Thread: The Children of the Yellow Emperor

"The children of the Yellow Emperor seem destined to play an enormous role in Mankind’s future."

This is a very though provoking article, by Ron Unz (himself a rather thought provoking intellectual). Current attempts to demonise China for it's success do not seem to take into account the enormous Chinese diaspora, and the effect they are having in the world today, and tomorrows world no doubt.

Anyway, this should provoke some discussion- hopefully a bit more cerebral than 'nasty chinky chink chink'.



How Social Darwinism Made Modern China
A thousand years of meritocracy shaped the Middle Kingdom.
RON UNZ •

THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE

• MARCH 11, 2013 • 8,300 WORDS


During the three decades following Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 reforms, China achieved the fastest sustained rate of economic growth in human history, with the resulting 40-fold rise in the size of China’s economy leaving it poised to surpass America’s as the largest in the world. A billion ordinary Han Chinese have lifted themselves economically from oxen and bicycles to the verge of automobiles within a single generation.

China’s academic performance has been just as stunning. The 2009 Program for International Student Assessment(PISA) tests placed gigantic Shanghai—a megalopolis of 15 million—at the absolute top of world student achievement.[1] PISA results from the rest of the country have been nearly as impressive, with the average scores of hundreds of millions of provincial Chinese—mostly from rural families with annual incomes below $2,000—matching or exceeding those of Europe’s most advanced and successful countries, such as Germany, France, and Switzerland, and ranking well above America’s results.[2]



These successes follow closely on the heels of a previous generation of similar economic and technological gains for several much smaller Chinese-ancestry countries in that same part of the world, such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and the great academic and socioeconomic success of small Chinese-descended minority populations in predominantly white nations, including America, Canada, and Australia. The children of the Yellow Emperor seem destined to play an enormous role in Mankind’s future.

Although these developments might have shocked Westerners of the mid-20th Century—when China was best known for its terrible poverty and Maoist revolutionary fanaticism—they would have seemed far less unexpected to our leading thinkers of 100 years ago, many of whom prophesied that the Middle Kingdom would eventually regain its ranking among the foremost nations of the world. This was certainly the expectation of E.A. Ross, one of America’s greatest early sociologists, whose book The Changing Chinese looked past the destitution, misery, and corruption of the China of his day to a future modernized China perhaps on a technological par with America and the leading European nations. Ross’s views were widely echoed by public intellectuals such as Lothrop Stoddard, who foresaw China’s probable awakening from centuries of inward-looking slumber as a looming challenge to the worldwide hegemony long enjoyed by the various European-descended nations.

The likely roots of such widespread Chinese success have received little detailed exploration in today’s major Western media, which tends to shy away from considering the particular characteristics of ethnic groups or nationalities, as opposed to their institutional systems and forms of government. Yet although the latter obviously play a crucial role—Maoist China was far less economically successful than Dengist China—it is useful to note that the examples of Chinese success cited above range across a wide diversity of socioeconomic/political systems.

For decades, Hong Kong enjoyed one of the most free-market, nearly anarcho-libertarian economic systems; during that same period, Singapore was governed by the tight hand of Lee Kuan Yew and his socialistic People’s Action Party, which built a one-party state with a large degree of government guidance and control. Yet both these populations were overwhelmingly Chinese, and both experienced almost equally rapid economic development, moving in 50 years from total postwar destitution and teeming refugee slums to ranking among the wealthiest places on earth. And Taiwan, whose much larger Chinese-ancestry population pursued an intermediate development model, enjoyed similar economic success.

Despite a long legacy of racial discrimination and mistreatment, small Chinese communities in America also prospered and advanced, even as their numbers grew rapidly following passage of the 1965 Immigration Act. In recent years a remarkable fraction of America’s top students—whether judged by the objective winners’ circle of the Mathematics Olympiad and Intel Science competition or by the somewhat more subjective rates of admission to Ivy League colleges—have been of Chinese ancestry. The results are particularly striking when cast in quantitative terms: although just 1 percent of American high-school graduates each year have ethnic Chinese origins, surname analysis indicates that they currently include nearly 15 percent of the highest-achieving students, a performance ratio more than four times better than that of American Jews, the top-scoring white ancestry group.[3]

Chinese people seem to be doing extremely well all over the world, across a wide range of economic and cultural landscapes.

Almost none of these global developments were predicted by America’s leading intellectuals of the 1960s or 1970s, and many of their successors have had just as much difficulty recognizing the dramatic sweep of events through which they are living. A perfect example of this strange myopia may be found in the writings of leading development economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, whose brief discussions of China’s rapid rise to world economic dominance seem to portray the phenomenon as a temporary illusion almost certain soon to collapse because the institutional approach followed differs from the ultra-free-market neoliberalism that they recommend.[4] The large role that the government plays in guiding Chinese economic decisions dooms it to failure, despite all evidence to the contrary, while America’s heavily financialized economy must be successful, regardless of our high unemployment and low growth. According to Acemoglu and Robinson, nearly all international success or failure is determined by governmental institutions, and since China possesses the wrong ones, failure is certain, though there seems no sign of it.

Perhaps such academics will be proven correct, and China’s economic miracle will collapse into the debacle they predict. But if this does not occur, and the international trend lines of the past 35 years continue for another five or ten, we should consider turning for explanations to those long-forgotten thinkers who actually foretold these world developments that we are now experiencing, individuals such as Ross and Stoddard. The widespread devastation produced by the Japanese invasion, World War II, and the Chinese Civil War, followed by the economic calamity of Maoism, did delay the predicted rise of China by a generation or two, but except for such unforeseen events, their analysis of Chinese potential seems remarkably prescient. For example, Stoddard approvingly quotes the late Victorian predictions of Professor Charles E. Pearson:

Does any one doubt that the day is at hand when China will have cheap fuel from her coal-mines, cheap transport by railways and steamers, and will have founded technical schools to develop her industries? Whenever that day comes, she may wrest the control of the world’s markets, especially throughout Asia, from England and Germany.[5]

How Social Darwinism Made Modern China, by Ron Unz - The Unz Review


This is the opening chapter- there is more to go. Quite an interesting comments section at the end too too. But ruthless Chinese meritocracy does seem to be beating soft Western notions of universal equality in the world today. The results speak for themself.

I don’t think it is uncomfortable. The only thing I worry about is that that US and China will become involved in a conflict in the future while I am living in Thailand making travel dangerous.

I will not concern myself with what happens after my lifetime. Everyone can be Chinese and it will be ok with me!

Read the bit copied above and will read the rest later.
Anyone who has been in and around Asia for a significant length of time has seen in person the impressive economic accomplishments of the "children of the Yellow Emperor".

While there may be aspects of the "chinky" economic accomplishments we westeners dislike, there is no question it is effective.

Rather than "hope", as some predict, it will collapse, the "west" should get it's head out of the sand and take a hard look at adapting some of the things which fuel this impressive economic performance.

Time will tell but many of the things in Biden's economic plan address changes needed to retool our approach to successfully competing in a world much different than it was during the cold war era.

As Biden correctly noted, "Chinese President Xi Jinping “is deadly earnest on [China] becoming the most significant, consequential nation in the world."

“It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able to adapt to and to adjust best to the changing environment in which it finds itself”

Old Charles was speaking of species but pretty much same for nations and forms of government.

Originally Posted by sabang

"The children of the Yellow Emperor seem destined to play an enormous role in Mankind’s future."

This is a very though provoking article, by Ron Unz (himself a rather thought provoking intellectual). Current attempts to demonise China for it's success do not seem to take into account the enormous Chinese diaspora, and the effect they are having in the world today, and tomorrows world no doubt.

Anyway, this should provoke some discussion- hopefully a bit more cerebral than 'nasty chinky chink chink'.

Jesus Sabang, are you that low educated that you have to bring out this bad written piece of crap. I recommend you read some of Helmut Schmidt's books about China. I think you seem to forget that we live in a democracy and we openly discuss and criticize people, government, and wars. Our press is not controlled by the government like your favorite countries Russia, China or Cuba (100%). By the way, H. Schmidt already "openly" discussed (1975) and told the rest of the world what huge potential lies within China.

“The Chinese conquer the world without military force. You could also recommend that to the Americans as a role model, "adds Schmidt smugly," if you wanted to. "" Handelsblatt "- China correspondent Frank Sieren as moderator asks whether he still has any concerns that the Chinese are becoming more and more companies and Acquire stakes in the West, in Europe? “No”, there is only global competition, no nationally self-sufficient economies.

Speaking of Europe, says Schmidt, how we often treat Greece as the “cradle of our civilization” today, that misses “respect” - pause - “and heart”. When asked whether he was in favor of China investing in Germany: "Yes, we can use capital." He prefers that, "than when the Americans invest here with their shitty hedge funds!"

If you want to start a serious discussion you should ask why "The children of the Red Empero's" are so still far behind China and the rest of the world.

we live in a democracy and we openly discuss and criticize

Precisely!!

are you that low educated

Compared to, ummm, You? Lets just leave it unsaid.

"The children of the Red Empero's" are so still far behind China and the rest of the world.

Care to translate hermano, me speaka da inglese.