonic France, etc. That’s just human nature as we all know. And it was the Greeks who partly created xenophobia (not original or unique to them), all their neighbors were “Barbarians” who could not speak a comprehensible language, were just making Bar Bar animal sounds!
Ian Welsh
No, Britain was the first do the industrial revolution. And it was a revolution. As big as the agricultural revolution in its own way. That was genuinely new, what the Chinese are doing is not.
mago
Correct. We don’t need exceptionalism from anyone or any culture.
What we need is harmony, lions lying down with lambs.
Yeah, I know that’s some kind of silly dreaming, but as John Lennon said, I’m not the only one
Someday we’re gonna wake up, but in the meantime. . . in between time. . . we’re fucked
joey_n
I’ll go out on a limb and express how happy I am to see this, speaking as someone who was supportive of China from early 2019 to late last September (yeah, 2025 has been a real disappointment in more ways than one) and has during which admired their innovations in science and technology.
Consider it coincidental or whatnot, and this may or may not be a good example (I may even get in trouble here), but last night Baidu had this news query of tearful protests against Sanae Takaichi in Japan, with responders cynically dismissing it as “crocodile tears” the same way previous anti-Takaichi protests were dismissed as theater. Were it not for this eye-opener for what it’s worth, I would’ve expected solidarity from a population I once thought was as aware of and opposed to US hegemony over East Asia as the writers over at Consortium News, ‘Bernhard’ and the guys over at Moon of Alabama, or the Saker back when his Vineyard was still up and running over three years ago.
Oakchair
Nor is the Chinese system the greatest of all time. Chinese culture is not the world’s greatest culture. The Chinese people are not innately superior to other people.
——
I wouldn’t be surprised if all that is right, but the Chinese could prove that they are superior. A good case could be made –it’s isn’t certain– that they already are on that path. All they have to do is diverge from the path The Netherlands, UK, America etc made. IE instead of raping and pillaging the rest of the world they just don’t do that.
different clue
Talking about revolutions . . . how about that Revolution of Falling Expectations, coming soon to a neighborhood near you.
joey_n
Addendum:
The source of the enmity is understood (in the context of Japan’s actions in China during and before WWII and the former’s present regime’s inaction/refusal in acknowledging the same), so don’t get me wrong.
Edmund
I can only speak to the last 50 years, but the difference between European and American culture in that time is that Europe gave the world the World Wide Web for free, and the Americans put Facebook on it.
ventzu
Ian: “No, Britain was the first do the industrial revolution.”
But Ian didn’t Britain first benefit from colonial plunder that started c.100-150 years before the Industrial Revolution? Such higher education and industry had capital to fund innovation, and captive markets to sell to.
As per Oakchair, western growth into hegemony (including the US) was built and sustained on aggression and colonialism. Whereas China’s growth has not been driven by foreign aggression.
To the extent that Lao Tse and Chuang Tse remain implicit in Chinese thinking and culture, I think we have a good shot at a more benign hegemony. But as you say, power over time eventually corrupts.
Ian Welsh
Plunder isn’t that unusual in history, and neither are colonies.
The industrial revolution was something NEW. This really isn’t in question. And the British did this new thing.
Plenty of empires have plundered vast wealth without using it to make an entire new means of production.
I’m of Irish descent. I think the English are mostly scum. But the industrial revolution was a big deal and it was English w/some Scots, mostly.
China has a great deal to be proud of, of course. Ancient civilization, invented lots of cool stuff, great literary tradition, blah, blah, blah. And they should be proud of becoming the world’s greatest power, which they clearly are.
But doing so is not an epochal accomplishment the way the industrial revolution was.
That said, it’s always a little dubious to take credit for one’s ancestor’s accomplishments.
Americans have nothing to be proud of, not today’s Americans anyway. The people who made America great are all dead. The people in power today are those who threw away the greatness their predecessors: their betters, created. The same is true of the English. Victorians or even Regency English would despise their descendants pathetic weakness, foolishness and stupidity.
Mark Level
Thanks to Ian for the clarification. Yes, Industrial Revolution, I get it, US got onto that very quickly as well. Meantime France, who could’ve been a major player, was dealing with Napoleon’s egotistical search for gloire via endless wars, half of them failed debacles. They were right to deprecate Perfidious Albion as a blinkered “Nation of Shopkeepers,” but they missed an early opportunity.
Oakchair says what I should’ve, and ventzu as well, hits the target bullseye. China is the greatest culture if we measure by size, scope (okay Russia has more territory but nowhere near the human #s), literature, it has claims in science like gunpowder, etc.
OT: Jews beat Arabs in some areas, areas of scientific study, commerce (to a point) but in Astronomy the Arabs were way greater, for centuries. Persia for philosophy, chess, many other gifts to humanity. And Ian’s point on May Day (Happy May Day all, dance ’round a phallic pole, or attend a demo or throw a brick thru your nearest Overseer Precint’s window, “just kidding, haha”!! Back to Ian’s point– Of course, we all know the rise of Neoliberalism in the 1970s installed shit leaders who destroyed all the West’s power and glory, from Carter and Reagan, Mrs. Fatcher (Felcher), the former “revolutionary” Vaclav Havel, Lech Walensa (always a reactionary, Catholic Fascist turd), Nelson Mandela who gave South African blacks nominal freedom and a vote, but nearly no land reform, economic boost, nor hope.
The West Sucks, the Ruling Class decided to flush the majority’s hopes and futures down the Crapper. Will there be revolutions or even timid reforms? I see very little hope for that.
elkern
Yes, we’re now in the [first] [New] Chinese Century. And yes, “Chinese Exceptionalism” will be rather annoying, perhaps much worse if it tilts hard toward the more explicitly racist ideas of “Han Superiority”.
At the same time, AI (as much as I hate it) is likely to lead to technical, economic, social, and therefore political changes at least as radical as the Industrial Revolution, all while the Earth shifts away from the climate regime which enabled the Agricultural Revolution a few millennia ago,
These changes won’t be easy to manage, but China is far likely to handle it all much better than the USA would… maybe.
My biggest concern with China is a sense that it/they focus too much on the “Economic” aspects of life. (“Economics” in scare quotes, because at least they seem to recognize that Economics is a subset of Ecology). The deep foundation of modern China is its Confucian roots, but its current structure evolved from Mao’s version of Marxism; both focus heavily on Economic frameworks. Economics is important, but it’s a lousy philosophy of Life. (See: Libertarianism).
Perhaps the best way to explain the hollowness of the Economic Framework is by contrasting China with India (!). Modern China is an economic miracle: a Billion people, lifted from starvation-level poverty to First World Middle Class health, comfort, and luxury in the space of a couple generations. By contrast, India is almost a basket case: a Billion people, still living in abject poverty, while its Oligarchs enjoy Epstein-level hedonistic delights.
As much as I despise India for its Caste system, I can still see something there which makes *sense* for the people inside the system – something aesthetic, “spiritual”, and just deeply human. The poorest Dalit, living a short, squalid life in a dirt-floor shack, still has their local Temple, ancient, with fading paint and cracking walls, but still holy, providing a quiet space for Wonder and Connection to The All; the things which really make us Human.
A purely Economic view of human life has no room for such frivolity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogN2WxbhOtg
spud
here are four main architects of the dismantling of america into a third world nation touting our exceptionalism.
https://www.voanews.com/a/clinton-to-stress-american-exceptionalism-in-ohio/3487881.html
Bill Clinton’s brand of American exceptionalism focused on defining the U.S. as the “indispensable nation” that leads with values to protect security and foster global good. This approach blended traditional exceptionalism with a modern, globalist perspective, emphasizing military strength alongside economic globalization, such as NAFTA and GATT.
(he gutted Gatt because it was voluntary, instead he helped set up corporate the ruled the W.T.O.)
https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/lawmaker-news/244166-obama-and-clinton-embody-american-exceptionalism/
Obama explicitly stated his belief in American exceptionalism, defining it through the nation’s capacity for progress, its ideals, and its role as an indispensable nation.
look who wrote that article, none other than one of the clintonites that went to russia after the breakup to teach them all about capitalism(Brent Budowsky) he dares not go back to russia, he is a wanted man there.
https://medium.com/reluctant-moderation/joe-biden-made-me-believe-in-american-exceptionalism-again-cae2abad8d58
The President’s first joint address was a reminder of everything that’s great about America.
——
biden could have been a great president that would have turned america against trump by simply doing away with student loan debt, instituting medicare for all, and strengthening and expanding social security, instead he used what america has become, the exceptional police state tactics, that blew right back into his face.
———-
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/hillary-clinton-make-case-american-exceptionalism-ohio
Hillary Clinton defines American exceptionalism as the country’s unique, “indispensable” role as a global force for peace, progress, and freedom. She emphasizes that American leadership, supported by strong alliances and values, is essential to global stability. In a 2016 speech, she contrasted this view with her opponent’s, arguing for a “cosmopolitan” exceptionalism that embraces diversity and upholds American, rather than just nationalistic, ideals.
spud
capitalism in action, pure exceptionalism:)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AnQLbDcnfWc
where did the money go.
bruce wilder
The people who made America great are all dead. The people in power today are those who threw [it] away . . .
Power corrupts . . .
different clue
Who first invented the phrase ” American Exceptionalism” ? I remember reading once that it was Joseph Stalin, and not in a good way.
So I went online and found this paywalled article with a tiny readable teaser . . .
“How Joseph Stalin Invented ‘American Exceptionalism’
By Terrence McCoy ”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/03/how-joseph-stalin-invented-american-exceptionalism/254534/
and here, for a slightly different story . . . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism
and this, indicating that while Stalin coined the phrase, the cast of mind has older roots . . . https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/political-science/american-exceptionalism
As to the coming Chinese Exceptionalism; we may not want it but we’re going to get it. And we’re going to like it, whether we like it or not.
I re-offer my prediction that in 50-80 years, after China is done pre-empting all the rivers in East, SouthEast and South Asia and ruining their downstream functionality for downstream nations; and after China has strip-mined the very last fish out of every last corner of all the China Seas; that China will be the Most Hated Nation in Asia. I wish I could live healthy long enough to see if events prove me right or wrong about that.
Egoculexegonos
Exceptional (when positive) is great if it’s temporary and necessary, but exceptionalism is tissue-rotting filth that looks and smell like a scented balsam. Anyway, I wonder how exceptionalism prone is China currently.
Recently I watched a long, interesting discussion video about China (it’s in Spanish but I leave a link just in case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BKUCdACLac ) where one of the commentators said that China was never going to intervene in other countries’ affairs because they still had clear memory of the so-called Century of Humiliation (opium wars, etc) and they felt they would never replicate such a thing on others. I believe that might be true now, but will they forget in a few decades? Dunno. They said the general scope of Chinese culture was very different from the Western one… but, even if that’s true, I’m afraid they might have subconsciously learnt quite a bunch of dirty, low tricks from us, “the summit of civilization”. At least, when you learn sth bad, you can either practise it or be aware of it in order to avoid it…
I deeply dislike the image, with religious echoes, of “lions lying down with lambs” because being big and powerful doesn’t necessary mean you have to be a bully or a predator: lions cannot avoid eating animal protein while humans, unless seriously socio-psychologically damaged in a very specific way, can be truly social beings. That expression tells a lot about the global Western, not necessary about China. But I agree, if they eventually go down Exceptionalism Road, they’ll be no different from Europe and its spawn.
Anyway, China will face the same environmental and resource problems the rest of the modern Anthroposphere is going to face (is actually facing now, not at full-throttle yet), so I’m not sure they’ll make it for so much as a century.
mago
I’m going to take a little trip down memory lane and speak to Chinese culinary influences in my life. (Years ago KT Chong took me to task for mentioning Chinese restaurants in every American outback, mistaking my praise for blame. Where’s he in this thread btw?)
Growing up in meat and potato country as a teenager it was a treat to visit the two Chinese restaurants in town and eat egg rolls and sweet and sour soup and flied rice while drinking cups of oolong tea. That was food for the round eyes. Their own staff dinners were more traditional.
As a 23 year old in Boston I was a regular at one Chinese restaurant in particular located in Cambridge square where they served the classics like Peking duck and steamed whole fish along with all the sides. There was an aquarium from which a poor fish was plucked to arrive thirty minutes later on your plate.
In Seattle I often enjoyed Din Sum Sunday in the International District, which was a favorite haunt. It was there in my hot shot chef days that I visited ill lit and pungent purveyors of fermented eggs and beans along with the broccoli rabe and mustard greens and other staples to both the public and private concerns. I was a regular who received not only preferential treatment, but education.
I incorporated fermented black beans into my repertoire, for example, making a black bean sauce with white fish, using fish stock, garlic, ginger and butter in a reduction sauce. (If I had time I’d do a political food blog, but I don’t.)
I also had a first generation Chinese business partner who was well connected in Seattle and with whom I was going to start a cafe. But it didn’t happen.
Other business and personal relationships happened along the way. That’s my Chinese experience and connection, and there are more stretching back to childhood that will remain unrelayed, including literary and spiritual influences such as Taoism. (Hey Mark).
I’m just talking here about being simpatico, but I wouldn’t want live under Chinese rule or live on their cuisine. I’ll appropriate whatever I can from wherever I can that seems useful and disregard the rest.
ktchong
Yes, and no.
Here is a timely video interview of Martin Jacques:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0wKS7flwzw
– – –
Here comes the big “no”.
Westerners want to believe the modern Chinese economy took off only after China had joined the WTO in 2001 and gained the permanent “Most Favored Nation” status with the US in 2002; (i.e., it’s really just “Normal Trade Relations”.)
That perception is a common misconception.
While WTO membership was a major milestone, China’s rapid growth actually began in the 1980s and accelerated in the 1990s — the time when China was under harsh US sanctions in the aftermath of the CPC crackdown of the 1989 Tiananmen student protests.
Here are some graphs that track Chinese GPD and growth over time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1OPqn8a45g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-2nqd6-ZXg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSZGVqC42XI
If you pay attention to the charts: Chinese economy and growth actually took off in the 1980s and 1990s — more precisely, in 1983, 1989, and (especially) 1993.
Look at the first graph again: China’s growth curve became log-linear (aka exponential growth pattern) in 1993, even when China was under harsh US sanctions over Tiananmen. In the 1990s, almost no US capitals, investment or technology was flowing into China, yet China grew exponentially anyway.
So, what happened in 1983, 1989, and especially 1993?
KT Chong
India established normal trade relations (“MFN”) with the US half a century before China, and it joined WTO half a decade before China. Yet that had not helped India.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwz2jmZ9E4I
India is worth mentioning in this context because China’s economy took off in the 1980s and 1990s but India’s did not, and the underlying reason for both was somewhat related. However, the reason has been mostly invisible or under-the-radar to people outside China, East Asia and Southeast Asia — or just “outside the loop.”
China grew in the 1980s and 1990s because China has that one huge but “invisible” advantage that India does not have.
– – –
And that same “invisible” factor, just as it undermined and overcame US sanctions on China in the 1990s, today continues to undermines the US in its economic war with China. It has weakened and even neutralized Trump’s economic leverages against China. Here is the beautiful part: all the big brains and think tanks in America — even the CIA and US State Department — are still mostly oblivious to it.
StewartM
An interesting video by a Marxist (well, actual communist), Hakim:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=886mG87-cfU
He points out that China beat the West at its own game despite their much-ballyhooed WTO entry being on VERY unequal terms.
Other than that, Ian, he echoes a lot of your points. One of the more interesting things he says about the difference in Chinese investment in the global South versus Western “investment” is that the latter is always bound to fail because near-immediate wealth extraction is its purpose, and you can’t have true investment if you’re eyeing immediate payoff.
Ian Welsh
India has done everything wrong for generations. They did not follow the Japanese/US/Korean/almost everyone playbook. I literally can’t think of one major thing they did right.
China was selling massive amounts to the West long before the WTO. Absolutely textbook mercantalism, starting with Deng’s reforms. But did joining the WTO help? Yes. It sure as hell did, if it didn’t China wouldn’t have joined.
Special pleading for China is as tiresome as special pleading for the US was.
Did they have to do a lot of things right? Of course, the world is full of countries which didn’t manage to industrialize.
Did they use a playbook which has been used by many different countries. Yes, yes they did.
Are they super special and wonderful? No more than many other countries and obsessive “China is the greatest and unique and wonderful” talk is as objectionable as the same talk about America or Europe was.
If there were something innately super special about China they wouldn’t have suffered the century of humiliation.
Just like if there were something innately super special about America they wouldn’t be losing their empire, prosperity, tech and industrial lead.
Everyone has ups and downs.
The most successful civilizations of all time were Mesopotamia and Egypt. They were civilizations for thousands of years. Mesopotamia had the tech lead for something like 7K years.
Then it ended.
It ends for everyone. Sometimes they get multiple shots. Sometimes they don’t.
Your pleading for the group you belong to be super special and uniquely wonderful is as tiresome as American exceptionalism is and was – whether today or 150 years ago.
China has risen. It will have its time in the sun. Then it will fall. No one knows this better than smarter Chinese.
different clue
Here is a digital touchscreen toaster. I sincerely hope this was not invented by China.
“Who came up with the genius idea to put touchscreens on everything? This is a toaster. Really hope that this isn’t the future. Pointless e-waste for a money grab.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1t14ljq/who_came_up_with_the_genius_idea_to_put/
This is not technological leadership. This is technological lampreyship.
If someone can figure out how to de-digitized these type of digi-lampreyfied appliances, and make them totally analog dumm, that someone will make a good living.
Roslyn Ross
How about we do away with exceptionalism fullstop. The British were more civilized than the Americans ever were but even their exceptionalism caused problems. The Chinese are also likely to be more civilized than Americans but we do not need their exceptinanlism either. Not that it seems to be their style. The British grew into theirs over thousands of years and constant invasions and colonisations. The Americans invented theirs in pubescent enthusiasm which never grew to maturity.
Jan Wiklund
Bad Samaritans by Ha-Joon Chang is a great book, but there are others. Personally I favour Erik Reinert’s How rich countries got rich, and why poor countries stay poor. Except being a superior book about how one industrializes it is the funniest book ever written about the neo-classic dogmas – everytime proposing something better and more real.
And then we have of course Chalmers Johnson about Japan, Robert Wade about Taiwan and Alice Amsden about South Korea. They are all good. Unfortunately I have never seen an exhaustive book about how the Chinese did it. Yi Wen’s The making of an economic superpower is the best I’ve seen so far.
StewartM
Ian Welsh
China has risen. It will have its time in the sun. Then it will fall. No one knows this better than smarter Chinese.
On that note, let me introduce all to another Youtube channel I’ve been following of late:
https://www.youtube.com/@CoolHistoryBros
I took some Asian history as an undergrad, but the survey class course book (John Fairbank) was heavy on “idealism” and ideology and scant on actual political details and narrative. This channel corrects that.
Feast on the details of the pre-Song dynasty “five dynasties and ten kingsdoms” period. Or the Hundred Schools of Thought. Or the An Lushan rebellion. Watch how a peasant became the first Han Emperor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlVXwef66bA&list=PLTWtVUzAvZ3oUSBoHO8-NwMofWR2tdUfK
Yo-yo between China triumphant, and China as a humiliated defeated subordinate. It’s all there, folks.
Mark Level
To Roslyn Ross: if you consider the “British more civilized than Americans ever were,” you bring to mind Gandhi’s quote when someone asked him about having more Western Civilization, “It sounds like it would be a good idea!” (Meaning of course it never was.)
I mean the British were hierarchical, exclusionary, racist, and conceited to a level that only the Deutsche of the Hitler era were. (Whereas Germans during the Romantic movement were to some extent more humane, loving, and aesthetically-inclined.)
Royalist Cunts, rarely regicides, & in Cromwell’s case, dug up and mutilated for being so. Putting enclosures on peasant’s land, poor houses, witch hunts, killing the Irish or making them slaves, before they went out and behaved similarly over half the surface of the earth, to create a Powerful “Empire.”
Child-beaters in the schools, rapists at times as well, buggerers, not for pleasure, not consensual, but for feeling Power purely, & impunity. Notorious perverts and impotent freaks, homosexuality meant the death penalty until something like the 1930s. They chemically castrated Alan Turing, the great WW II code-breaker and computer expert, driving him to suicide.
James Bond was an avatar, a phony one, “cultured” & “suave”. John Le Carre told the truth with George Smiley, an unimpressive little cuckold. Racist yobs, soccer riots, Tommy Robinson, MI-6 recreating their past “glory” bombing innocent people and stirring up trouble all across the earth.
Fuck the Brits, they’re mostly assholes, stole stuff like the Elgin Marbles from countries they occupied, deliberately caused famines killing millions in India (several times), Ireland, etc.
Doctor Who was a kind of rebuke to their Imperial nastiness. There’s always compensation. The 12th Doctor, Peter Capaldi, was brilliant as a nasty, obscene bully who was like 2nd in command in the government, there was a battle between 2 sides, one wanted to go to war, there was a US general played by James Gandolfini near the end of his life who was trying to stop it. Capaldi verbally bullied and shat all over everyone, friend and foe alike, it was “brilliant”, as the Brits like to say. I at least admired the intensity, and the honesty.
Mark Level
Oh, I was remiss in not giving the name of the War film satire with Gandolfini and Capaldi, 2009’s “In the Loop”, satirizing Bush Jr’s failed Iraq War. It is mordant and funny, pretty savage. A spoiler: Capaldi wants the War and death, Gandolfini’s General opposes it. Of course the Capaldi character wins, we live in the 29th century.
different clue
The history of civilization is the story of man’s effort to live like the social insects.