It felt to me that Adam's position as the 'relative outsider' on China liberates him from a certain baggage that those of us firmly in the China circle can't avoid. Adam's formidable intellect and objectivity as a tangential expert almost forces him to describe China's significance as it is without qualifiers. It's like a parent of a child prodigy being shy of fully recognizing and admitting the child's true capability.
This is why I thought the episode was such a significant one and I'm glad it seems like that sentiment is shared with you. Excited to see where Sinica will go from here!
Earlier this year you were discussing Joseph Levenson's Confucian China and its Modern Fate, the part that always strikes, about how Confucianism wasn't a thing in China, it was everything, so no one even thought to defend or define it. And how you tell when it was that Confucianism was on its way out -- when people like Zhu Xi began to define and defend it.
We here in the west are at a similar inflection point now. I think this is one reason for the taboo on speaking openly about what China's transformation means. Careers might be at risk, or unpleasant disagreements among friends and family might arise.
For myself, I remember the moment I realized what was likely to happen with China. It was 1983 and I was at the National Palace Museum in Taibei. On display, I saw a whole river boat scene carved in exquisite detail from a single apricot pit. On the mainland that year on a hard sleeper ride from Nanjing to Chengdu, the whole train was alive with the spirit of enterprise -- people talking and comparing ways they could make money.
I almost felt like Mao must've felt when he realized that, "In a very short time, in China's central, southern and northern provinces, several hundred million peasants will rise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back. They will smash all the trammels that bind them and rush forward along the road to liberation."
So, I think one aspect of this transformation is to understand why and how it has happened. Adam Tooze's and David Wallace-Wells' hopes for the world aside, China didn't do it to be a shining example to the rest of the world in terms of energy economy/efficiency or climate activism. Poverty. Desperate poverty. Political humiliation and near-total devastation. Being on the brink of losing your sovereignty. Facing the world alone when the world would carve you up and send you down a path of endless servitude. Looking back at all your people's own achievements and being able to see, taste, feel total collapse, as your own people would cannibalize themselves, as human dignity was nowhere to be found. We don't need to quote ancient poets or texts. Our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents ate a lot of bitterness along this path. Their stories - by the millions - some have been told, most remain untold - especially to Westerners. They trained, they toiled, they sacrificed. My parents, your parents, their parents, their parents' parents - they knew their people were behind the 8-ball. China was missing Science, missing a lot of political and institutional infrastructure. They ate cans of soup or nothing but bean sprouts and rice, and hit the books. They studied, they collaborated. They shared. I get that people like Adam Tooze might be a bit surprised. Thankfully, he is not resentful about it and is in a position to characterize much of its resulting meaning all so eloquently. We need his voice, his brilliant contextualization amidst the modern Western example. Someone like Wallace-Wells is, no doubt, excited - cheering China on and can put political/cultural judgments aside on behalf of the planet. Because he deeply cares about what is happening to Mother Earth (as we all should). But China has a very long history of engineering and innovation. The period of modern bitterness and humiliation is... maybe just passing, like so many periods of China's long history. But in this time, we the living know what happened. Our parents, our grandparents - they did the doing. Chinatowns across the planet are full of diaspora Benevolent Societies that sent money back to build schools, bridges, rebuild a road here, there, all over. The early days of industrialization/urbanization and parents didn't live with their children anymore. Adolescents so alienated from their own parents because they were not raised by them. Young people journeyed out into the world at such a young age, not knowing if they would ever see their own parents again, to go learn what needed to be learned, to learn Science, to hope someday to take it back to help people. Grandparents and great grandparents - doing their part, trying to educate girls, undoing the foot-binding, embracing "modernization/Westernization"... Everywhere, there has been sacrifice, tiny steps of progress to make things better for their children. Maybe it's fear of the Red Scare kind of persecution that drives the reluctance to name all this. I get it. But all the more reason to stand up and say, "Hey, buddy - we/they didn't do it for you. They did it for themselves, to save their own selves. Their suffering drove them." Let's honor their toil. My father and his colleagues talked about solutions for flooding and its related questions of more efficient water utilization not just for planet, but to save lives. They talked about better sewage systems to replace the dig-a-hole-and-bury method, to stop spreading disease. They needed faster ways to build high-rises and build them safely because so many people lived in something akin to cement block garages. It was really that basic. But once they trained, then like any human brain, the fire's been lit, they're off to the races. (America and the West did it, too, but today, so much less investment in people...) I don't think it's all wonder about "authoritarian" systems and the politics of the CCP. You've gotta look at the real history - the real conditions that people faced - and understand their basic motivations. The CCP made a lot of mistakes - Cultural Revolution, famine, and some really bad pot-making, for example... Despite the tragedies, somebody seems to have learned something for the next round. Prior to that was the long trail of other tragedies, failed efforts by the KMT, constant invasion by the Japanese, their false promises, overthrowing their own imperial gov't, the very bitter civil war(s), everyone with different ideas about how to create change... Beyond the glorious metrics of Tooze/Wallace-Wells' concern was the everyday desire to do better for your children, to sacrifice for your children. It's been kind of a collective madness on this front. Because, to be honest, they often weren't such great parents. All of them. Lots of them. Generational trauma has been driving this, too. The road to this current magnificence is littered with tragedy, mental illness, broken families, failed gambits, heartbreak...sacrifice. And could it be lost? As China's own history tells, yes. Complacency/paranoia from leadership, elites not caring more about power than the laobaixing, bad actors who would always poison the Common Good for their own selfish, narcissistic aims - it can all be undone. So, I don't think the unease on your front is unwarranted. When you know the real backstory, you know today all came from paying a very, very heavy, high price.
I just read this essay, after having coincidentally listened to the Adam Tooze podcast back-to-back with a Bulwark podcast with David Wallace-Wells. They are perfect companions on the topic of how we should see China and the world through the lens of the green tech revolution that is upon us. Here's a link for anyone interested:
Kaiser, as a longtime follower of China (dating back to my time as a student there in the mid-80's) I cannot agree more with or thank you enough for your insights into how we need to view China by recognizing the magnitude of its transformation and what an impact that has had on the world. I, too, am guilty of failing to adequately adjust my views on China, many of which were formed when it was a much different place.
In trying to articulate my reaction to all of this I stumbled across a 2023 Phrase of the Week post from your China Project site referencing the idiom "一叶蔽目，不见太山." "Be blinded by a single leaf and not see Mount Tai." On the surface, this idiom approximates the English phrase "To miss the forest for the trees" but I think the historical backstory to the idiom captures the fuller extent of what we are talking about. Here is the post's brief but apt summary of the idiom's origin:
It first appears in “The Falcon Crown: Heaven’s Will” (鹖冠子·天则 hé guān zǐ tiān zé). It’s a parable that dates back to the Three Kingdoms period in Chinese history (AD 220–280). The parable tells the story of a poor scholar who read that a mantis could hide behind a leaf to prey on cicadas. He went to find the magic leaf so he could become invisible. One day, he thought he found that leaf, so he used it to cover his eyes and started to steal others’ belongings, thinking no one could see him. Of course, everyone could see him and he was immediately caught.
So not only do we distort our perceptions and observations of China, but we do so perhaps willfully, perhaps preposterously, and all to our peril. To me, there's an "Emperor has no clothes" aspect to all of this that cannot be ignored. Of course, I do not wish to put these darker, complex motivations on you, Kaiser, or anyone else, but I have to face them when analyzing the errors in my own views.
Anyways, thank you again. And I vote yes to a summer gathering in Shaxi to exchange views on all of this. Count me in.
It felt to me that Adam's position as the 'relative outsider' on China liberates him from a certain baggage that those of us firmly in the China circle can't avoid. Adam's formidable intellect and objectivity as a tangential expert almost forces him to describe China's significance as it is without qualifiers. It's like a parent of a child prodigy being shy of fully recognizing and admitting the child's true capability.
This is why I thought the episode was such a significant one and I'm glad it seems like that sentiment is shared with you. Excited to see where Sinica will go from here!
Earlier this year you were discussing Joseph Levenson's Confucian China and its Modern Fate, the part that always strikes, about how Confucianism wasn't a thing in China, it was everything, so no one even thought to defend or define it. And how you tell when it was that Confucianism was on its way out -- when people like Zhu Xi began to define and defend it.
We here in the west are at a similar inflection point now. I think this is one reason for the taboo on speaking openly about what China's transformation means. Careers might be at risk, or unpleasant disagreements among friends and family might arise.
For myself, I remember the moment I realized what was likely to happen with China. It was 1983 and I was at the National Palace Museum in Taibei. On display, I saw a whole river boat scene carved in exquisite detail from a single apricot pit. On the mainland that year on a hard sleeper ride from Nanjing to Chengdu, the whole train was alive with the spirit of enterprise -- people talking and comparing ways they could make money.
I almost felt like Mao must've felt when he realized that, "In a very short time, in China's central, southern and northern provinces, several hundred million peasants will rise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back. They will smash all the trammels that bind them and rush forward along the road to liberation."
Great post Kaiser. I am a little confused on what exactly is the "the thing" that we still can’t say (or do). Is it -
1.) to admit that the center of gravity has already shifted
2.) to accept the implications of a world that no longer orbits the same cultural or institutional center.
3.) to let go that that liberal democratic capitalism, though battered, still sets the normative horizon.
4.) to find the language to reckon with it.
5.) all of the above
So, I think one aspect of this transformation is to understand why and how it has happened. Adam Tooze's and David Wallace-Wells' hopes for the world aside, China didn't do it to be a shining example to the rest of the world in terms of energy economy/efficiency or climate activism. Poverty. Desperate poverty. Political humiliation and near-total devastation. Being on the brink of losing your sovereignty. Facing the world alone when the world would carve you up and send you down a path of endless servitude. Looking back at all your people's own achievements and being able to see, taste, feel total collapse, as your own people would cannibalize themselves, as human dignity was nowhere to be found. We don't need to quote ancient poets or texts. Our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents ate a lot of bitterness along this path. Their stories - by the millions - some have been told, most remain untold - especially to Westerners. They trained, they toiled, they sacrificed. My parents, your parents, their parents, their parents' parents - they knew their people were behind the 8-ball. China was missing Science, missing a lot of political and institutional infrastructure. They ate cans of soup or nothing but bean sprouts and rice, and hit the books. They studied, they collaborated. They shared. I get that people like Adam Tooze might be a bit surprised. Thankfully, he is not resentful about it and is in a position to characterize much of its resulting meaning all so eloquently. We need his voice, his brilliant contextualization amidst the modern Western example. Someone like Wallace-Wells is, no doubt, excited - cheering China on and can put political/cultural judgments aside on behalf of the planet. Because he deeply cares about what is happening to Mother Earth (as we all should). But China has a very long history of engineering and innovation. The period of modern bitterness and humiliation is... maybe just passing, like so many periods of China's long history. But in this time, we the living know what happened. Our parents, our grandparents - they did the doing. Chinatowns across the planet are full of diaspora Benevolent Societies that sent money back to build schools, bridges, rebuild a road here, there, all over. The early days of industrialization/urbanization and parents didn't live with their children anymore. Adolescents so alienated from their own parents because they were not raised by them. Young people journeyed out into the world at such a young age, not knowing if they would ever see their own parents again, to go learn what needed to be learned, to learn Science, to hope someday to take it back to help people. Grandparents and great grandparents - doing their part, trying to educate girls, undoing the foot-binding, embracing "modernization/Westernization"... Everywhere, there has been sacrifice, tiny steps of progress to make things better for their children. Maybe it's fear of the Red Scare kind of persecution that drives the reluctance to name all this. I get it. But all the more reason to stand up and say, "Hey, buddy - we/they didn't do it for you. They did it for themselves, to save their own selves. Their suffering drove them." Let's honor their toil. My father and his colleagues talked about solutions for flooding and its related questions of more efficient water utilization not just for planet, but to save lives. They talked about better sewage systems to replace the dig-a-hole-and-bury method, to stop spreading disease. They needed faster ways to build high-rises and build them safely because so many people lived in something akin to cement block garages. It was really that basic. But once they trained, then like any human brain, the fire's been lit, they're off to the races. (America and the West did it, too, but today, so much less investment in people...) I don't think it's all wonder about "authoritarian" systems and the politics of the CCP. You've gotta look at the real history - the real conditions that people faced - and understand their basic motivations. The CCP made a lot of mistakes - Cultural Revolution, famine, and some really bad pot-making, for example... Despite the tragedies, somebody seems to have learned something for the next round. Prior to that was the long trail of other tragedies, failed efforts by the KMT, constant invasion by the Japanese, their false promises, overthrowing their own imperial gov't, the very bitter civil war(s), everyone with different ideas about how to create change... Beyond the glorious metrics of Tooze/Wallace-Wells' concern was the everyday desire to do better for your children, to sacrifice for your children. It's been kind of a collective madness on this front. Because, to be honest, they often weren't such great parents. All of them. Lots of them. Generational trauma has been driving this, too. The road to this current magnificence is littered with tragedy, mental illness, broken families, failed gambits, heartbreak...sacrifice. And could it be lost? As China's own history tells, yes. Complacency/paranoia from leadership, elites not caring more about power than the laobaixing, bad actors who would always poison the Common Good for their own selfish, narcissistic aims - it can all be undone. So, I don't think the unease on your front is unwarranted. When you know the real backstory, you know today all came from paying a very, very heavy, high price.
I just read this essay, after having coincidentally listened to the Adam Tooze podcast back-to-back with a Bulwark podcast with David Wallace-Wells. They are perfect companions on the topic of how we should see China and the world through the lens of the green tech revolution that is upon us. Here's a link for anyone interested:
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/david-wallace-wells-the-us-is-handing
Kaiser, as a longtime follower of China (dating back to my time as a student there in the mid-80's) I cannot agree more with or thank you enough for your insights into how we need to view China by recognizing the magnitude of its transformation and what an impact that has had on the world. I, too, am guilty of failing to adequately adjust my views on China, many of which were formed when it was a much different place.
In trying to articulate my reaction to all of this I stumbled across a 2023 Phrase of the Week post from your China Project site referencing the idiom "一叶蔽目，不见太山." "Be blinded by a single leaf and not see Mount Tai." On the surface, this idiom approximates the English phrase "To miss the forest for the trees" but I think the historical backstory to the idiom captures the fuller extent of what we are talking about. Here is the post's brief but apt summary of the idiom's origin:
It first appears in “The Falcon Crown: Heaven’s Will” (鹖冠子·天则 hé guān zǐ tiān zé). It’s a parable that dates back to the Three Kingdoms period in Chinese history (AD 220–280). The parable tells the story of a poor scholar who read that a mantis could hide behind a leaf to prey on cicadas. He went to find the magic leaf so he could become invisible. One day, he thought he found that leaf, so he used it to cover his eyes and started to steal others’ belongings, thinking no one could see him. Of course, everyone could see him and he was immediately caught.
So not only do we distort our perceptions and observations of China, but we do so perhaps willfully, perhaps preposterously, and all to our peril. To me, there's an "Emperor has no clothes" aspect to all of this that cannot be ignored. Of course, I do not wish to put these darker, complex motivations on you, Kaiser, or anyone else, but I have to face them when analyzing the errors in my own views.
Anyways, thank you again. And I vote yes to a summer gathering in Shaxi to exchange views on all of this. Count me in.
Great article Kaiser - haven’t listened to the pod, but will tomorrow night. Thanks as always for your insights!
Great article Kaiser. Keep doing it.
Great read! Looking forward to listening to the podcast on my way home tonight 👍