China is rewriting the rules of the global order.

I watched a really good doc on YouTube about 'sinofication that I can't find now

It is interesting because although since we've all lived in China and seen that it isn't actually a particularly functional society, even if you are well off, I do seriously wonder if there is a better one on offer from USA or anywhere else. The world that we grew up in with the US as the top power, whatever we think about it is gone, not just because of the rise in the power of China, but also because of the decline of western governments.
Even if China had not become an economic superpower and started to change the way that global politics operates, the problems with the systems that we grew up in where corporate power completely surpassed national power and national governments are just run by pretty dumb posh people who don't really affect much or have any interest in affecting anything beyond making sure that they stay rich was going to happen.
On a positive note, the Chinese government is capable of solving a lot of environmental problems that the west simply isn't. I don't feel that I am smart enough, plus with my privilege I don't think it's wise to say whether the people who are suffering under the level of corruption and incompetence of the Chinese government in the poorer regions of China are 'worth' the ability to have a chance with climate change, but it is a thing.
Hopefully there will be a better way, there was a 'third world' movement that was an idea kicking around in the 50s and 60s as the British and French empires collapsed and a lot of new countries didn't want to join the Imperialist or Soviet empires and aimed for something that was actually decentralised and fair. These movements were wiped out, but conditions have changed and at some point this question will come up again.

Been trying to work out my position on a particular idea sometimes associated with China, "fragmented authoritarianism". The suggestion, I'm thinking, is that there are varieties of authoritarianism that are monolithic on the outside but almost pluralistic on the inside by virtue of being... affiliations of warlords, I guess.. The whole place is ruled by "one party", but that one party contains factions and local authorities that may or may not bow - internally - to the higher leaders. The ideology remains, and the formal internal systems stay "top down", but the practice is one of all sorts of compromise and intrigue.

"Integrated fragmentation" is another version. Where "fragmented authoritarianism" suggests delay and inefficiency, "integrated fragmentation" suggests possibly effective functioning.

By which preamble I mean to begin wondering how to view China. Plainly, China exists. But what is it? As a cultural and ideological entity, it may or may not be especially different from anything else in the world, but by virtue of scale whatever differences do exist appear to make it astoundingly alien. Okay so, it's huge and it's different, and it appears to have an agenda, and that agenda is being played out in a stupendously large fashion. But like everything in China, the impact comes from a million tiny operatives rather than from any telegraphed institution.... Right? Or perhaps those institutions do exist and we - I - are making the same mistake as always - I don't recognise or understand the motivation here so I shall assume it and it's associated entities do not exist.

Well, if China is a fragmented authoritarian, we can assume that whatever "institution" comes into being is unstable. The motivations behind those structures may be universal (to Chinese) and therefore genuinely institutional. But they may also just be a random collection of forces that have currently tended into this or that direction.

But if it's an integrated collection of parts - or a system on the way to integration - then that's substantially more powerful as a future entity.




Maybe it's just that China is so new as a modern entity. The final form has not appeared yet. All the pieces are moving into place, but the organization is so alien that no one's willing to percieve it yet.

You know, Chinese leadership and ideologues keep saying things right out in th eopen and they don't get heard. The historical necessity of the rise of new China - that's one that they seem to know the meaning of but no one else does.


 

Outsmarting the Trump administration isn't hard.  Tell them that if they attack some noun (person, place, or thing), that will get more votes  in the election and then stand back and watch what happens.  Add in Trump's ways of abusing America's firmest allies, and US influence goes down whether or not any other country is rising.

China's rise seems fragmented, but all of those fragments are like an avalanche.  The stones may bounce different ways, but the overall movement is in the same general direction and the speed continues to increase.  To narrow down the focus, look at what's happened since the economic changes that began in 1979/80.  Four experimental special economic zones seemed like such a tiny thing.  Some aspects of the experiments didn't work as well as expected, but others were far more successful than anyone anticipated.  Those successful parts that started as fragments became policy nationwide.  What began small turned China into the world's 2nd largest economy.

Two of those four (Shenzhen and Zhuhai) are now part of the Great Bay Area Plan, which is the next big economic experiment.  Life's about to get interesting for those of us who live in the Pearl River Delta.

A rising tide doesn't quite lift all boats.  Natural forces from China's growing economy created some very rich people, a very large middle class, and improved the lives of nearly all of the most extremely poor.  It took a separate effort to deal with the last of the most extremely impoverished.  Despite viral complications, China is on schedule to finish eliminating the most extreme level of poverty by the end of 2020.

Yes, China still has problems, but China is in a far better position to address those now than it was even 10 years ago.


Meanwhile, people in more than one western country are afraid that 5G will be used to control them via chips injected as part of a Covid-19 vaccine. 

Counterpoint: "China" would not exist had there not been "globalization"

Interestingly, to quote wikipedia, "[globalization] was decisively shaped by nineteenth-century imperialism", presumably inasmuch as that imperialism created a direction for the flow of goods from the colonizers to the colonized, which direction in the modern era appears to have reversed, and in the covid era appears to have stalled....

"China" as we know it currently is a modern creation. The monolithic character of "China's rise" is, arguably, not a product of historical imperative but merely of size.

In fact, on the point of China's fragmentation and/or monolithic character, I'm rather taken by an article I read today....

Counterpoint: "China" would not exist had there not been "globalization"

Interestingly, to quote wikipedia, "[globalization] was decisively shaped by nineteenth-century imperialism", presumably inasmuch as that imperialism created a direction for the flow of goods from the colonizers to the colonized, which direction in the modern era appears to have reversed, and in the covid era appears to have stalled....

"China" as we know it currently is a modern creation. The monolithic character of "China's rise" is, arguably, not a product of historical imperative but merely of size.

In fact, on the point of China's fragmentation and/or monolithic character, I'm rather taken by an article I read today....

Global trade contributed much of the impetus to China's economic growth, just as it did for Japan after WWII.  The main difference is the speed of change.  China was rather insular until 1979/1980 and remaining apart from the rest of the world before then severely limited the economy.

Like the UK and US before it, and Japan and Mexico more recently, China found that becoming an large scale exporter has its benefits.  As goods flow out, money flows in.  The economy improves, the middle class grows, but prioritizing jobs above all else does have some bad side effects.  Pollution becomes an issue.  Like other nations dating all the way back to the UK during the earliest years of the industrial revolution, fragmented efforts eventually will come together.  Some only slow the rate of increase of pollution.  Others stabilize it at current levels.  Success is only achieved as the regulations shift from containing the problem to reducing the problem.  S. Korea and Japan are probably the farthest along in this cycle.  China's moving into the "Looks like we're going to have to order more brooms and mops to clean up the mess" phase.  A number of other countries in SE Asia are earlier in the same cycle, enjoying the benefit of all those new jobs and money while their skies and rivers fill with gunk.

We'd have a cleaner world without globalization, but it would be a poorer world.  Let's just be glad the world is mostly achieving global supply chains via trade deals instead of conquest and occupation, like in the good old days of the British and Spanish empires.

Even the idea of the majority ethnic group in China, the Han, as the Chinese "race" is a relatively new construct. Hayton sets out how the nationalist revolutionaries in the late 19th century needed a tool to set the Qing rulers apart from the people.

The Qing, Manchu invaders from the north, had ruled for nearly three centuries over what today is called China. The Confucian consensus of the time was that political legitimacy arose from participation in the civilised culture, and that this meant anyone from anywhere, even barbarians, even the Manchu, could participate in the nation. 

"Nationalities" or "ethnic groups" in China aren't fully defined on a scientific basis.  Then again, neither were the 3 (then 4, then more) groups taught in public schools in the US and many western countries.  Some of the Chinese definitions are more racial, some are more cultural.  Most people at the Saloon have hear of the "56 nationalities of China".  Not as many know that Type 57 means "unrecognized ethnic group."

In some cases it's a little more obvious.  Many members of the "Russian" ethnic group could easily pass for "ordinary" Russians.  In other cases, most people can't tell a lot of minorities from Han.  Then again, even among Han, its often possible to successfully guess what province someone is from (similar to being able to guess nationalities of Europeans).  I've also been able to pick the only Han girl out of a group of Miao and Tujia girls (and I can tell which are Miao vs Tujia most of the time  ).

I think it's worthwhile trying to untangle "China" from China somehow. There's some kind of monolithic entity called "China" that exists at least in part because Chinese like group identities, and in part because we've all needed some nickname for the economic significance the country of China has obtained, but also in part because the country's political significance has been on the rise too. The task of communicating and presumably therefore understanding that political significance has so often failed I think because the terms in use are both inadequate and consciously undermined. That whole bide our time and hide the bushel crap? It's only the tipping iceberg of a whole pole of deliberate obfuscation. "China" has only recently started making overt displays - wolf warrior diplomacy and all that crap.

I hope and expect one day we all can stumble upon terms adequately descriptive of "China" as a thing in the world. I'd expect those terms to not ultimately amount to "China is a special case". China is a special case, but whatever is unique in the case isn't actually defined until a bunch of prosaic background has been established.

Thus, one is eager to avoid conflating success with identity. The historical inevitability of China's rise is an example of conflating success with identity.



I think this project of terms is apt to fail. There are some core concepts within the Chinese system that "we" can know but cannot feel. "We" can't be Chinese in that way, not without giving up a measure of identity. So we will find the right terms to describe what's going on, but we won't ever really believe them.

But I am always going to have to wonder whether or not that's a lie too. The inscrutable Asian, the unknowable Confucian, that might all be bullshit as well, promulgated generation after generation as a atalisman against the very assimilation "they" have always proposed.


Etc and so on. I imagine I can see why people so often say weakness is at the heart of modern Chinese political identity. That old "Confucian consensus... that political legitimacy arose from participation in the civilised culture" is a position of strength, where you say that your own identity is sufficiently strong that it will carry over onto others. The idea that creeping westernisation is undermining Chinese identity is a position of weakness.

And to add in one last seeming non sequitur, a lot of that stuff isn't real. It's a product of material weakness as identified with ideological or political weakness.


or, to sum up, I wonder what does make culture strong. Is it just numbers of believers?


 

I believe most people are willing to accept the country on the map labelled as China as a sufficient definition.  The economic significance derives from the massive production capacity of the country (and, like any other country that manufactures for export, the presence of external clients).

I think the whole "wolf warrior" thing was a response to Trump's method of using tweets as weapons of diplomacy.  If the polls are correct, that won't be an issue after January 20th.  Hiding under a bushel was reasonable early on.  If the US had realized that China really had the potential to rival the US economically in 1979, some excuse would have been found to take action (up to and including military action) to prevent this from happening.  Quietly building let China make itself both essential to the world economy and capable of far better defending itself before the US realized it.

Maybe hiding under a bushel was too successful, or maybe certain people's feeling of their own sense of superiority over all others developed a bizarre method of protecting this delicate world view.  Even now, I see people who are convinced that China is primarily populated by starving people forced to live on collective farms.  These same people try to claim that every sign of China's economic growth is some kind of fiction, maintained in part by a conspiracy involving those who report of world economies.  I'm sure none of them have ever actually visited China.  I wonder how many of them also think the Earth is flat.

I think the Chinese people are currently shifting their view of themselves.  The feelings of inferiority left over from the "100 years of humiliation" are being replaced by "Wow, we're not just doing ok, we're doing great and the future looks promising."  National pride is a good thing, as long as it doesn't lead to "We are the ultimate country the world ever has or will produce and no one can possibly be better than us in any way" feelings which are terribly common in the USA.

The concept of "we" in China is stronger than in other countries.  Selfish and selfless people exist around the world, but on average the Chinese are better at moving towards a common goal, even if it means some sacrifices along the way.  Combined with good long term planning (something sadly lacking in many countries), the end results of a complete overhaul of the country's economic system have been amazingly impressive.

A plausible account, indeed one that urges a certain generosity to "China".

But "China" isn't a construct comprising individuals and groups. It's not democratic. The will or the interests of the people aren't what determines direction - at least as far as ideology is concerned, but presumably also as far as realpolitik is concerned. Identifying "China" with the Chinese people is, in fact, sedition, isn't it?

That's to say, I read a few things into the accounting you've given. I read it as framed in individualism's terms rather than collectivism's.


Which isn't to say that it's wrong. Just that, given what the terms import, I'm wondering if they apply. I mean, if people say they don't want or need universal rights, they will still have them in principle, but ignoring their rejection does play merry hell with normal system of practical application. It's a feature of Chinese diplomacy for example that freedom of expression is assaulted in the terms of freedom of expression - you must allow us to bellow our propaganda in your newspapers and on your campuses otherwise you are not following your own values! etc

A major weakness of most democratic systems is the extent to which they rely on social support for their legal systems. Societies as we know them have NOT come into being by law. We are NOT all criminal by default and only constrained by the presence of laws. We, the governed, act more or less in cooperation to support the system of laws by being "law abiding". We make our "individual choices". It's our sword and shield.

And "China" actively says you, wE$t3r people, you must die by your own sword and here let us help you.

Is there a perfect balance between individual rights and functional government?  Possibly, but it's not an easy balance to find.  For now, most Chinese are happy with the current balance, which allows far more personal freedom than they had 50 years ago.

Sadly, what I see in the "World's #1 source of personal freedom" is a country ripping itself in half.  Assaults on reporters (by individuals and the government. Calling the press the enemy of the state.  Assaults on those who disagree.  Politicization of a disease to the point of murdering a store security guard to defend the "freedom" not to wear a mask.  Such deep rooted fear of a freely and democratically elected government that right wing extremists have been committing acts of domestic terrorism since the 1990's.

I'm wondering if the US can ever recover from this.  I have my doubts.

Re: the op: A counterpoint:


How Xi Jinping Blew It

Public opinion toward China has darkened, and with Joe Biden set to become president, there is little prospect of Beijing fixing its mistake.

Like Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler or George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, Chinese President Xi Jinping has just had an epic foreign-policy failure—he just doesn’t appear to have realized it yet.

Through four years of Donald Trump’s presidency, Xi had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to significantly, and perhaps permanently, expand Chinese influence around the world at America’s expense. By angering friend and foe alike, withdrawing from global institutions and agreements, and failing to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, Trump left the world ripe for a new leader to step into Washington’s worn shoes. Some were convinced this was China’s moment. “Sadly, the art of diplomacy has been lost in Washington D.C.,” the former Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani wrote earlier this year. “This has created a massive opening that China has taken full advantage of, on its way to victory over the post COVID-19 world.”

But Xi blew it. A recent Pew Research Center global survey revealed that attitudes toward China have drastically darkened in a number of countries, sinking to all-time lows in an array of nations such as Canada, Germany, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Xi himself didn’t fare any better. Though his image around the world is still a bit better than Trump’s, a median of 78 percent of respondents said they had little or no confidence that Xi would do the right thing in global affairs, a sharp spike from 61 percent in 2019. In almost all of the 14 countries included in the report, negative opinion of Xi reached the highest levels on record. With Joe Biden about to become the next U.S. president, Xi may have lost any chance of fixing his mistakes, and the consequences for China’s role in the world could be huge.

This disaster underscores how China’s political system is ill-suited for the role of global superpower. Beijing is undoubtedly more powerful than it was in January 2017, when Trump entered the Oval Office, yet what is perhaps not fully understood is how much stronger it could have been. Power is about more than simply military might, financial leverage, or economic size—it includes the exertion of a softer form of influence, whereby countries follow a hegemon’s example not because they are forced to, but because they want to. A pillar of Pax Americana has been the ideals it has traditionally promoted, including free speech and free trade, that appealed to other societies....

I keep changing my mind on this. A couple of years ago, I pretty much agreed with that article that Xi being a megolamaniac has held China back from global leadership, but then there is always this danger of imagining that China wants America's role, I think that the CCP idea of global leadership is very different and they will not bother with any of the American fantasy of 'the city on the hill' etc. They don't have the thing of wanting to be liked.
Under Xi, China has spent insane money on taking over countries in South Asia, Africa, and Europe through building projects and so on. The Chinese argue that this is peaceful trade etc, but that is just rubbish imo. I don't think that the CCP really cares about soft power, there is this lip service, but they don't really care that much, they do have billions to spend and they have never cared about where it goes as long as it gives them influence. Pro-Beijing people would argue that this was true of American imperialism as well, and there is a good case for that, but I do think that China is markedly different and are fairly open about just controlling things for their benefit.
I still think that this will ultimately fail at home and abroad because a lot of the criticisms of the Beijing system are true, ultimately as standards of living go up, people will expect more, and for all of their rhetoric, China hasn't really shown evidence of a plan beyond getting up to a good standard of living. It is still ultimately a corporate technocratic system and although because of the scale and focus on education, it could last for a long time, it does seem to have these massive holes in their design for life, and pointing out the hypocrisy of 'western society' doesn't cut it forever.

Unmistakable threat: China gives up the charade on trade dispute with Australia

[excerpt]

Unfortunately, as business links diminish, there is now a rapidly narrowing avenue for mediation between two "comprehensive strategic partners" that still don't appear to understand each other.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the Chinese Communist Party's claim that the Australian government is responsible for unfriendly media coverage.

"It shows [China] holds countries responsible for their free civil societies and serves as a template for illiberal order-building," noted Rush Doshi, the director of the Brooking's China Strategy Initiative in Washington.

"China is not obligated to trade with [Australia], but that misses an interesting point.

"The deployment of coercive economic leverage to shape [Australia's] internal behaviour is a kind of illiberal order-building. This list is a partial guide to the norms of that illiberal order."...


Doomed

Contemplate how many countries many western countries not only decline to trade with, but also even impose sanctions and various levels of trade blockades against, all over some form of political disagreements.  Trade wars and cutting off trade between countries isn't a new invention.  The only thing new here is that China decided that it also has the right to make the same threats that regularly are made by other countries in an effort to get their way.

In the China-Australia dispute, I'm going to classify that latest statement as saber rattling.  It is an indisputable fact that neither country is obligated to trade with the other, but it is also in both China and Australia's best interests to try to resolve differences and keep trading.