I just learned that the way emperors in China tie their rule to the mandate of heaven and the glories of the past is by collecting ancient (over 3,000 years old) bronze vessels. I think we need to know if Xi Jinping is collecting the very old bronze vessels that Chicago hasn't managed to collect.
I think he has the biggest collection already.
That's good to know.
I also wonder if this isn't the kind of move he can take because of Trump's election. The models of governance that compete with Communist Imperialism (or whatever you call it) aren't having a good decade.
3: Minzner and Pei both say Trump & C are helping, but no, it's internal. Minzner tracks this back to 1989: the possibility of serious reform having been foreclosed, the party eventually is left with limited options to deal with problems. So for instance Xi's fairly arbitrary anti-corruption campaign, rather than deepened rule of law.
I think it's more due to the success of Xi's internal "anti-corruption" campaigns that neutralized competitors. Effective resistance would have come from within the party structure, and now there ain't none. But christ, Chinese politics are opaque.
Goddammit, I did not see that pwn coming.
But has Xi gathered enough of the Infinity Stones?
Seconding 4. Not being able to reform, the only path for Xi is increasing autocracy. I don't know what this would mean in the long run--can China become an imperial Singapore, or will this eventually lead to stagnation?
7: Maybe I'm misreading you, but AIUI Singapore isn't remotely as authoritarian as the PRC.
Hey Mossy, which Spence are you reading?
9: The Search for Modern China. I don't think I'll continue with it atm though.
5: Another thing Pei says is that he used to think there was a possibility of reform starting in the provinces, but now he doesn't since they've all fallen in line behind Xi.
8: I meant more in terms of being an economically successful but unfree state, particularly one with Asian values Chinese characteristics.
10: Why not? That's a great book!
12: How unfree is Singapore? I know essentially nothing about the place.
13: I'm not feeling it right now. I've been on a Ming-Qing dive recently and it felt a little shallow. I'll probably get back to it presently.
4, 5 A tried and true method? I think MBS is a fucking moron but he's been smart enough to use that as his method of securing power even if it was clumsily done.
5: Another thing Pei says is that he used to think there was a possibility of reform starting in the provinces, but now he doesn't since they've all fallen in line behind Xi.
Given China's economic development that seems unlikely, Xi or no. When central government is forced to bail out the provincial governments and/or their banks and SOEs, they can use that as a means to tighten political control as well.
Maybe Mongolia will invade again. That could force reform.
15: All those links agree the anti-corruption campaign isn't purely infighting, it's genuine as well. One of them said IIRC ~200k prosecutions/whatever. Adjusted for population, that would be ~4600. Is MBS purging on that scale?
14.1: My impression is that it's a place that allows economic freedom but through illiberal means has become a de facto one party state under the People's Action Party, controlled by the Lee family. Free speech is curtailed. It's somewhat unusual in being broadly prosperous but not truly democratic. In that sense it's been touted as a model for China, but I think it's still an open question as to what degree that can scale while still remaining stable.
This is probably the right place to ask: I think my next history read should probably be something from the middle imperial period, say Tang or Song. I'm more interested in the stable times than the fractured ones. Any suggestions?
In Singapore, you can't say bad things about the ruling party because that would be a PAP Smear.
In particular, Singapore has a free speech zone. Just one.
16: Could you elaborate on that? AIUI the large majority of taxes are raised by the provinces, so I assumed some provinces are net contributors to the central government, others net recipients.
If you find a good Tang/Song book, let me know.
18 that seems steep by an order of magnitude, possibly two.
16: Could you elaborate on that? AIUI the large majority of taxes are raised by the provinces, so I assumed some provinces are net contributors to the central government, others net recipients.
Basically provincial governments have ploughed money into questionable projects and companies, directly, and through state owned banks. Even worse, many of these projects have been invested in on the basis of a more or less implicit government guarantee. Local government debt has skyrocketed as a result, and the contingent liabilities are enormous. At some point, these chickens are going going to come home to roost. When they do, unless the central government decides to let the local governments hang, which would presumably lead to mass protests/lynchings and economic chaos, they're going to be able to impose very strict control on the governments in question, a la the EU and Greece, but more so.
See here for just one example, but this has been going on for a decade with a never ending string of asset bubbles propped up by local government debt.
25 Of course it was a quick shakedown that took place over a few months.
25: agreed. A few hundred seems more like it; Al Jazeera said 208 in November last year.
23: I vaguely remember Teo was reading about that period and some books came up in a past thread. Maybe he'll look at this thread.
He got a job now. I blame neoliberalism.
19: From the Further Reading in Dardess' Governing China:
No survey of the Tang can fail to mention the absorbing works of Edward H. Schafer: The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T'ang Exotics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), and The Vermilion Bird: T'ang Images of the South (University of California Press, 1967). David A. Graff's Medieval Chinese Warfare, 200-900 (London and New York: Routledge, 2002) presents its subject with clarity. Tang history finds itself effectively intertwined with biography in the lives of some leading literary figures, for instance in James J. Y. Liu, The Poetry of Li Shang-yin: A Ninth-Century Baroque Chinese Poet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969); Charles Hartman, Han Yü and the T'ang Search for Unity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); and Robin D. S. Yates, Washing Silk: The Life and Selected Poetry of Wei Chuang, 834?-910 (Harvard University Press, 1988).I've read none of these, but on other recommendations he's 2/2 with me.
Despite a growing body of scholarship on the Liao, Song, Jin, and Xi Xia, most books about this era are specialized, and few pass the stern tests of significance and readability. James T. C. Liu's China Turning Inward: Intellectual-Political Changes in the Twelfth Century (Harvard University Press, 1988) comes close. There is also Ronald C. Egan, Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi (Harvard University Press, 1994).
And far to the west, though maybe he's waking up now. From TFA here it looks like he was reading The Age of Confucian Rule on the Song. Teo, what'd you end up thinking about it?
21: how is singapore like china? singaporean media is all state-controlled, so it does have the humorous reading-between-the-lines feature in which you try to figure out what's really being said. and you can't say bad things in print or public fora about the pap or serving government officials: you will possibly get in terrible trouble. it's widely felt that advantages accrue to ethnically chinese people vs indian or malay, though there is some chicken and egg chinese language stuff there. there is an excessive dependence on migrant labour with the migrant labourers not enjoying the same wages and protections as the citizens. also, there is excellent chinese food.
all that said, it's not that much like china IMO. it's more fabian socialist: the government plans out public housing developments years in advance and builds light rail and bus terminals, and opens up land for private companies to build malls and condos to be ready for population growth (tbh this is kind of great). but they don't suck at it! they're quite good! to do so it uses the pool of the money in people's cpf funds--like a SS fund linked to you as an individual, which comes from your paycheck. you can use the money as a downpayment on one of these public housing units so you can own your own home (with 80% of your fellow citizens) or for medical emergencies (above national support/price controls). one obvious difference: no great internet firewall, so citizens can do whatever they want on the internet, which is never censored. hypothetical overseas singaporean blogs about bg lee's unsatisfactory sexual prowess and his family's excessive wealth? read away. anonymous blog about same? create one, only, maybe don't make it obvious where it is. they could get mad, I think. also, you can use whatsapp or other end to end encrypted apps all you want. you don't have to bribe people to start a business or anything, at any stage. in fact, no bribing at all for anything. also it's just mad rich; I don't think you have to worry as much about your citizens overthrowing you when you experience not only regular growth like china but just objective wealth--quite a bit wealthier than the netherlands. who's complaining.
china would like to be singapore but it's not something you just slouch into? or maybe they don't even like the idea. singapore has wanted to use its ethnicaly chinese aspect to get a leg up in investing in china/creating an economic zone, but I don't think it's done well.
33: Ha, I had just looked it up (since I'm in Juneau and don't have it with me) and was about to link it. I liked it.
And Singapore would not like to be China. AFAIK they've consistently opposed the PRC's Greater China ethnicity=PRCness thing.
Definitely a bit dry, but pretty short and readable overall.
Thanks, teo. I'm reading a pop sci book on the Proto-Indo-Europeans that is full of interminable descriptions of archeological results--interesting, but not really my thing, and after a few dozen digs they all blend together--so I'm fairly inured to dryness right now.
The Yangtze basin has much more rainfall. Very moist digs, I hear.
The David Anthony one? It looks intriguing.
(Obviously I have lots of tolerance for dry descriptions of archaeological digs.)
You also can't protest in public in Singapore (as in, demonstrations) and there is also all the propaganda associated with authoritarian states---not just in the press as mentioned above but also in education, public billboards, etc.
To me the most pertinent difference is no great firewall, so the proportion of people who are woefully ignorant about alternative perspectives of the country is much smaller.
I'm not sure how fabian socialist the cpf scheme is as the interest rate is pathetic (below inflation, so you are losing money). This is not inevitable as there are other countries with similar schemes who pay a lot more to their citizens. It's essentially citizens being forced to fund the sovereign wealth fund. Being able to cash out cpf and invest it in something with higher returns is one of the things I'm looking forward to in the giving-up-my-citizenship process.
In general, I object to the fabian socialist characterization as social welfare mechanisms (e.g. unemployment) are deliberately kept low so as to force people to be self-sufficient, and they are very explicit about distinguishing themselves from social democracies in europe, whom they view as wasteful and encouraging of laziness. cpf is not social security as it comes from your own wages so it is not redistributive at all and doesn't help with unemployment or retraining periods, and it doesn't help those who have not enough to retire on b/c they've been earning a pittance or been a homemaker most of their life.
s/unemployment/unemployment insurance/
To be more constructive, the parts that I think most resemble china are:
state capitalism. The state owns most of the land and a very large proportion of local businesses
social control, in particular media control, propaganda, and persecution of opposition figures, albeit to a lesser extent
Singapore, more so than china, was an early example that you did not need democracy/social freedom to be rich and stable. That's why people tend to latch onto it as the nearest analog to china.
40: Yup. My lack of appreciation of them is probably my own fault--I'm reading it on a Kindle, making it hard to read the maps and charts. If I could better place the archeological cultures in time/space, I'd probably appreciate the evidence better. Still, he does an admirable job. And it's neat to see an expert attempt to unify the linguistic and archeological evidence, although sometimes he can be a bit cavalier with methods. He'll claim that a certain archeological culture spoke a certain language family and his process of getting there isn't convincing.
My lack of appreciation of them is probably my own fault
Maybe, but Josh Marshall had some similar complaints in his (overall positive) review. I think it's a general hazard of archaeologists writing this kind of book, as is this:
He'll claim that a certain archeological culture spoke a certain language family and his process of getting there isn't convincing.
Thanks Ponder and al.
can China become an imperial Singapore, or will this eventually lead to stagnation?
This is the thing. I think some kind neo-Neo-Confucianism, plus the powers of a modern surveillance state, could hold together indefinitely. Survival then would depend on continued functioning of the state machinery, which would depend on generally competent technocracy. I think that is possible in principle, but AFAIK it's never yet happened in such a large state, much less an undemocratic and largely poor one. Another thing Minzner mentions is that social mobility in China has fallen, which isn't promising for long-run competence. And beyond day-to-day competence, they also need the ability to handle long-run out-of-the-ordinary-problems like climate change, which dictatorships often aren't good at; but OTOH neither is anyone else.
lurid read and I think enjoyed the David Anthony P-I-E book. Thanks for all the titles about poets in 38 - really most of what I know about European history comes from the lives of poets.
Or 32. Even if "inured to dryness" applies to certain poets.
47. One gets the impression from Chinese history that eventually (if not immediately) every Chinese dynasty latches onto Confucianism or neo-Confucianism as a prop to its legitimacy.
There are certainly already some neo-C tendencies to the Xi Dynasty (or is it the Mao Dynasty?). "Xi" is a respectable dynasty name, which recommends it over "Mao."
Second law of politics, isn't it: nothing changes things less than a revolution. America has a revolution, and ends up being governed by a cabal of wealthy land-owning oligarchs in wigs. France has a revolution and ends up with a new Sun King. Russia has a revolution and ends up with a paranoid Red Tsar. China has a revolution and gets a Confucian autocrat living in the Forbidden City with a truckload of concubines.
50, 51: Yes. Confucianism has been prerty much totalitarian from the get go, but this is the first time the state may have the resources to make it stick. Also this must be a Chinese record for ideological rebel-conservative oscillation.
Like, the Ming and the Song started as rebels, but they were conservative rebels from the beginning.
32: I missed this post last night; thanks for the references. Will also consider them once I'm done with the PIE book.
51: ajay, you're ignoring some real progress. Now, the Confucian autocrat lives slightly to the west of the Forbidden City.
51. Does he really have a truckload of concubines? Does he have more than the Donald?
This seems more likely to be good than bad, and makes me a bit less scared about China. China's Communist dictatorship was catastrophic in large part because they ended up with Mao in the aftermath of two successive violent revolutions. (Russia had a similar experience!) Xi, by contrast, seems to be consolidating power peacefully and with little in the way of opposition.
Imperial Confucianism also has a somewhat better track record in China than a one-party Communist state.
I'm still a bit creeped out by things like Sesame Credit, but that was developed under Communist party rule, not under Confucian monarchy.
Of course this is all an extreme outsider's perspective, and Chinese people might know lots that I don't.
56: China's Communist dictatorship was catastrophic in large part because they ended up with Mao in the aftermath of two successive violent revolutions a dictator-for-life answerable to no-one who made imprisonment the price of failure. That's what Xi is now.
Confucianism's track record is better than Maoism's, drastically worse than the post-Mao PRC's.
Sesame Credit and the like would make the emperors come in their pants. They're vastly improved versions of Qin and Han rank systems, with privileges tracking rank and rank tracking loyalty. That's what I mean by 52.1.
Does he really have a truckload of concubines? Does he have more than the Donald?
I was thinking of Mao. I've no idea how many concubines Xi has but I imagine he has some. I mean, why wouldn't he?
Imperial Confucianism also has a somewhat better track record in China than a one-party Communist state.
Worse, actually. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were minor inconveniences compared to the Taiping Rebellion.
51: England? The latest lot of long-term economic growth series strongly suggest something big changed just after the Civil War.
58 last: I think you overstate the case. I'll take a look at the numbers later.
60. Before or after the restoration the regime was significantly different to the wannabe absolutism of Elizabeth, James I and Charles I.
The Glorious Revolution seems like it might be a more appropriate cut-off.
61. Wikipedia* says the Taiping Rebellion was responsible for 60 million deaths through famine, and that the "Great Famine" of the late 1950s to early 1960s killed 15 million.
* On the internet, so obviously accurate.
63. Seconded.
58,64: All the numbers are crap, but that said:
Taiping: 60m* in 14 years = 4.2m/year in a population of ~450m.
GLF: 30m** in 4 years = 7.5m/year in a population of ~600m.
Adjusting for population, that would make Taiping equivalent to 5.7m/year in 1959. And Taiping was a war with complex causes, only some of them within Qing control; the GLF was a peacetime policy freely chosen. Maoism doesn't look good at all.
*A high estimate; elsewhere wiki says 20-30m.
**A low estimate; here wiki says minimum 45m.
I don't think deaths per year is an appropriate metric; if you do X, and as a result ten people die tomorrow, X is not as bad as Y, which causes two people to die every year from now to 2018.
66: Quantitatively, sure. What I'm trying to get at is the qualitative badness of governance.
And even in absolute terms, they're they're pretty close together. I chose the numbers that make Mao look best. Take the opposite approach and the GLF killed twice as many, even adjusting for population.
I think when you're trying to judge which bad thing is worse by comparing amortized inflation-adjusted decamegadeaths per annum, you're doing something wrong.
In retrospect, 70 arises pretty inevitably from the post title. Also, mouseover.
70: Need to adjust for base death rates, park geographic effects and plausible alternative historical paths. I propose DARC--Deaths Above Replacement Cataclysm.
And I guess canonically one should really measure it in Negative Rat Orgasms. NROARC.
34: "china would like to be singapore but it's not something you just slouch into? or maybe they don't even like the idea."
Also, scale.
I defer to ponder on singapore opinions generally...
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