Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

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sanjaykumar
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by sanjaykumar »

I am not sure the premise of a timid ( Gandhian is not synonymous by any means) Indian response to Chinese activities on the border is valid.

Please see the Kanwal Sibal, ex-foreign secretary, interview. Indian forces were positioned trans Chinese forces in Somudorong Chu. More recently, Debsang and Chumar incursions both resulted in aggressive force mobilisations by India. The GOI issues bland non-information to the media. The reality is very different. Some evidence suggests Indians do some intrusive patrolling of their own.

It is trivial to scan the contemporary coverage of these incidents in the Times of India, Hindu etc: There is no inkling as to the reality of the maneuvers now revealed by Kanwar Sibal.
chola
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by chola »

shiv wrote:
chola wrote: When the numbers favor you (20 to 1 along the LAC) then you fvcking take advantage of it and roll over the opposition. That is numbers driven realism. That is why Wall Street dominates global finance and why the United States dominates the global hierachy of nations.
You are saying, if it works on wall street it will work for the armed forces. Sounds like bullshit to me. Clearly it is not working for the Chinese. Or for the US against piddly North Korea
Propaganda and psychology of the sort of pseudo-science bullshit you are suggesting is not working for the Chinese, that is correct. It doesn't work for anyone when it come down to brass tacks. Money and kinetics are the only thing that counts when reality hits.

Hard core numbers driven strategies in trade is not working for Cheen? Look at their GDP figures. And the influence it buys them around the world. Flooding the SCS with ships, aircraft and man-made islands is not working? They took over a vast area of that body without firing a shot.

Why are we so concerned with them if numbers are not working for them?

Cheen can't fight so they avoided war for five decades because the numbers didn't work for them in the fight arena. We could have brought war to them and crushed them in our theater.

Forget arguing about the US. The overwhelming power of that nation even when reaching all the fvcking way from the other side of the Pacific into Cheen's backyard is so immense that 95% of the PRC's military is heaped against its East Coast. Leaving a rump chini force in Tibet which we could have and should have rolled over and crushed.

And NoKo has become a cudgel for the US to beat Cheen with. Trump is going to sanction Cheen over NoKo even as the US puts every military option on the table.
shiv
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by shiv »

chola wrote: Cheen can't fight so they skipped war for five decades because the numbers didn't work for them in the fight arena. We could have brought war to them and crushed them in our theater.
How? India is nowhere in wall street no? How can we beat the Chinese? The should have crushed us with Doklas no?

First you say Wall Street CEOs should rule India. Then you say that wall street worked well for China. Then you claim that India could have beaten China without those wall street CEOs or success on wall st. This is ludicrous rubbish. You are just typing stuff furiously for reasons that i suspect have nothing to do with contributing to this thread.
chola
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by chola »

shiv wrote:
chola wrote: Cheen can't fight so they skipped war for five decades because the numbers didn't work for them in the fight arena. We could have brought war to them and crushed them in our theater.
How? India is nowhere in wall street no? How can we beat the Chinese? The should have crushed us with Doklas no? You are making even less sense with your wall street psycho prattle.
Nope just numbers, numbers, numbers. Unlike the psycho-babble that you advocate.

It's the concept of hard-nose research and cranking of numbers on a situation to predict the likelihood of outcomes. It is how American entities in business and its military win most of the time. The NRIs at the top of these American entities know how to win this way too 8)

We outnumber the PLA 20 to 1 along the LAC, the outcome was fabulously good that we would have won a border war with Cheen.

Don't try to equate bullshit pseudo-science like psychology and propaganda (that YOU advocate) with strategies that make real money and make real changes on the ground.
shiv
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by shiv »

chola wrote: Nope just numbers, numbers, numbers. Unlike the psycho-babble that you advocate.
Believing this is also psychobabble
chola wrote:Don't try to equate..blah blah
There there there. I though you had given up trying to advise me what to do. You won't stop will you? Maybe you are building up numbers numbers numbers and think that will change anything? :rotfl:
chola
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by chola »

shiv wrote:
chola wrote: Nope just numbers, numbers, numbers. Unlike the psycho-babble that you advocate.
Believing this is also psychobabble
chola wrote:Don't try to equate..blah blah
There there there. I though you had given up trying to advise me what to do. You won't stop will you? Maybe you are building up numbers numbers numbers and think that will change anything? :rotfl:
Nope, just countering that research and numbers have nothing in common with your psychological bull manure.
Suraj
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by Suraj »

Mod Note

No more of this folks. Please move on. Anything further directed at one another will be deleted.
Vishnu
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by Vishnu »

A quick response to some of the feedback here on the shows I co-anchored in recently at CGTN headquarters, Beijing. There two shows I co-anchored and one show where I was a panelist. I don't have the time to respond to each one of the points raised here other than to say that I refuse to shout down anything. Thats not civilised. I countered the points mentioned by the Chinese anchor as far as I could - and that point was absolutely loud and clear. I was not willing to hijack a show on BRICS to make it an India-China slanging match. Similarly, in the other show which I co-anchored, I clearly and categorically stood up to the Chinese anchor when he attempted to prevent me from answering my questions ... In the end, I did get in my questions and I did get answers as well. Both shows were organised by CGTN. They were free to get whoever they chose. Not all the panelists in the BRICS show were their employees or Indian students at Peking University as someone suggested.
shiv
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by shiv »

cross post
SSridhar wrote:India's way of handling China has just solved the biggest policy puzzle for world powers - Pranab Dhal Samanta, Economic Times
So, is there now an India model to emulate while dealing with a confrontational China? While that would receive some detailed attention in the days ahead, what’s clear is that there were certain distinctive contours to the Indian approach. And while these worked for India, it’s also a fact that they proved effective because of a larger context that continues to weigh heavily on China.

The context is now becoming increasingly embarrassing for China. The North Korean tests, including the missile that was fired over Japanese territory on the day Doklam issue was resolved, underline the weight of that embarrassment.

Terror Has a Capital

The other country pulling down China in a similar manner is Pakistan, which is under fire for sponsorship of terrorism not just by India alone, but by now a growing spectrum of countries. These start with Afghanistan and go on to include countries in West Asia, Europe, and the US, as exemplified in President Donald Trump’s South Asia strategy address.

In short, North Korea and Pakistan are not the best advertisements of friends for a country aspiring global economic leadership. At a time when the US is looking insular as an economic power, China has thrown in its hat to lead the free trade pitch. The Brics, for instance, is a key forum to strengthen this claim. And just then, to have Pyongyang set off a nuclear device doesn’t help matters.

This kind of ‘Notoriety Club’ had a utility for China, but that time may have passed. This is a conclusion only Beijing can make. But it cannot stop other countries drawing their own meanings in their national interest.


It’s in this context that the shrill rhetoric on Doklam did not help. There were very few takers for China’s case, frankly, even before it was articulated. The reason for that being China’s lack of credibility in sub-continental matters, given its own long-term strategic commitment with Pakistan. Further, the tone and content of the official attack did not help either, sending signals that made others equally insecure.

In contrast, India had a more nuanced approach, which can now be fleshed out along few parameters. To begin with, there was a conscious, clear decision to halt Chinese construction activity and stand by Bhutan regardless of how the situation evolved. This was a departure from the past practice to avoid direct confrontation. But this time, the overall military assessment was that China had come too close for comfort.

The initial action was done swiftly. Thereafter, India decided to keep quiet, not aggravate matters. So, New Delhi had, early in the day, recognised the principle that there could be no gain made by humiliating China.

New Delhi followed this edict to the point that it did not allow itself to be provoked by any Chinese humiliation. The next principle at play was that China has much bigger stakes in the international system and the global commons for it to just abandon all of that in favour of military action against a global systems-compliant country and emerging economy like India. That assumption was correct. Which is why China did not cross the Brics deadline.

Cultivation Season

And, finally, it was assessed that in the bigger picture, Beijing’s aspirations require cultivating more positive relations with New Delhi. Which is why the condemnation of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed in the Brics statement is better understood as a rethink in China than a victory for India.

The Doklam handling tells us that there’s indeed an effective way to talk tough issues with China, and not by giving in or speaking out, but by showing up and conversing relentlessly to find convergences. China, after all, cannot have an ambition at the cost of everyone else.
KLNMurthy
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by KLNMurthy »

shiv wrote:
KrishnaK wrote:China's opinion of India The presenter in the video makes the argument that China downplays Indian military achievements to highlight that China's progress is solely due to the Communist regime. That would make the Chinese paranoid about a democratic India achieving parity. Of course that is bound to raise the question why must the CPC rule China, if a democratic India does as well.
Thanks for posting and perfectly germane to this thread. 11 minutes well spent!
It is interesting to me that the Chinese two-pronged approach--insist India is aggressive and grasping while af the same time downplaying India's power and capbilities--is exactly the line taken by mainline left-leaning media and commentators in India vis-a-vis India-China relationship. "We are trying to punch above our weight, but China is beating us onlee and we are not doing anything about it, because we are like this onlee."

So, either the Chinese propagandu works on Indians also, or the Indians in question are actually Chinese agents.
pankajs
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by pankajs »

The crux is that both countries are of similar size. With US, China could argue to its citizens that China is way too big/complicated to adopt US ways. But a prosperous India is a threat to CCP without even crossing the border! India cannot be explained away by citing size differential or complexity and that is a HUGE problem.

There is always an Indian elephant inside the Chinese/CCP tent. It cannot be explained away nor can it be ignored no matter how hard the Chinese try. Indian success can make the CCP position untenable without India doing anything.
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by panduranghari »

The last 10 post exchange between chola and shiv are text book example of 'how to derail a thread'. What the hell is going on? Shouldn't these 2 posters delete this purile exchange from this thread or should mods do it?
chola
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by chola »

SriJoy wrote:
chola wrote:
And it will fail just as miserably for India if we spend time fvcking with "psychology" and "propaganda" instead of kinetic force. Instead of rolling of rolling into the Tibetan Plateau with our massive advantages in men and aircraft, we need to settle this psychological mumble jumble of giving them face to affect their behavior later? Nothing but mental masturbation because it doesn't affect shit on the ground.
Apologies for barging in. But i don't understand how we have superiority in men ? I thought the PLA is just as big as the IA and overall, better equipped ?
I get that we have air superiority in the Himalayan sector, due to the logistics of taking off from Chengdu/Khotan versus numerous airfields in North India &/ compromised loads from tibet take-offs.
I wrote about this ad infinitum.

The reasons are:
1) geography -- they can't deploy and supply in numbers because Tibet is a high altitude wasteland that is hard to reach and once there hard to maintain,

2) geopolitics -- the strategic area which are core to PRC's survival are concentrated entirely on their east coast and those are facing the US, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam and SoKo. Think about it, that is like if we were facing two PRC-equivalents and three Pakistans on our borders (ready for a "five-front war." Therefore the PLA must concentrate the vast majority of its forces on its east. Losing Doka La or Aksai Hind will not bring down the CCP. Having Taiwan declaring independence without a military response will.

Check the satellite photos. You cannot find bases where crores of men can be housed in Tibet. You cannot find places where there are hundreds of vehicles and aircraft in Tibet.

We own a massive advantage on our borders and in the IOR. That is a fact.


Agree 100%. Also not to forget, Unkil has the most daunting naval force projection of all time- it may not be a cakewalk anymore, but USN can still take on the combined navies of rest of the world- especially if they activate their mothballed carriers and thumpingly win.

However, i must say that while i agree with your principle of 'two forms of power- $$ in peacetime and beat-stick in war-time', i think the main problem with using our beat-stick (where we have the advantage) vs Pakis and Cheenis, is that nobody in the world has figured out yet how to prevent a conventional war between two nuclear powers from going nuclear. We are not gonna be the first ones to find out either and until a war happens between two nuclear-tipped nations that doesn't go nuclear, i suspect, we won't be putting our 'beat stick' to use against China/Pakiland in a 'general war' sense of the word. I suspect, that is the keen interest of non-involved world players in the USA-NoKo slow-boil. to see if we can have a war between two nuclear nations not go nuclear.
We already proved that two nuclear states can fight without going nuclear during Kargil. Cheen fought the USSR when both were nuclear powers.

Unless the survival of one side or the other is at stake, no one is dropping a nuke. If we roll over them along the LAC, retaking everything lost in 1962 and a bit more in defensible positions, it will not result in a general nuclear war. If we took Lhasa and tried to detached Tibet entirely then yes general war would probably declared.

If we are afraid of using our conventional military because of nooks then why have a big conventional military at all?

Hell, the reason we have the NoKo situation today is because Cheen initiated offensive action against a nuclear state and recovered North Korea from US forces without being nuked.

Nations have and will continue to fight conventionally whether there are nooks or not. You just have to be aware of the thresholds.
ricky_v
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by ricky_v »

it is time now to declare the Chinese as the people of the(red) book; the modern day prophet has spoken and the bible-manual has been updated. There are a couple of things tangential to this line of thought;
There are no "Inflaming countries with an American twist" nor "Spreading pakistaniyat lahori style"; pt being there is a division of labour elsewhere(strategist, analyst, mr president....) except china, where the same person can be chairman,president, chief iron birather, dog catcher of Yulin etc.
Secondly, we are witnessing ascension of a person to godhood in legalism awash china; at this point people should be f*kng with him just on the grounds of principle. Five glorious years of opportunities potentially rife with conflicts,natural or forced to deal with a person already a demi god and thirsty for more, should unite a godly amount of people from various regions for a noble cause.
shiv
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by shiv »

Cross post
Julian_Bashir wrote:20 year lurker, first time poster, be kind

Posting in full as subscription required

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https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/i ... 268dbdbd92

We are on the cusp of serious ­debates about the implications for Australia and the whole Asia-Pacific world of the vast increase in Chinese wealth and power this century, not least with the repudiation of political reforms by Xi Jinping and his assumption of indefinite and all but absolute power. For those debates to be conducted intelligently and productively, it is vital that we think about China in a clear-headed manner.

Unfortunately, the field is cluttered with myths about China, sedulously propagated by the Chinese Communist Party, which hamper debate. Here are seven that need dismantling to clear the field.

Myth 1: China is simply resuming its “natural” position as the world’s greatest power after an anomalous 200-year “blip” of Western industrial and technological primacy.

The kernel of truth to this often-claimed position is that when all countries were agrarian and China had the world’s largest population (by far), it naturally had the world’s largest economy in gross size. This is uncontroversial and trivially true.

However, at no point did this make the Chinese empire the world’s “greatest power”. It was simply, in its better eras, one among several states around the world, such as the Roman, Persian and Islamic empires, that disposed of considerable power. Like them, however, it was a regional power, not a global one in any meaningful sense.

Even the short-lived but powerfully expansionist T’ang dynasty (649-907) was militarily defeated by the Korean state of Silla in 676 and by the Abbasid Arabs, allied with the independent Tibetans, in 751, giving the Muslims dominance in Central Asia for 400 years — until the Mongols came.

More important, during the past 2000 or 3000 years, “China” frequently has been ­fragmented into many ­independent states or ruled in whole or part by foreign bar­barians, such as the Khitan (907-1125), the Mongols (1271-1368) or the Manchus (1644-1912).

The Mongols were a huge Eurasian power but their empire was not “China”; it simply included China.

The Ming dynasty was vastly smaller and did not include Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet or Central Asia.

No dynasty before the Manchus ever ruled Taiwan and they only very briefly. The Manchus were resented foreign overlords whom Chinese nationalists longed to overthrow and finally did, in 1912. But the Manchus added Mongolia, Inner and Outer, as well as Manchuria itself, Xinjiang, Qinghai and Tibet to the “Chinese” empire. Chinese nationalists then aspired to make the whole Manchu Empire into the nation-state of China, only to see it fragment again into war lord states and independent states such as Tibet (under foreign influence) in the 1910s and 20s.

So when someone claims that China’s present aspirations are simply the resumption of its “natural” and perennial status, cough politely and point out that this is a serious misreading of the history of the past 2000 years and more. What is happening right now may be compared loosely with the rise of the T’ang dynasty in the 7th century. It is to be hoped that it does not come to resemble the rise of the aggressive Qin dynasty in the 3rd century BC, or that of the Mongol Empire in Eurasia in the 13th century AD.

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Myth 2: China’s strategic culture is non-expansionist and pacifist, and this makes it different from the colonialist and imperialist West.

This, too, is an illusion based on a slender and beguiling truth. The truth is that never, except for a brief flurry of exploratory voyaging in the early 15th century, has China — until now — been a significant naval power.

The Mongols twice (1267 and 1274) built armadas and attempted to invade Japan, only to see their fleets annihilated by typhoons, which the Japanese dubbed kamikaze — the divine wind.

The idea of “China” and its name derive from the warring state of Qin which, in the 3rd century BC, conquered all other states in the Han world (the north­eastern provinces of what is China now) in a series of ruthless wars to “unite all under Heaven”. The endgame in this vast imperial ­project is beautifully dramatised in Chen Kaige’s 1998 film The Emperor and the Assassin.

Before that, for centuries “China” had consisted of numerous states that fought fiercely and often. Subsequent to that, the Han were expansionist until overrun by the Hsiungnu, the eastern equivalent of the Huns. The T’ang were expansionist and even the Ming, famous for their delicate porcelain works, were ­aggressive whenever their resources made them feel energetic.

As Alastair Iain Johnston showed in his classic study, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (1995), the Ming chastised their northern neighbours when they could and otherwise appeased them. This shouldn’t surprise us but Johnston undertook the study to test — in the case of one of the more introverted Chinese dynasties — whether the evidence supported or undermined the ­notion that Chinese strategic culture was especially pacifist or wise. It hasn’t been, and it isn’t.

Xiaoming Zhang’s recent book Deng Xiaoping’s Long War: The Military Conflict Between China and Vietnam 1979-1991 (2015) is a most illuminating study of Chinese strategic culture under one of its most astute and ruthless leaders when decades of Maoism had seriously hampered the country’s modernisation and left its military in a dilapidated condition.

In February 1979, despite China’s condition and despite his own explicit emphasis on economic modernisation ahead of military spending, Deng Xiaoping went to war against a communist neighbour and did so “to teach it a lesson it would not soon forget”. Xi has far greater military power at his disposal than Deng ever had and has clearly set some strategic priorities.

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Myth 3: Chinese elites have a wise, long-term view of the world — a mandarin view, as it were.

The beguiled like to allude to Zhou Enlai, the pre-eminent Maoist mandarin, as characteristic in this respect. But regardless of the merits of Zhou, it is always dangerous to take an exception as demonstrating a rule. If Chinese elites are culturally given to far-sightedness and wisdom, how is it Chinese empires have again and again lapsed into decay, fallen apart or been conquered by foreign barbarians?

If modern Chinese elites had inherited such powers, how was it they failed in the 1910s to build a ­viable republic, failed to prevent a communist victory, fell before or fell in line with Mao Zedong and ended up, as China scholar Pierre Ryckmans wrote in 1984, killing “more innocent Chinese citizens in 25 years of peace than had the combined forces of all foreign ­imperialists in 100 years of endemic ­aggression”?

Right now, the performance of the Chinese Communist Party looks formidable. But we should not succumb to the notion that the Chinese are somehow culturally ­superior and more given to far-sightedness than the rest of us. They are human, all too human, and as prone to errors, miscalculations, cognitive biases and hubris as the rest of us. We should think of them and dialogue with them with this firmly in mind.

Posters of Mao Zedong, left, and the Chinese President at a Beijing market last month. Picture: AFP
Posters of Mao Zedong, left, and the Chinese President at a Beijing market last month. Picture: AFP
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Myth 4: China’s current borders — and even its extraterritorial claims, such as those in the South China Sea — date back to “ancient times”.

The authorities in Beijing like to claim, for instance, that Tibet, Taiwan or the South China Sea have “always” been part of “Chinese territory”. This is complete nonsense.

It is nonsense for two reasons. To begin with, it is simply untrue to say that China’s borders have been fixed in place for any length of time since, say, the era of the warring states between the 6th and 3rd centuries BC. Second, very large swathes of them, as pointed out above, were annexed to a Beijing-based regime by the foreign Manchus (the Qing dynasty) only in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Taiwan, for example, was declared a part of the Manchu ­Empire in 1885, without the consent of its native inhabitants — only to be ceded in perpetuity to Japan in 1895. The Japanese ruled the island with great effectiveness for 50 years, far longer than the Manchus had done, and ­dev­eloped it into a thriving colony, whose inhabitants rebelled against the imposition of Chinese Nationalist rule (from 1945) in 1947.

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Myth 5: Chinese mariners sailed all around the world long before Europeans, discovering the Americas and igniting the Italian Renaissance.

This is one of the most far-fetched of the myths about China that has been circulating in recent years, in particular in Gavin Menzies’s book-length fantasy. No serious scholar gives any credence to this confabulation but former president Hu Jintao tipped his hat to it when addressing the Australian parliament in 2003.

Hu stated: “Back in the 1420s, the expeditionary fleets of China’s Ming Dynasty reached Australian shores. For centuries the Chinese sailed across vast seas and settled down in what they called Southern Land, or today’s Australia. They brought Chinese culture to this land and lived harmoniously with the local people, contributing their proud share to Australia’s economy, society and its thriving pluralistic culture.”

These statements are entirely without historical foundation. It is disturbing, at a time of extensive Chinese territorial claims, that a senior Chinese leader would make them. They should not be indulged or given any credence.

Menzies took up the well-­authenticated fact that Ming fleets sailed via the South China Sea and the Arabian Sea to the coasts of East Africa in a series of expeditions that reached as far as Jeddah in Arabia and Mogadishu in ­Somalia. Between 1405 and 1433 there were seven such expeditions, under admiral Zheng He. Under the boy emperor Zhengtong, however, these exploratory voyages were ended abruptly, so that the threatened Ming could concentrate their resources on fighting off the Mongols in the north.

Zhengtong was taken prisoner by Esan Khan’s Mongols at the age of 22 and held for eight years. ­Released at the age of 30, he ruled until he was 40 and died young. During his reign, the Ming turned inwards, mentally and physically walling themselves off from the external world. They were far from being its dominant power.

It was under the Ming that the famous Great Wall of China was built — not under the Qin long ­before, as so often stated. As ­Arthur Waldron’s classic study, The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth (Cambridge University Press, 1992), makes clear, there had been bits and pieces of ephemeral mud-brick wall in early eras, but the Ming alone built a continuous stone barrier — one that must be the envy of Donald Trump — out of weakness and ­defen­siveness, only to have it breached by the Manchus soon after it was completed. The Manchus then conquered the Ming.

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Myth 6: The Chinese Communist Party has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in the past 30 years

This needs to be put in clear ­perspective. It credits the party with something that, by and large, the Chinese people, unshackled from communism, have done for themselves.

The Communist Party kept China poor and oppressed for 30 years under Mao and inflicted enormous human and cultural damage on it. Then it opened up progressively to ­market forces and foreign investment, and hundreds of millions of its people lifted themselves out of poverty.

This began in the 1980s, with the peasants being told that, over and above their grain quota for the state, they could grow any other crops they chose and sell them on the open market. Food supplies trebled in short order.

Who lifted whom out of poverty here?

When Deng decided to experiment with special economic zones to bring capital and technology into a China that ­the Maoist autarchy and command economics had left destitute, he reached out to survivors of the old Chinese capitalist elite, many of whom had been on pig farms during the Cultural Revolution. He asked them, in exchange for seed capital, to reach out to their relatives in the diaspora and tell them that China was opening for business again. Within a few years, foreign direct investment began to pour into China.

Who lifted whom out of poverty here?

When China began to get on its feet, the OECD countries worked hard to draw it into the global trading order, including giving it membership in the World Trade Organisation while retaining its status as a ­“developing” nation and before it had privatised its strategic ­industries or financial system, or created a working, open stock exchange. It still has not done these things.

Who has been lifting whom out of poverty here?

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Myth 7: Liberal democracy is incompatible with Chinese culture.

Well, democracy is certainly ­incompatible with the Chinese tradition of centralised imperial rule and it is certainly incompatible with Marxist-Leninist or Maoist totalitarianism.

But we need to remind ourselves that it also would have seemed ­incompatible with the Japanese ­imperial or shogunate system until the late 19th century or with ­Korean culture until the late 20th century. Yet Japan and South Korea now are thriving democratic polities in every meaningful sense of the term.

In important respects, Taiwan is the test case. Systematically developed by Japan between 1895 and 1945, it was taken over by the Chinese ­Nationalists in 1945 and ruled so badly, compared with Japanese colonial rule, that the Taiwanese rebelled. They were crushed by Chinese military forces, many thousands of people were executed and martial law was ­imposed for 40 years.

Peng Ming-min’s classic memoir of dissent, A Taste of Freedom (1972), written while he was in exile, tells the tale of resistance to dictatorship.

In the late 1980s, Chiang Ching-kuo, son of Chiang Kai-shek, opened up the political system in Taiwan and it now has a Democratic Progressive Party president (Tsai Ing-wen) and legislature. Chiang Chin-kuo chose to do precisely what Deng, his old Leninist classmate from the 1920s in Moscow, refused to do on the mainland in those same years.

Chinese culture was not the issue, nor was Leninism an ­insuperable ­obstacle. What was required was political leadership and strategic choice.

Good history has always been about refuting myths and getting realities clearer. Regardless of the propaganda coming out of Beijing, we should apply that principle to our understanding of its history and political culture.

This doesn’t mean being offensive or insensitive. It simply means being informed and putting aside sentimental and ­imperial nonsense about the “Heavenly Kingdom”.

This will be important, if we want to thrive on our own terms in the era of Xi Jinping and his “Chinese Dream”.

Paul Monk is the former head of China analysis for the Defence Intelligence Organisation, the author of Thunder From the Silent Zone: Rethinking China (2005) and seven other books.

paulmonk.com.au
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by sanjaykumar »

The most informative post on China I’ve seen.
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by ArjunPandit »

^^This post needs to be "learned from heart, to fart". I always wondered how chinese escaped the western propaganda like the one that India and hinduism continues to face. Seems like karma is catching up with them fast.
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by Rudradev »

ArjunPandit wrote: I always wondered how chinese escaped the western propaganda like the one that India and hinduism continues to face. .
Rajiv Malhotra writes about this quite extensively in his books Being Different and Breaking India.

The Chinese didn't escape western propaganda but (even before they became one of the world's leading economies) took a proactive role in shaping the western narrative about their country. How did they do it? One word: access.

The CCP ensured that ANY Western scholar or journalist who wanted to write about China could only gain access to China's institutions, universities, museums, historical/archaeological sites, libraries, manuscripts, academia, experts, common people... EVERY single form of first-hand data gathering, if and only if their writing agreed with how China wanted to present its own historical and civilizational narrative. Otherwise, you could not come in, period. You could never rival any other China expert if you didn't have first-hand access; so unless you toed the line your career would never get off the ground.

India of course did the opposite. Our own academic institutions were manned by Irfan Habibs, Romila Thapars etc. who forced upon Indians (within India) the colonialist, orientalist Western narrative of who we are and what our history is. They have enmeshed themselves slavishly with the Donigers, Nussbaums, Witzels, Truschkes etc. whose entire agenda is to repress our indigenous narrative. They actively collaborate with these foreigners to ensure that everything that even Indians (let alone the rest of the world) learn about India is a lie.

Rajiv Malhotra and others argue that India too should follow the Chinese example and control access to India in order to shape the Western narrative about us. This is going OT, but the main point is that the Chinese initiative in regard is something we should admire and take up ourselves, it wasn't by any passive accident that they escaped the institutionalized slander that we have faced and continue to face.
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by ArjunPandit »

^^Thanks RDji. I dont think this is OT (if that matters). In an isolationist sense it is, but considering the similarities (at a very superficial level), the two classic case of good kid bad kid that were in same class
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by chola »

Rajiv Malhotra and others argue that India too should follow the Chinese example and control access to India in order to shape the Western narrative about us.
You would do this only if you had the myopic view that Cheen somehow has a better reputation in the West than India.

As an Amreeki Desi, I can tell you that NOTHING could be FURTHER from the truth. Cheen as a state is disliked in the US to a degree that is unthinkable for India. Now chini culture is more accepted by the general Western public but in three narrow spaces onlee — chinese cuisine, kung fu and chinese women (which also dovetails with white fetish for East Asian women overall.) I will get into the American Anglo-Saxon elite on chini culture later.

The Indian state is not seen as an enemy. Desi males are not seen as spies and desi women are not seen as playthings. We are seen as a free people and a free state. Now the poverty part cannot be helped unless we want to be an authoritarian and hated nation like the PRC and simply block access for academics and tourists.

The PRC is disliked but I have to admit, feared and respected, because of its economy. This is where the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) elite’s view of China comes into play.

The US has always been in the China trade. The great Yankee families of New England made their fortunes in the China trade. The romance of the Clipper Ships sailing to Hong Kong, etc. still resides among the upper American crust. This is why all the great American Universities, incuding Harvard, Yale and Stanford, have leading China Studies departments.

This elite connection to Cheen is business related but is also tied to the Missionary instincts of this American class. Not only do they believed that Cheen is great for yhe business of wealth, it is also great for the business of souls. This elite vision of China is passed on to Wall Street and the American Treasury where we had chini experts like Hank Paulson and chini speaker like Tom Geithner at the highest levels of Amreeki business and finance. The opening up of Cheen since Deng’s era had rekindled this centuries old infactuation with the China trade.

So closing access to India would not create the same emotional bond with the American elite because the history and, frankly, the profits with India are not there. (In the UK, we might have the same impact though Britain is far weaker nation than the US with less impact.)

But for the average American, Cheen is highly disliked save, again, for its food, kung fu and women. So what does acting like an authoritarian state get us?
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by Rudradev »

Yawn. Look at the tone of sheer adulation in American academic writing on China, as opposed to what is taught in US schools and colleges regarding Indian civilization. Look at the fawning reportage that China receives in the mainstream US media as opposed to the usual contempt and derision that India habitually elicits within those very same circles.

"Average American" anecdotes are of zero relevance because to the "Average American" the outside world is of zero relevance. They may think whatever they want about Cheeni vs. Desi wimmens but vote only on the issues that directly and parochially impact them.
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by shiv »

Rudradev wrote:Yawn. Look at the tone of sheer adulation in American academic writing on China, as opposed to what is taught in US schools and colleges regarding Indian civilization. Look at the fawning reportage that China receives in the mainstream US media as opposed to the usual contempt and derision that India habitually elicits within those very same circles.

"Average American" anecdotes are of zero relevance because to the "Average American" the outside world is of zero relevance. They may think whatever they want about Cheeni vs. Desi wimmens but vote only on the issues that directly and parochially impact them.
Dead right - the west shows great respect for China and we Indians follow that lead.

Let me ask this:

When we hear of a Chinese warship fleet simply crossing the Sunda strait to enter the Indian ocean and panic that China is about to screw us - why do we go all quiet rather than mock Chinese cowardice when they turn back?

We, as a nation, have a fundamental fear of China that the Chinese utilize against us to great effect

Partly that fear is a result of 1962. And partly what the west tells us to believe
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by ArjunPandit »

shiv wrote: When we hear of a Chinese warship fleet simply crossing the Sunda strait to enter the Indian ocean and panic that China is about to screw us - why do we go all quiet rather than mock Chinese cowardice when they turn back?

We, as a nation, have a fundamental fear of China that the Chinese utilize against us to great effect

Partly that fear is a result of 1962. And partly what the west tells us to believe
Exactly, post dhoklam a chinese poster and I were trolling each other and one of the genius retorted that Indians left Doklam because they did not have enough food. When asked to support he did not have anything to show. In a sense they are truly iron brothel(r)s of pakis
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by chola »

Rudradev wrote:Yawn. Look at the tone of sheer adulation in American academic writing on China, as opposed to what is taught in US schools and colleges regarding Indian civilization. Look at the fawning reportage that China receives in the mainstream US media as opposed to the usual contempt and derision that India habitually elicits within those very same circles.
Really, Saar? Please find 10 “contemptuous” western academic or mainstream articles (not some internet troll) on India and I’ll do the same for Cheen.

I will have FAR easier time.
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by chola »

chola wrote:
Rudradev wrote:Yawn. Look at the tone of sheer adulation in American academic writing on China, as opposed to what is taught in US schools and colleges regarding Indian civilization. Look at the fawning reportage that China receives in the mainstream US media as opposed to the usual contempt and derision that India habitually elicits within those very same circles.
Really, Saar? Please find 10 “contemptuous” western academic or mainstream articles (not some internet troll) on India and I’ll do the same for Cheen.

I will have FAR easier time.
Here is my contribution in 15 minutes of googling. Western, especially Amreeki, hate and dislike for Cheen is far greater than any similar feeling for India.

1. https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Collapse- ... 0812977564

2. http://deathbychina.com/ Author Peter Navaro is a President Trump Cabinet member

3. China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants
https://www.engadget.com/amp/2018/02/22 ... ch-spread/

4. http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/02/28/a-s ... gulag/amp/

5. http://www.lifenews.com/2017/08/22/chin ... -children/

6. https://dailyreckoning.com/chinas-comin ... -meltdown/

7. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/04/b ... -cars.html

8. US would go into any war with China with 'unparalleled violence'http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 61821.html

9. Photographer documents the plight of China's left-behind kidshttps://www.cnn.com/2018/02/04/health/c ... index.html

10. http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-bu ... rica-24536
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by Rudradev »

chola wrote:
Rudradev wrote:Yawn. Look at the tone of sheer adulation in American academic writing on China, as opposed to what is taught in US schools and colleges regarding Indian civilization. Look at the fawning reportage that China receives in the mainstream US media as opposed to the usual contempt and derision that India habitually elicits within those very same circles.
Really, Saar? Please find 10 “contemptuous” western academic or mainstream articles (not some internet troll) on India and I’ll do the same for Cheen.

I will have FAR easier time.
I don't need to post links, saar. There are whole books on the subject with a wealth of research behind them.

Read
"Breaking India"
"Being Different"
"Academic Hinduphobia"
"The Battle for Sanskrit"

by Rajiv Malhotra. He has been documenting this for decades.

Here are some of his youtube links

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 19D3pt-Z8D

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... qZrQl18QKN

"Rearming Hinduism" by Vamsee Juluri is another prolific resource.

As far as the media is concerned, I can point to specific journalists in the mainstream US media over generations. Pamela Constable, Barbara Crossette, Eric Margolis, Celia Dugger, John F Burns, Gardiner Harris, Annie Gowen to name just a few. Google them and you'll find plenty more than 15 contemptuous and condescending articles each.
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by chola »

Rudradev wrote:
chola wrote:
Really, Saar? Please find 10 “contemptuous” western academic or mainstream articles (not some internet troll) on India and I’ll do the same for Cheen.

I will have FAR easier time.
Read
"Breaking India"
"Being Different"
"Academic Hinduphobia"

by Rajiv Malhotra. He has been documenting this for decades, and not via randomly googled links either.

Here are some of his youtube links

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 19D3pt-Z8D

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... qZrQl18QKN

As far as the media is concerned, I can name specific journalists in the mainstream US media over generations. Pamela Constable, Barbara Crossette, Eric Margolis, Gardiner Harris, Annie Gowen are just a few. Google them and you'll find more than 15 contemptuous and condescending articles each.
Saar, I have read Malhotra and suffice it to say that he has his own way of looking at caste and to be perfectly honest it was similar to mine own — until I grew up and finally understood why my own parents ended up college-educated leftists.

Anyways, I dare say there are NO “contemptuous” work against Indians on the same level of importance and impact as Gordon Chang’s “Collapse” which graced the desks of every Wall Street chief as required reading or Peter Navarro’s “Death By China” which brought the author all the way to top trade advisor in the President’s Cabinet.
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by Rudradev »

I understand your urge to push this discussion further and further OT because your initial assertion has been exposed as flimsy. What Rajiv Malhotra or you may think of "caste" has nothing to do with the relative academic and journalistic treatment of India vs. China (which is not a matter of opinion, but thoroughly documented fact).

I mean, seriously? The "Aryan Invasion Theory" is still peddled in US schools and universities as historical fact. So is the notion that India never existed as a nation until the British unified it through conquest. By contrast, it's a rare piece of writing (like the Paul Monk article above) that questions the idea that all Chinese are Han, that China has a virtually unbroken historical continuum of nation-state identity and central rule from the earliest imperial times to the present. Whose narrative is winning?

In terms of relative magnitude in policy influence, I will see your Gordon Chang and Peter Navarro, and raise you a Henry Kissinger, Zbignew Brzezinski, Madeline Albright, Joe Biden, John Kerry or Hillary Clinton (take your pick).
Last edited by Rudradev on 07 Mar 2018 01:43, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by chola »

Please, your paranoia about the West is flimsy. Especially compared to Cheen. Maybe Malhotra has a point viv a vis other gora nations compared to India. But not Cheen.

China is far more disliked by the West than India by a wide margin. Why is this even a debate about this? Is Cheen getting C-17s, F404s and Apaches from the US? Or are we? Cheen gets the pointy end of the US military across their entire seaboard that’s what they get.
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by shiv »

chola wrote: China is far more disliked by the West than India by a wide margin. Why is this even a debate about this? Is Cheen getting C-17s, F404s and Apaches from the US? Or are we? Cheen gets the pointy end of the US military across their entire seaboard that’s what they get.
This is a remarkably blinkered and short term view and if I may say so - a pointless effort at trying to prove that the US loves India more than China simply to belabor a point and say "When I say something I am right". As we all know this is a game that two can play leading to endless "Yes I'm right" "No you're wrong" arguments. All it needs is someone to be willing to play that game - as I often do myself.

The US's record in "loving India" is pathetic. The US has been inimical to India right from the mid-1960s to the 1990s. India wanted C-130s in the 1960s. We got them 50 years later after the US slobbered after China and allowed them to pass nukes to Pakistan with the US President, no less, lying to his senate. Some love. I have been informed by Indian US lovers on BRF time and again that the US only has interests, and no permanent friends and enemies and here I am being exposed to some mysterious romantic fiction about the US loving India forever. These are things that have been discussed at length in other threads and are not relevant to this thread - and I think this idiocy of "US loves India more and loves China less" is an argument that really should stop right now.
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by chola »

and here I am being exposed to some mysterious romantic fiction about the US loving India forever.
Complete strawman. No one said US loves India forever. All I said is the US hates Cheen and that the US does not hate India hence we get the C-17, F404 and Apache.

I also said the suggestion that India can “improve” its reputation by acting like Cheen — restricting access, harassing the press, etc. — is shear stupidity because China’s reputation is shit in the US and I do not want India with the same kind of reputation.
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by Rudradev »

Finally the crux of the matter makes itself known.

Forget doing what is actually to India's benefit... the overriding priority for some folks is maintaining the right reputation for India in the eyes of the World's Greatest Hypocrisy. :roll:
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by Mukesh.Kumar »

Rudra saar, Chola saar, why are we talking of love and hate in this age of Tinder? The only person the US or Cheen love is themselves. So should India. Rest its all about possible bedfellows for the night. Right Swipe, Left Swipe.
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by Rudradev »

I'm not talking of "like", "love", "hate" etc. at all. These simple-minded emoticon placeholders, please note, have zero relevance as far as I am concerned. Please go through my posts again if you have any doubt on this.

I have referred to recorded, well-documented attack strategies adopted over decades by US media and academia against Indian civilization and grand-narrative building in a very systematic way. Such efforts are far too organized, too large-scale and long-term to be the result of mere emotional appeal. A lot of research and cold, rational thought has gone into developing and implementing them, then maintaining and even improving them with the onset of the information age. Large organizations don't embark on such initiatives because they "feel like it".

If someone else conflates a project of this magnitude with the trivial prejudices of joe and jen sixpack shared over a few too many beers at a backyard barbecue, I can hardly help that.
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by ricky_v »

cannot find the right thread for this one,published in 1930 by a westerner on the societal norms prevailing at the time, the entire book is there as far as i am aware. Should be taken in the context in isolation to "racism" and western attitudes towards the enemy.
https://archive.org/details/waysthatare ... ls/page/14
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by ramana »

In light of PRC honoring their soldiers killed during Galwan clashes time to revive this topic
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Re: Roots of Chinese boastfulness - history & psyche

Post by wig »

https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/ge ... cdc7&ei=14
Geological Disaster': Experts As Thousands Evacuated In China After Cracks Appear Near High-Rises
Tianjin, china = drilling of geothermal wells appears to be resulting in land cracks and high rise buildings needing to be evacuated,
geological experts said they were likely caused by underground cavities below a depth of 1,300 m (4,270 feet)
The land subsidence forced the authorities to rescue as many as 3,899 residents from at least three 25-storey high-rise buildings till June 3, state-backed Global Times quoted the district government as saying.

As per Reuters, following preliminary information from geological experts and several government departments, the Tianjin government called the incident a "sudden geological disaster". The experts surveyed, mapped and monitored the site.

"The situation is very rare," according to an expert questioned about the incident at the Tianjin government municipal headquarters, as quoted by Reuters. It added that the Tianjin government said that drilling of geothermal wells resulting in soil loss and land subsidence in the area cannot be ruled out.
preumably the oversight body is being proactive
Reuters reported that the Chinese government recently held several high-level meetings on geological and hidden disaster preparation.

Meanwhile, as per Global Times, the experts emphasised the need to strengthen monitoring of the ground and buildings to prevent secondary disasters and conduct further investigation.
Moderators, this should in "China bositive news " thread. but i was unable to locate the thread.
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