06-23-2019, 08:14 PM
Only rarely has China been meaningfully unified -- and I mean China Proper. China has long been a multi-ethnic society even if outsiders cannot make ready distinctions between even North China and South China. But there one is making distinctions between people as different as Norwegians and Greeks.
China has been difficult to unify. China has a heritage of weak central government that often relies more upon brutality than upon service to the masses. That rarely succeeds for more than about 75 years by which time comes an invader capable of destroying the shaky edifice of society.
If I could change Chinese modern history, I would make the efforts of Sun Yat-Sen to make China a united society with a responsible government more effective. Maybe China would not have seemed so vulnerable to Japan, and maybe China would be a liberal democracy today with a more advanced consumer economy. The Commies would have never had a chance.
Those who have met contemporary Japanese see a very different Japan than the thug empire that brutalized everything from Manchukuo to Indonesia and from Burma to... well, it was stopped at Midway. Japan may be the sort of country that mauls any country that does evil to it, but it is not going to invade China. But what do the Chinese see? Official propaganda of the state masquerading as education. Thus World War II was heroic resistance against brutal Japanese invaders and sell-out opportunists against whom the Chinese Communist Party was the only effective leadership. Propaganda is as effective in preserving an obsolete world-view as it is in efforts to impose a new one.
So if I had a Japanese girlfriend at a critical time, what would I have seen? Obviously the kimonos, the bonsai trees, a strange writing system, and of course the films of Kurosawa. Such poses no obvious threat.
China has been difficult to unify. China has a heritage of weak central government that often relies more upon brutality than upon service to the masses. That rarely succeeds for more than about 75 years by which time comes an invader capable of destroying the shaky edifice of society.
If I could change Chinese modern history, I would make the efforts of Sun Yat-Sen to make China a united society with a responsible government more effective. Maybe China would not have seemed so vulnerable to Japan, and maybe China would be a liberal democracy today with a more advanced consumer economy. The Commies would have never had a chance.
Those who have met contemporary Japanese see a very different Japan than the thug empire that brutalized everything from Manchukuo to Indonesia and from Burma to... well, it was stopped at Midway. Japan may be the sort of country that mauls any country that does evil to it, but it is not going to invade China. But what do the Chinese see? Official propaganda of the state masquerading as education. Thus World War II was heroic resistance against brutal Japanese invaders and sell-out opportunists against whom the Chinese Communist Party was the only effective leadership. Propaganda is as effective in preserving an obsolete world-view as it is in efforts to impose a new one.
So if I had a Japanese girlfriend at a critical time, what would I have seen? Obviously the kimonos, the bonsai trees, a strange writing system, and of course the films of Kurosawa. Such poses no obvious threat.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
