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China's "humiliation,' reconsidered
China's so-called humiliation:
Take a closer look
REED STEVENS
Discussing Obama’s Dreams of My Father in July at a book club MeetUp that I moderated, the lively dozen or more men and women thoroughly dissected the author’s candor, his race and religion and his tormented relationship with his father and mother, ending with a discussion of our own minority experiences. As a good proportion of Silicon Valley’s residents come from Mainland China, Taiwan and India, on this day several of the participants were dark-skinned Indians and at least one was Chinese. Toward the end of discussion a Chinese woman spoke up for the first time to announce in a soft voice that she was, in her words, "a racist."
We were astonished. But she wasn’t kidding.
“I believe the Chinese people are inferior to Westerners,” she said very clearly. Then she explained that since she came to the U.S. in 1989, she has seen how advanced this country is compared to China.
We were all taken aback, and some of us hastened to assure her that we respected China for its ancient civilization and its increasing industrial and technical prowess. As she spoke, I thought: All we hear about China is Tiananmen Square, the failures of the Cultural Revolution, the destruction of the educated bourgeoisie, starvation and political repression. Not to mention that we fought the Chinese in Korea.
An eccentric Englishman, obsessed with China
I suggested that China's story is mostly unknown in the West and that I planned to read Simon Winchester’s The Man Who Loved China. It’s the biography of Joseph Needham, an eccentric Englishman who “unlocked the mysteries of the middle kingdom,” as the book jacket says. I had heard Michael Krasny on NPR’s “Forum” interview the author, a delightfully cultured Brit who also wrote The Professor and the Madman, the biography of the author of the Oxford English Dictionary, popular a few years back.
When I checked the book out of my local library I plowed through the many, many details of Needham's academic career. A scholar obsessed with all things Chinese and an ardent socialist, Joseph Needham devoted his entire career as an Oxford don to living in and traveling across China from 1943 through the Mao years, dallying along the way with attractive Chinese women (never fully described, darn it) tolerated by his English wife. The result of his endeavors? Several volumes, the sine qua non on China’s intellectual and scientific, geographic, anthropologic, religious and social history.
An answer in the epilogue
Fascinating, yes. But as I neared the end of this mighty tome, I despaired that nothing in this man’s life story would make that Chinese woman feel proud of China.
However, when I reached the epilogue, my efforts were richly rewarded. In this chapter Winchester describes both China's “attitude” of absolute superiority, of not needing anything from the west. He lists the various theories for this posture: national personality characteristics; the many western military invasions; the theory that “It’s too big to govern or feed itself”; structural, philosophical and so on.
The not needing is the key to Chinese humiliation. They really did and do believe they are superior. As Christians feel superior to non-Christians, as Muslims feel superior to Christians, and (might I say it?), as Jews feel superior to everybody. Everybody wants that “respec',” man.
The power of 600 million cell phones
Winchester says we won’t hear much about “humiliation” in the future because that old attitude of isolated superiority is changing fast. China has opened its gates. It must: China has more than 600 million cell phones, thousands added every week. Good-bye Chinese humiliation, hello China Number One: at the Games and in technology, manufacturing and art and science and everything the West is good at.
According to Winchester, isolationism was only a brief phase— 300 years— in the world’s longest-living civilization. How old? Read the book to find out.
This new Leap Forward won’t take long. A look at the long appendix listing China’s remarkable inventions from time immemorial— the compass, gunpowder and the printing press, for starters— is worth the price of the entire book. We are just beginning to feel the power of this vast and brilliant people as they gather themselves, and us, along with the rest of the world, to shape our common future.
To read a response, click here.
To read another perspective by Dan Rottenberg, click here.
Take a closer look
REED STEVENS
Discussing Obama’s Dreams of My Father in July at a book club MeetUp that I moderated, the lively dozen or more men and women thoroughly dissected the author’s candor, his race and religion and his tormented relationship with his father and mother, ending with a discussion of our own minority experiences. As a good proportion of Silicon Valley’s residents come from Mainland China, Taiwan and India, on this day several of the participants were dark-skinned Indians and at least one was Chinese. Toward the end of discussion a Chinese woman spoke up for the first time to announce in a soft voice that she was, in her words, "a racist."
We were astonished. But she wasn’t kidding.
“I believe the Chinese people are inferior to Westerners,” she said very clearly. Then she explained that since she came to the U.S. in 1989, she has seen how advanced this country is compared to China.
We were all taken aback, and some of us hastened to assure her that we respected China for its ancient civilization and its increasing industrial and technical prowess. As she spoke, I thought: All we hear about China is Tiananmen Square, the failures of the Cultural Revolution, the destruction of the educated bourgeoisie, starvation and political repression. Not to mention that we fought the Chinese in Korea.
An eccentric Englishman, obsessed with China
I suggested that China's story is mostly unknown in the West and that I planned to read Simon Winchester’s The Man Who Loved China. It’s the biography of Joseph Needham, an eccentric Englishman who “unlocked the mysteries of the middle kingdom,” as the book jacket says. I had heard Michael Krasny on NPR’s “Forum” interview the author, a delightfully cultured Brit who also wrote The Professor and the Madman, the biography of the author of the Oxford English Dictionary, popular a few years back.
When I checked the book out of my local library I plowed through the many, many details of Needham's academic career. A scholar obsessed with all things Chinese and an ardent socialist, Joseph Needham devoted his entire career as an Oxford don to living in and traveling across China from 1943 through the Mao years, dallying along the way with attractive Chinese women (never fully described, darn it) tolerated by his English wife. The result of his endeavors? Several volumes, the sine qua non on China’s intellectual and scientific, geographic, anthropologic, religious and social history.
An answer in the epilogue
Fascinating, yes. But as I neared the end of this mighty tome, I despaired that nothing in this man’s life story would make that Chinese woman feel proud of China.
However, when I reached the epilogue, my efforts were richly rewarded. In this chapter Winchester describes both China's “attitude” of absolute superiority, of not needing anything from the west. He lists the various theories for this posture: national personality characteristics; the many western military invasions; the theory that “It’s too big to govern or feed itself”; structural, philosophical and so on.
The not needing is the key to Chinese humiliation. They really did and do believe they are superior. As Christians feel superior to non-Christians, as Muslims feel superior to Christians, and (might I say it?), as Jews feel superior to everybody. Everybody wants that “respec',” man.
The power of 600 million cell phones
Winchester says we won’t hear much about “humiliation” in the future because that old attitude of isolated superiority is changing fast. China has opened its gates. It must: China has more than 600 million cell phones, thousands added every week. Good-bye Chinese humiliation, hello China Number One: at the Games and in technology, manufacturing and art and science and everything the West is good at.
According to Winchester, isolationism was only a brief phase— 300 years— in the world’s longest-living civilization. How old? Read the book to find out.
This new Leap Forward won’t take long. A look at the long appendix listing China’s remarkable inventions from time immemorial— the compass, gunpowder and the printing press, for starters— is worth the price of the entire book. We are just beginning to feel the power of this vast and brilliant people as they gather themselves, and us, along with the rest of the world, to shape our common future.
To read a response, click here.
To read another perspective by Dan Rottenberg, click here.
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