https://insidestory.org.au/reinventing-china/
America is a created nation, so the answer to that question is: of course.
The premise is puzzling. China already exists, so it does not need to be invented.,
If Hayton meant anything by his choice of suggesting that China was an "invention", I suppose he must have meant "reappraising" China.
Who is he suggesting "invented" China? No Chinaman would presume to use such a verb to describe his motherland. It would appear that this grandiose term is used by a Western Man thinking in grandiose terms that the West "invented" China and has the power to "reinvent" it. China is not the intellectual property of the West, it is a nation and an empire. It is the most successful gentile nation in the world if we are to measure success in terms of longevity, territory and the fact that it has an independent foreign policy that does not take orders from Washington.
To the extent that Western ideas had a role in creating modern China, we would have to attribute modern China to the ideas of a self-hating German Jew. Marxism is a Western idea, but the most successful practitioner of Marxism in the world is China since the Soviet Union is no more.
The bureaucratic administrative structure that exists in China's centralised state is but its ancient imperial legacy. After all, China had its war of national unification before the First Emperor, and he died 200 years before even Christ was born.
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China is an intelligent civilization gestalt in perpetual continuum & evolution. It is shaped by global, historical, geographical and political conditions. Due to China’s deep accumulation of lessons from history & strong identity, it learns very quickly to adapt and rise to new challenges, especially those of the past 200 years. While the Qing dynasty started out as a highly successful empire (look at the map, wow!), it deteriorated as the Manchu ruling class rejected the Han Chinese intellectuals efforts to modernize, like Japan did under Meiji. These internal conflicts crippled China’s development for centuries. It’s finally on the right track and took off like a rocket, setting an example for other developing nations to evolve their own models and strategies. Unfortunately, its increasing influence is viewed as threatening by many existing powers.
China has never been so rationally governed in its history. Its one-party state means that its political talent is concentrated only in one party and its politicians are properly trained and assessed unlike the laughable procedures of what passes for Western "democracy". If the West knew what was good for itself, it would have an honest discussion about what has gone wrong, but it does not appear that Western Man is capable of honest speech and clear thinking. If it is not blaming China for having cheated, it is blaming Jews. If it had any shame, it would feel ashamed of itself, but it now a degenerate matriarchy whose moral and political system have failed, determined to remain in denial that its moral and political system have failed.
Agreed, you’re right. Actually the Chinese political system is a complex mix of Meritocracy, representation, selection and election which hasn’t changed in its original form from over 2000 years ago, ie the KeJu system. The top students of colleges from all over China are invited to become party members and assigned positions and tasks. This ensures a wide representation of the best minds regardless of background, ethnicity, gender, etc. The country gets priority over the private sector to ensure good governance. They will eventually rise to the top based on performance. With a population 5x US, elections or universal suffrage will be alien, almost impossibly expensive and subject to corruption. For Chinese, There’re only 2 types of government - Good and Bad. Not Marxist/Socialist/Capitalist/Liberals, etc.😄
It’s badly researched. But it fits today’s political opinions.
Do you mean the political practice of demonising what you find threatening rather than thinking your problems through rationally? Perhaps the West should adopt China's example of governing rationally too.
Yes, in part. It fits the current Western narrative on China’s supposed lack of knowledge concerning the South China Sea, and how Hong Kong is increasingly being viewed as a separate territory without applications of any Chinese sovereignty whatsoever.
This is really sad. After thousands of thousands of year of history of human practice, when very near to its possible self-destruction, why haven’t we waken up so much to enough soon?
Western governments no longer support traditional marriage and treat married parents the same as unmarried parents. There is now a pair of unmarried parents in Downing Street. Apparently, Carrie Symonds, an unmarried mother, was the one who got the British Prime Minister to sack his Brexit advisers. Perhaps she will soon take over, like the Dowager Empress ...
Marxism was a Sabatteann idea was it not?
Marxism will always be attractive when most people are feeling poor. Presumably that is why capitalism has always been focused on creating a strong middle class to prevent any peasant rebellion. However, since the middle classes have been impoverished, a peasants' rebellion becomes increasingly likely. It seems the technocratic new elite think they can manipulate our perception of reality and make us believe in anything while it prepares to warehouse us for extinction.
The oligarchs play the same hand over and over - when will we wake up?
The oligarchy is a political cartel and cartels tend to be corrupt because they would have the tendency to carve up the market between themselves and prevent rivals from entering the market.
In terms of its borders, I would attribute the creation of a Chinese territory to the ‘unequal treaties’, when a number of States aligned China’s borders with their colonies, in effect telling China through the use of international law what it was and could be. When the later conventions are then considered, wording changes, so sovereignty is replaced with suzerainty, downgrading territorial status in respect of China. This was a deliberate process, which I call colonisation of the mind. So creation is a better word than invention, and the effect of colonisation is a better descriptive for what happened and why. Yet somehow in the book that’s all China’s fault, yet it doesn’t correctly describe basic facts, including Britain’s own legal history.
China is hardly Marxist- I believe China selectively and flexibly adopts different ideas that serve its purpose at the moment in time. I think the best description of China’s ideology is Pragmatism or Black/White Cat theory.
The West now believes that Democracy and Intersectional Feminism are its gods. Those like Trump who challenge it are declared deplorable heretics and are cancelled and ignored. China must realise that Western politicians not only lie to everyone, they also lie to themselves. They also have a death wish and should be treated as suffering from dementia. They have no plan other than to react to the loudest voice that shouts at them. Since it is no longer politically correct to blame Jews for everything that goes wrong with their dysfunctional moral and political system, they now assume that China has overtaken the West because it must have cheated.
People feeling poor have been in favor of autocracy, anarchism, distributism and many other things, it’s simplistic to make a correlation for Marxism like that in my opinion.
Revolutions only occur when enough people feel misgoverned and impoverished. Distributism and Marxism falls under the heading of taking the property of the wealthy who have misgoverned them which is fairly typical as regards peasants' revolts. The Boxer Rebellion was caused by a sense of grievance against the government.
Modern China learned and borrowed a lot from modern Japan. From certain political, economical, social ideas and its wording to describing certain new technologies and gadgets - a lot came from Japan. This is no coincidence as many Late Qing Early Republican era intellectuals, artists and scientists studied there. Three thought leaders who come to mind: Liang Qi Chao, Sun Yat Sen and Lu Xun.
In ancient China, the Chinese learned and borrowed a lot from India. Be it ideas, thoughts, religion or philosophy - Indian influence is there.
Why am I bringing this up?
Because the Chinese are actually more Japanese then the Japanese in absorbing the best from the world, neatly re-packages it, fits it in to traditional Chinese world view be it Confucianism or Taoism and makes it her own.
Neo-Confucianism is Buddhism in Confucian clothes. Ch'an is Buddhism in Taoist robes.
The modern Chinese idea of itself, be it a nation, a state, a nation-state, a civilization actually has a lot of Japanese influence. Which, itself, is influenced by German thought.
As the idea or concept of "volk" reaches East Asia, it is almost unrecognizable.
Yet, we can not argue that "China" is a Western concept because no Western political word can describe it.
Japan modernised and cut through China like a hot knife through butter during the Sino-Japanese War. Presumably, it was complacency and incompetence that prevented China from similarly modernising to their cost. After much conflict, they found themselves adopting the ideas of a self-hating German Jew. China is the most ancient continuous gentile civilisation in the world and is the most successful and longstanding practitioner of separation between "church" and state. You may have noticed that China is not defined by its religion. Paradoxically, it is also obvious that it operates under the principle of "cuius regio, eius religio" while offering freedom of worship to its subject peoples.
Please tell us more about this paradox of the best of Chinese culture being in existence outside China.
Oh god, there are so so so much to list ... LoL ... One immediate example is Koreans and Japanese bowing to and showing respect to people of "higher rank", a highly developed knowledge of acupuncture in Taiwan and Japan, Japanese embrace of Neo-Confucianism. The Neo-Confucian Scholar Wang Yang Ming has a particularly strong following in Japan. The elite during the Meiji Restoration really liked his theory of "knowledge-action" which Sun Yat Sen also embraced. Some argue Wang Yang Ming's teachings were the philosophical foundations of the Restoration. Another Chinese tradition well kept outside is Zen in Korea and Japan. Some scholars argue that Japanese culture is Shinto + Zen.
The list goes on ...
And then there is imperial Chinese architecture, etc etc ...
Could you explain "knowledge-action"?
You can Google Wang Yang Ming and "knowledge and action" as I am sure you will find a much wider and better explanation.
However, in short, "knowledge" and "action" are one. If you do not "do", then you don't really "know". To "know" is to "do" Knowing is not enough, you must do. That's about it in a very very short and small recap. lol
It made me think of the Buddhist principle of "right thought, right speech, right action". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path
He was certainly the Action Man of Chinese philosophy! Do you know why he opposed Zhu Xi? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Yangming#Suppressing_the_Prince_of_Ning
No, I don't.
Yes! That's why Wang was a Neo-Confucian to his core. Some argue that he was really a Buddhist. But, he had to wrap it in Confucianism as not to offend the royal court, his masters and those around him. At the end of the day, Wang was an Imperial Official and as such, bound by many things. If he was a private scholar, I am sure he would have had more 'academic freedom" ...
It is interesting that political philosophers became competing religions over time.
I would just say their "hands were tied". Like in Europe, you couldn't really say anything bad about God or challenge the existence of God. We find Kant and Hegel "praising" God and that "Providence" guided them ...
Kerry Brown's imagery about Hayton "undertaking an act of deconstruction — an attempt to undermine & weaken a Frankenstein’s monster cooked up in the intellectual West but thriving in the alien environment of Asia" is striking. China has an image problem & many nations & people see its actions & values as deeply unsavoury. Part of this is, I believe, because 'Modern China' has been developing slowly & steadily before our eyes since 改革开放in 1979 yet we hadn't appreciated how the 'beast' (to use the analogy) would develop, behave, influence & extend its reach. Multinational companies saw the potential market size decades ago & invested heavily in it. Governments have wooed its leaders to attract greater investment & build bi-lateral opportunities. But the reality is different to what was imagined. Suddenly we have a superpower that is not 'playing by the usual rules' because, chameleon-like, it has a historical tradition of being able to re-invent itself, absorb the best of other cultures and ideas & come up with "Chinese characteristics" to suit itself. Few westerners speak Chinese so there is a dearth of insight, personal connections or links that could help to reveal the nature of the Chinese people who live in this new China.
I am afraid there is willful blindness. The instinctive desire to demonise rivals is crude and ugly in a largely irrational and badly educated populace whose graduates are in fact incapable of and discouraged from independent thought. Westerners have lost capacity to think through their problems rationally without blaming and then hating those they think responsible for their problems while refusing to admit their own mistakes. China must not forget what Britain tried to do to Germany in two World Wars because it perceived Germany to be a rival empire. WW1 was not about Belgian neutrality but the building of the Berlin to Baghdad Railway whose 21st century equivalent is China's Belt and Road Drive which threatens America's command of the seas. America has now perceived China to be overtaking it and the low desire of Washington to shoot China in the back as it passes may not be resisted. We should have no illusions about the down and dirty ways Westerners demonise even each other, so China should not be at all surprised that when Westerners get tired of demonising Jews and Muslims, they will be demonising China.
Most people who hate China do not travel, but even if they did, they would choose anywhere else rather than China because they would not pay money to be proven wrong about their beliefs. As far as they are concerned, they are fully informed about how much they hate China, Russia and Iran and all the places they never intend to visit. Those who do will claim to have been spied on or treated badly in some way. I was very pleasantly surprised when I visited last year a technologically advanced country with courteous, friendly and honest people. Many Westerners live there and love it knowing that if they had remained at home they would be unemployed or in a low paying job they hate. The Barrett channel is Westerners living in China and enjoying life there. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1XG7bJnYqta_ezr12WZp7w
Often prejudice is borne out of ignorance. I feel privileged to have lived, studied, travelled and worked in China and speak mandarin. Nations evolve, ideas change, opinions form, governments come and go so the world we live in is all about change. There is a knowledge gap about China, that is for sure. Our work aims to fill that gap and to enable young people to challenge their understanding and to see life from a different perspective. Such a skill is good for everyday life not only when engaging in international politics
https://engagewithchina.org
Because the moral and political system of the West have broken down. you cannot expect Westerners to think, speak or act in a rational and moral way. As long as Westerners continue to pretend that their moral and political system are still working, they will be demonising anyone that does better than they do. If they do better, they must have cheated and have to be brought down. As for whether they have a functioning moral and political system, they refuse to discuss it because it is heresy to say that Christianity and Liberalism have failed. Westerners are indifferent to the failure of Christianity because they stopped believing that Jesus is God a long time ago and asserted the right to deny the Trinity as the Americans did with their First Amendment, which was based on quran.com/2/256. The White House Koran belonged to Thomas Jefferson and he was the one who drafted the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Putin pointed out last year in the FT that Liberalism was "obsolete" but there was no international debate on it, only an indifferent shrug of the shoulders. https://www.ft.com/content/670039ec-98f3-11e9-9573-ee5cbb98ed36 The only public intellectual who mentioned it afterwards was the late Rabbi Sacks.
As for learning Mandarin, how can you expect the average Westerner who expects only to attend a failing state school to even think of learning Mandarin? They are barely literate in English. They might get to learn Mandarin if their parents can afford school fees but learning Mandarin would only be optional, even for the liberal elite.
In the meantime, many Africans are now fluent.
The British educational establishment is only interested in hiding its failure with ever lowering standards of education in schools and behaviour in society caused by the degeneracy of fatherlessness in the matriarchy that is the West? Most parents in Britain are unmarried parents. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2285670/Most-children-of-British-mothers-born-out-of-wedlock.html
The West has been a matriarchy since 1974 when Keith Joseph had to make way for a woman who became the first female Prime Minister of Britain. He was thought to be Prime Minister in waiting, until he criticised the morals of unmarried mothers in his Edgbaston speech. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/wintour-and-watt/2010/nov/25/conservatives-davidcameron
No male politician will now criticise the morals of unmarried parents in a liberal democracy.
Having agreed to have 5G installed by the Huawei, the British political establishment then reneged on it because the US forbade it. Does the US have 5G? Is the US going to install 5G for the UK cheaper and better? Why can't the British even install their own 5G or build their own railway connecting the north east of England to the north west of England which is what is more needed than HS2? The real problem with the West is that its governments do not even have the principle of governing in the national interest and even seeks to demonise China and any other country eg Iran, Russia etc for acting in their national interest.
I can only conclude that the West has not been guided by sound principles of government for decades and is now in the advanced stages of dementia, perfectly explaining the Culture War raging across the West and its current political orthodoxy of Politically Correct Intersectional Feminism that is closing down independent rational thought in educational institutions across the West.
I don't know if you are aware that an English master at Eton has been sacked for refusing to remove https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTHgMxQEoPI&t=1082s from his YouTube channel because it is heresy to the matriarchy.
Since the matriarchy is now getting its claws into the minds adolescent males expected to be future leaders of Britain with so little protest, you really cannot expect anything resembling principled and focused political action to come about from the West to challenge and defeat the matriarchy. The American political establishment have stolen the election from Trump who was only trying to act in the American national interest and given it to a clearly senile man with very little protest from the American people who seem prepared to accept the narrative of the liberal media acting in concert to steal the election.
If you still expect Western governments as currently constituted to act on truth, logic and morality in their own national interest, then I am afraid you have been away too long away in China where such things are encouraged and accepted.
“Frankenstein”, “Beast”, etc...? China is playing by the world’s rules, eg not a shred of evidence of wrongdoing by Huawei has been presented yet the company is sanctioned to crush its growth. China is playing by WTO’s rules, just not by America-Europe-Australia First rules.
It is important that China understand that Biden is senile and the American political establishment and a significant number of US voters want such a man to replace Trump. We can therefore deduce that nothing else they do will make any sense.
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