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America created the Japanese empire? Just because we kicked down the door doesn't mean we take responsibility for the crap they did later. And I don't hear the Koreans or the Manchus complaining about our crushing of the Japanese. Or the Filipinos (though they have some other complaints). Or Australia. Or New Zealand.
You guys get China too. Nepal, lower Mongolia, eastern China. Brutal repressions. That all counts.
I don't think we get a get out of jail card either, though I do think that maybe the native American thing gets emphasized for the wrong reasons. It sounds an awful lot like you're saying "you're all white so you're all the same." American imperial politics were radically different from Europe's, even after we actively got in the game on an international basis around 1900. And our actual execution of imperialism had some radical departures as well. Things look a lot different when you do more than scratch the surface.
Though I'll also admit, I'm mostly referring to pre-1950 America, when most of the damage was done by Europeans. Still, I think post 1950, the damage done by Europeans before us has had greater lasting influence, and I maintain that they're different, especially Britain.
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Blayne Bradley
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If I recall the Japanese were only following the example everyone else including the United States had already set for them.
If I recall, Nepal was colonized by Britain and Lower Mongolia was a part of the Yuan Dynasty that stayed a part of China, eastern china as in the east coast of it had been colonized by Han chinese thousands of years ago, dont see the imperialism there.
All of this was centuries before the Europeans even made wooden boats.
The Imperialism of well Imperial countries in say the Roman sense of "we'll take over you and make you better" vs the Colonial Imperialism of "We'll take your land, drain your resources and rape your culture and language..."
I think there's quite the distinct difference, back in the Ancient days of say the mongols, the intent was "we'll conquor you and make you a part of us" ie the Romans or Mongols note, China when controlled by Han Chinese if I recall never actually expanded via military conquest, the major territorial pushes were by foreign dynasties like the Yuan or the Qing.
The European sense of Colonial Imperialism starting in the 1500's was more like "your less then us, we don't want you but you can work and serve for us for we are your masters" there always seemed to be a distinct separation between the European landowners and colonists, and the Aborginals of the lands they colonized.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: America created the Japanese empire? Just because we kicked down the door doesn't mean we take responsibility for the crap they did later.
No. You take responsibility because you *exploded* open their door, forced them to buy your stuff, taught them to go empire building, sold them precisely what they needed to fight in China and create an empire, and then when they started doing too well you added the "yellow peril" racial crap. Only when they turned on you, then you took notice.
Even their war slogan, "Asia for Asians" reflects precisely the love-hate relationship they had with you.
quote: Or Australia. Or New Zealand.
No guff. The guys giving the orders are European.
Gee, I wonder where all the natives went. Even while trying to illustrate "Asians" you accidentally point at the graveyards you created.
quote: You guys get China too. Nepal, lower Mongolia, eastern China. Brutal repressions. That all counts.
The heck? We're talking about exploiting *each other*. If we wanted to discuss how you guys found ways to kill and oppress each other, well, the results literally fill books. (Also, eastern China? Do you mean the Qin, should I be comparing them to Romans? Lower Mongolia? We've already discussed the Mongols)
In fact, European success at colonizing Asia is a direct result of you guys being so good at killing and oppressing each other. Our suckiness at resisting it is a direct result of us not doing it.
Its almost impossible to understate how sophisticated the European colonization machine was. Military destruction of the target's defenses and the population, forcible economic exploitation and domination including slavery, and religious indoctrination of the remainder.
Three waves of oppression. We can't even come close to touching it.
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quote:No. You take responsibility because you *exploded* open their door, forced them to buy your stuff, taught them to go empire building, sold them precisely what they needed to fight in China and create an empire, and then when they started doing too well you added the "yellow peril" racial crap. Only when they turned on you, then you took notice.
Even their war slogan, "Asia for Asians" reflects precisely the love-hate relationship they had with you.
We taught them to go Empire building? The heck? Their first two foreign wars were with Russia and China at or around the time we were fighting our FIRST imperialist war with Spain. They'd finished fighting Russia before we were even done fighting Aguinaldo in the Philippines. As for training them, we had a geographically tiny island "empire" abroad, whereas they were gunning for a massive Asian one. And for that matter, their army was Prussian based, and their navy was I think Russian based (might be wrong on that one, but it wasn't American).
quote:No guff. The guys giving the orders are European.
Gee, I wonder where all the natives went. Even while trying to illustrate "Asians" you accidentally point at the graveyards you created.
You'll have to expand on that, I'm not sure what you mean. I think what you're trying to say is that America is somehow responsible for British atrocities in Australia and New Zealand, which sounds a whole lot like that "white people are all the same" thing you were spouting earlier.
quote:In fact, European success at colonizing Asia is a direct result of you guys being so good at killing and oppressing each other. Our suckiness at resisting it is a direct result of us not doing it.
Its almost impossible to understate how sophisticated the European colonization machine was. Military destruction of the target's defenses and the population, forcible economic exploitation and domination including slavery, and religious indoctrination of the remainder.
Three waves of oppression. We can't even come close to touching it.
You're right, the Europeans were very, very good at it. I'm not disputing that. We're not European though.
I'd also add that inter-African warfare often included a LOT of what you're talking about. Slavery and forced indoctrination were around a long time before European boots hit the ground. They were just really good at it.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: We taught them to go Empire building? The heck? Their first two foreign wars were with Russia and China at or around the time we were fighting our FIRST imperialist war with Spain.
Again, way too late. After you blew open their doors, among the first exports were military technology and tactics. American experts were among those that retrained the Japanese military to fight their civil war and Americans were the first to sell the Japanese an ironclad. It was precisely this reformation of the Japanese military along American technology and tactics that allowed them to be so successful.
quote: You're right, the Europeans were very, very good at it. I'm not disputing that. We're not European though.
Please.
Even the faces of your leaders (and most of your population) up to the very very last one are largely indistinguishable from Europeans.
Its almost insulting for you to claim that you're Americans. The real native Americans are mostly dead and in the ground. You're mostly just Europeans that live on top of them and pretend that its always been yours. "America is a Christian nation" and "illegal immigration" ring any bells?
No, not all white people are the same. But Americans are effectively and culturally European in all the ways that really count.
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Not when it comes to foreign policy, despite the fact that we must all look alike to you.
You either really don't know what you're talking about, or you do, and you're being either really disingenuous, or really racist. Or a both.
You seem to live in a lovely fantasy world where whites, as an amorphous indistinguishable mass, are to blame for everything. It's funny too, because a lot of whites used to use this justification for attacking you guys. Actually it's not funny, it's sad.
If Americans were JUST like Europeans, Mexico, Latin America, the entire Caribbean, and I imagine a lot of South America would just be called the southern United States. Our anti-imperialists were a lot more powerful vocal minority than were Europe's in that they actually got stuff done.
The fact that you think we taught Japan to be imperialist after they'd coveted Korea for a couple hundred years (and in fact conquered them long before we "blew open their doors") and China as well, shows you're just searching for anti-white man lines more than you are actually grasping real material.
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And the idea that the Chinese gov't wasn't hypocritical about invading and controlling other nations is naive. For instance, many of the times China has invaded a country in something like the last two hundred years, the official main reason has been "mistreatment of the minority Chinese population" -- mistreatment they were more than happy to ignore (and often allow worse inside China) when the other regime was being politically cooperative. That's not being honest, that's lying. People in China now are being upfront about it, but people in the west are similarly upfront about most of our old imperialism.
Of course, if we want to talk about current Chinese self-deception with regard to past invasions, there's the idea that most of the people in Tibet wanted to be invaded by China. I've heard that from every recent Chinese immigrant I've had a conversation about Tibet with.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: You either really don't know what you're talking about, or you do, and you're being either really disingenuous, or really racist. Or a both.
You can deal with the facts or ignore the facts and call people names*. It would be racist if I said Europeans did what they did *because* they were white. Its not racist to simply observe that European imperialists were white and as even you admit set new records in exploitation and imperialism.
* Perhaps I should call you a racist for assuming that I hold the views that I do simply because of my race.
quote:You seem to live in a lovely fantasy world where whites, as an amorphous indistinguishable mass, are to blame for everything.
No, I simply live in a world where I don't measure time in 50 year slices and the occupation of North America is uncomfortably close.
You said that Chinese people should have given Americans the benefit of the doubt for dubious actions over a handful of years. We say prove it over time.
quote: If Americans were JUST like Europeans, Mexico, Latin America, the entire Caribbean, and I imagine a lot of South America would just be called the southern United States.
Monroe doctrine, "banana republics" ring any bells. It just never got as bad as European work because you guys had less time.
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quote:But Americans are effectively and culturally European in all the ways that really count.
In the same way, Koreans and Japanese are really just Chinese.
Yep. Go on.
(With the only caveat being that Chinese immigration and cultural diffusion to those places occurred multiple full dynasties ago where as European colonization of America is only roughly 200 years ago)
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: People in China now are being upfront about it, but people in the west are similarly upfront about most of our old imperialism.
You should inform Lyrhawn who still uses self-serving rhetoric like "protected China from outside influence" or "we just finished fighting a war that removed Japan from China" which started the whole conversation.
Meanwhile, my first line on the conversation was:
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: In fact, you usually look just about the same as everyone else with the only particularly unique quality being that you're (as a group) remarkably hypocritical and self-righteous while going about the same old.
That includes Asians.
quote: I've heard that from every recent Chinese immigrant I've had a conversation about Tibet with.
Dubious. Not unless you didn't talk to immigrants from Hong Kong or Taiwan or any immigrants under 30. (Or alternatively, just many immigrants) My experience is fairly different and they usually recognize the realpolitik aspects of the whole thing in one form or another.
In fact, you can search this very forum for the thread on the recent Tibet riots which *I* started.
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Of course a tiny minority of the Chinese population with a vastly different recent history from most of China might have a different stance. Where did I say every Chinese person thinks like that?
It also does not preclude thinking the invasions were realpolitik; only a couple of the people I talked to thought China invaded partly because it wanted to help Tibetans change their government, most of them just thought people shouldn't complain due to that perceived attitude.
And all of the immigrants in question have been, at oldest, early thirties. I can think of about ten such conversations specifically, and several of those are early 20s.
And I'd like to quote the part of your first line that I was disagreeing with:
quote:with the only particularly unique quality being that you're (as a group) remarkably hypocritical and self-righteous while going about the same old.
China's been just as hypocritical and self-righteous about their invasions. And since more than one of their last several invasions with hypocritical reasons given were in the last fifty years, by your standards they're still going about the same old.
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Where did I say every Chinese person thinks like that?
You literally said "every recent Chinese immigrant."
quote: China's been just as hypocritical and self-righteous about their invasions. And since more than one of their last several invasions with hypocritical reasons given were in the last fifty years, by your standards they're still going about the same old.
Of course they are and so is the US. Thats what the same old means.
The only real disagreement I have is with the "just as hypocritical." If you think a handful of military invasions where we barely got out the front door, let alone overseas or to other continents is even in the same ballpark as the systematic economic, religious, and military colonization of whole continents and tens of millions of people then you have very little sense of magnitude.
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Now you're resorting to selective quotation. Take a look at the entire quotation "every recent Chinese immigrant I've had a conversation about Tibet with."
So our unique quality is in not being unique?
We haven't done whole continents and tens of millions of people for quite some time. China's done millions of people too, of course; not all of its invasions just got out the door. However, I never said China was just as good at being an invader and colonialist, especially in modern history, only just as hypocritical.
edit: we've done tens of millions of people recently if you count Iraq, but given attitudes about the war so soon after, it is among our least hypocritical.
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Now you're resorting to selective quotation. Take a look at the entire quotation "every recent Chinese immigrant I've had a conversation about Tibet with."
Which is of increasing selectiveness as we take apart that claim. The problem is that you were attempting to create a picture of the Chinese immigrant community but then focused only on immigrants from mainland China. In fact, in both Canada and the United States the recent immigrant population is still dominated by Cantonese and people with Hong Kong roots. Its only in very recent years that the trends are toward mainlanders and they have quite aways to catch up.
quote: So our unique quality is in not being unique?
Seriously, read the quote again and work on your concentration, "with the only particularly unique quality being that you're (as a group) remarkably hypocritical and self-righteous while going about the same old."
See the "remarkably"? The remarkable aspect is not in that fact that you go about the same old but the remarkable hypocrisy and self-righteousness. Its pretty plain English.
quote: We haven't done whole continents and tens of millions of people for quite some time.
Again, different views on time. A couple hundred years in Chinese history doesn't even get you out of the last dynasty and nets only a handful of invasions. Vietnam and Tibet mostly.
A couple hundred years in United States history gets you to the enslavement of Africans to the extent that they form a full 10% or more of your population. The number of invasions in Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East, I can't even begin to count.
It just doesn't compare.
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Blayne Bradley
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Assuming 200 years ago starts at roughly 1805 It would appear that China hasn't invaded a single country in that time. Tibet doesn't count as its essentially indistinguishable from reclaiming previously controlled territory a fact recognized by the international community.
Also why wouldn't tibetans want the Chinese to have moved in? Tibet was 95% Slaves and Serfs owned by a aristocratic land owning ruling class that made up 5% of the population whose worth was measured in their weight in gold and the worth of a peasant was worth a length of string. The Chinese introduced secular rule, land reform, social equality and economic aid and development.
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See, even the foreigner is more hypocritical on Chinese invasions than I am. At least I count Tibet as an invasion Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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I'm more interested in the attitudes of Chinese people, and mainland immigrants are more indicative of those on the whole.
Also, you're wrong about the recent immigrant population being dominated like that. Not counting HK and Taiwan, as of 2006 there were 1,357,482 people born in mainland China living in the US ( http://www.migrationinformation.org/USfocus/display.cfm?id=685 ). If you include HK but not Taiwan, the number only goes up to 1,551,316. Note that this isn't recent immigrants, this is all immigrants still living in the US. Recent immigrants are even more heavily dominated by mainland China.
According to the stats from the census bureau from 2000 ( [url=http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/stp-159/STP-159-china(inclTaiwan).pdf] here [/ur] -- strangely the site won't allow parentheses in a url, but if I put it in url tags it'll leave it as plaintext) , those from China including Taiwan were numbered at 1 518 650, while not including Taiwan ( http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/stp-159/STP-159-china.pdf ) they were numbered at 1 192 435 . So unless there's been an incredible upsurge since then in the percentage from Taiwan, they don't dominate total living immigrants, much less recent immigrants, of which there's been a big increase in the number from mainland China.
I don't have stats for Canada, but I doubt they're grossly distorted from those.
quote:Seriously, read the quote again and work on your concentration, "with the only particularly unique quality being that you're (as a group) remarkably hypocritical and self-righteous while going about the same old."
See the "remarkably"? The remarkable aspect is not in that fact that you go about the same old but the remarkable hypocrisy and self-righteousness. Its pretty plain English.
I wasn't construing you as saying the remarkable part was going about the same old, so I don't think it is my reading comprehension that needs much improvement. I was referring to how you were suddenly starting to concede at least some hypocrisy on the part of China. And I continue to disagree that any hypocrisy and self-righteousness on the part of westerners about our endeavors in invasion and control is not especially unique to westerners in contrast to Chinese people.
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Blayne: China never invaded Korea or Vietnam, either? You should stop spending so much money on drugs.
Mucus: if we're taking Blayne as an example, he's totally not hypocritical in the ways you've been talking about wrt the west's treatment of east asia Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Blayne Bradley
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Uummm. A large portion of southern china are cantonese not just including HK.
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Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Blayne: China never invaded Korea or Vietnam, either? You should stop spending so much money on drugs.
Mucus: if we're taking Blayne as an example, he's totally not hypocritical in the ways you've been talking about wrt the west's treatment of east asia
Please explain how China sending 200,000 volunteers to aid North Korea any different from the US sending fighter pilots to China in 1937?
Also "invaded" Vietnam? Border war/retalliatory strike != Invasion and in any case they didn't occupy Vietnam or Korea either way. Maybe its you who needs to lay off the drugs and crack open a history book.
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fugu: Your numbers are for first generation immigrants, not recent immigrants.
All of your statistics I already touched on myself with, "Its only in very recent years that the trends are toward mainlanders and they have quite aways to catch up"
Again, you're using very small Western-based assumptions on time. Recent for Chinese people means like in the last 50 years. The largest group of Chinese immigrants that we classify as non-recent would be immigrants that came over to build the railways.
It *would* be hypocritical for us to call Americans Europeans with a max of 200 years of settlement and then in the same breath turn around and call Chinese Americans after a mere 50 years or so. But we're not like you (collective).
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Blayne: China never invaded Korea or Vietnam, either? You should stop spending so much money on drugs.
Korea is already out because as BlackBlade noted both sides were walking freely across the lines. China invaded South Korea only after the US invaded North Korea so its basically a wash.
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Blayne: China had every intention of invading Vietnam, in fact Deng Xiao Ping out and out told Carter that was his intention. It was the 40,000ish casualties in the first month that saw the Chinese drastically change their strategy.
quote:Although Hanoi said it was forced to do so to stop Pol Pot's genocide and to put an end to his cross-border attacks against Vietnam, Deng saw it as a calculated move by Moscow to use its allies to encircle China from the south. Soviet "adventurism" in Southeast Asia had to be stopped, Deng said, and he was calculating (correctly, it turned out) that Moscow would not intervene in a limited border war between China and Vietnam. Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said Deng's explanation to Carter of his invasion plans, with its calculated defiance of the Soviets, was the "single most impressive demonstration of raw power politics" that he had ever seen.
But I suppose that again plays on China's fear of European intrigue in the Asian realm. But even with that motive Blayne you need to acknowledge that China did try to invade Vietnam, they did it with the Monguls, and during Deng's administration. You'd think Deng would have learned something about the fact that although the Mongol hordes were able to plow through Europe they were completely stopped in Vietnam hundreds of years ago.
edit:
quote:Please explain how China sending 200,000 volunteers
Volunteers? Please. Sure many, I'll even grant you most enlisted, but don't pretend Mao was above impressing people into the army to fight. -----
Mucus: You seem a bit more angry than you typically are discussing these topics, is everything OK? Besides American immaturity of course.
email me through the forums if there is anything wrong.
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quote:The largest group of Chinese immigrants that we classify as non-recent would be immigrants that came over to build the railways.
Yeah, and that happened in the 1850s, 60s and 70s, so you're saying a 150 years ago doesn't count either? Or did they come over en masse to build the highway system in the 1950s time frame that you're referring to?
quote:You should inform Lyrhawn who still uses self-serving rhetoric like "protected China from outside influence" or "we just finished fighting a war that removed Japan from China" which started the whole conversation.
You're right, I shouldn't have said protected China from outside influence. I should have said protected their territorial integrity. We did it for selfish reasons, but we didn't do what the Europeans would have done, which would have meant grabbing our own slice of China for ourselves and let others grab theirs. I think you could argue that we limited outside influence, and it might not have been what the Chinese wanted, but being conquered and ripped apart I would imagine would be something they'd want even less.
quote:You can deal with the facts or ignore the facts and call people names*. It would be racist if I said Europeans did what they did *because* they were white. Its not racist to simply observe that European imperialists were white and as even you admit set new records in exploitation and imperialism.
Europeans? Sure. Americans? Not really. Maybe you could argue economically in the last 50 years, but by that accounting, China is on the verge of, if not already, guilty of the same thing. It IS however racist to say that all white people are the same, which is part of what I glean from what you're saying.
quote:* Perhaps I should call you a racist for assuming that I hold the views that I do simply because of my race.
I don't care what what you're race is, I'm talking about what you're saying, not who you are. Your race never entered into it. That's a pretty half-assed attempt at deflection, and isn't remotely the same thing.
quote:No, I simply live in a world where I don't measure time in 50 year slices and the occupation of North America is uncomfortably close.
You said that Chinese people should have given Americans the benefit of the doubt for dubious actions over a handful of years. We say prove it over time.
50 year slices? America has been around for 230 years. If you're only counting actions since 1950, then you don't get to use American Indians for your purposes.
quote:Monroe doctrine, "banana republics" ring any bells. It just never got as bad as European work because you guys had less time.
What does less time have to do with anything? Europe carved up and subjugated Africa in a generation. America had been a country for a hundred years at that point. The timing issue has nothing to do with it. If we had really wanted to, we could have conquered all that territory and could have added it to our holdings. That you don't see the differences is to me indicative of either a lack of willingness to try, or just total ignorance of the subject. You know the anti-American lines that every non-American seems to know by heart and learn at some point in their lives, but the specifics aren't really holding up from what I see.
Why isn't Cuba part of America? Why isn't Panama? Haiti? Nicaragua? Mexico?
Because we actively rejected the European style imperialism that would have led them to annex those countries, but we chose not to, and in many cases, went in to stabilize and got out as fast as we could. And the Monroe doctrine kept European colonial powers OUT of an area that we didn't end up taking for ourselves. We only took the Philippines through international peer pressure, and it was a huge mistake and an awful act. But even in the biggest overt act of foreign imperialism in American history we still did a better job than Europe did in theirs.
I don't think we did it all for altruistic reasons, we did a lot of it to limit European influence in what we saw as our sphere of control, and for economic domination (which was a dubious argument considered we generally skipped the raping of natural resources that Europe did, and considering these places had no money to buy our goods). But I do think there were altruistic movies mixed in, and I think the results speak to that effect.
I'm not saying that we didn't make a lot of mistakes or that we didn't commit any atrocities, because we did, just like Asians have, just like Africans have, just like Europeans, but on nowhere near the same scale as that last group. What Japan did, they didn't learn from us.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: ... Mucus: You seem a bit more angry than you typically are discussing these topics, is everything OK? Besides American immaturity of course.
email me through the forums if there is anything wrong.
I think addressing this is probably more productive then rehashing the quotes that Lyrhawn brought up and that I've already addressed.
Stepping back and taking a look at the thread, I *am* more angry than normal and if some one of that venom hit Fugu in the crossfire.
fugu13, I apologise for conflating you with Lyrhawn
No, this is mostly between Lyrhawn and I for a number of reasons. But I think I'll take up BlackBlade's offer to look over something that I wrote in one big go as a first pass filter to avoid inflaming this even more (Sorry BlackBlade).
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Assuming 200 years ago starts at roughly 1805 It would appear that China hasn't invaded a single country in that time. Tibet doesn't count as its essentially indistinguishable from reclaiming previously controlled territory a fact recognized by the international community.
If you just didn't know what 'invading' means, that would be forgivable. Here, you're trying to avoid calling a spade a spade.
Tibet was invaded. conquered. all that jazz.
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Mucus: someone born here was never anything but an American citizen. I don't count them as immigrants. But given the vastly larger number of people who live here who moved here from mainland China than from HK + Taiwan, I want to see some numbers for second and later generation immigrants, out to whatever number of generations you deem reasonable, that show mainland Chinese are not the majority.
And that's all a side note, of course. Since mainland Chinese are the vast majority of Chinese, they are clearly the appropriate immigrants to talk to if one wants to get any idea of majority Chinese attitudes towards things.
Also, whatever one's stance on other things about the Chinese invasion of Korea, it was definitely an invasion (which Blayne appears to roundly deny happened).
quote:No, this is mostly between Lyrhawn and I for a number of reasons. But I think I'll take up BlackBlade's offer to look over something that I wrote in one big go as a first pass filter to avoid inflaming this even more (Sorry BlackBlade).
If it makes it any better, there's no particular inflammation on my side, this just happens to be a subject I take special issue with, but I'm not upset or angry.
I'm not sure why you're taking particular umbrage at me, as I don't think I've been offensive or vitriolic, but if this particular subject has special significance to you and you've taken extra offense on account of that then I apologize if any of my statements, through that lens, were taken with extra offense.
Though, apologizing for the packaging doesn't mean I'm retracting the substance of what's inside.
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Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Mucus: someone born here was never anything but an American citizen. I don't count them as immigrants. But given the vastly larger number of people who live here who moved here from mainland China than from HK + Taiwan, I want to see some numbers for second and later generation immigrants, out to whatever number of generations you deem reasonable, that show mainland Chinese are not the majority.
And that's all a side note, of course. Since mainland Chinese are the vast majority of Chinese, they are clearly the appropriate immigrants to talk to if one wants to get any idea of majority Chinese attitudes towards things.
Also, whatever one's stance on other things about the Chinese invasion of Korea, it was definitely an invasion (which Blayne appears to roundly deny happened).
Please explain your definition of invasion and at what time and place did China invade a country known as "Korea" and in what way sending troops to aid a Comintern Ally (DPRK) somehow an invasion, they didnt occupy the country or institute regime change.
"If you just didn't know what 'invading' means, that would be forgivable. Here, you're trying to avoid calling a spade a spade.
Tibet was invaded. conquered. all that jazz. "
For an invasion to take place, there would need a country to invade, for all intents and purposes Tibet was circa 1949 a part of the Republic of China a fact recognized on the maps of every power that mattered, since it was not a legal sovereign entity then de jure then no invasion took place just the central government stabilizing a remote province not recognizing the rule of the central government at the time.
Find an example of China in the last two hundred years when it was ruled by Han Chinese that it took an army declared war on, and invaded with intent to occupy/annex another Sovereign nation recognized by the league of nations or the united nations.
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Mucus: someone born here was never anything but an American citizen. I don't count them as immigrants. But given the vastly larger number of people who live here who moved here from mainland China than from HK + Taiwan, I want to see some numbers for second and later generation immigrants, out to whatever number of generations you deem reasonable, that show mainland Chinese are not the majority.
Well, I took a look and its hard to get hard numbers. But I think you only need second generation immigrants like myself to get the trends that I'm speaking of. Unfortunately, the Canadian government does not track it directly but I can demonstrate it with at some confidence using statistics rather than personal observation.
On page 26, you'll see the breakdown on immigrants from between HK, Taiwan, and PRC. Simply summing up the values gives roughly 377 thousand first generation immigrants from HK and Taiwan and roughly 366 thousand immigrants from the PRC.
That already gives us a small majority only with first generation immigrants. (Although I admit that data past 2005 would probably bump the PRC substantially indicating that I am a little out of date.) Sadly, my own parents immigrated in the 70s are are simply off the map.
For the second generation we need to use some circumstantial evidence since it appears the Canadian government doesn't explicitly track it.
What we do know is that the peak of HK immigration is from 1991-96 where as the peak for the PRC is 1996-2001, which would give that group that much more of an advantage when it comes to children. Also, if you look at the included maps for Toronto and Vancouver, you see that the current percentages for places of birth for Hong Kong + Taiwan are usually larger or competitive to those for the PRC. With a reasonable distribution split for the Canadian-born group, you should see that the HK + Taiwan group should be relatively dominant (although perhaps not for many decades more).
I think that should give some indication that the numbers do follow my intuition to some degree.
quote: And that's all a side note, of course. Since mainland Chinese are the vast majority of Chinese, they are clearly the appropriate immigrants to talk to if one wants to get any idea of majority Chinese attitudes towards things.
Yeah, I was mostly objecting to the characterization of the recent immigrant community.
On the issue, perhaps, but you have to realize that there are a few flaws with such an approach. In particular, one should consider how people talk with outsiders and in particular when in a country that is largely hostile to one's home.
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quote:Three waves of oppression. We can't even come close to touching it.
Why do you think this is?
quote:Monroe doctrine, "banana republics" ring any bells. It just never got as bad as European work because you guys had less time.
So you think time was the limiting factor that prevented us from, say, annexing part of Central America?
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Thats actually a very interesting question. I recently read a book about Joseph Needham who was a Western scientist who visited China during WWII in order to find out exactly what the Chinese developed all those years ago (it turns out a very remarkable amount) and why Chinese technological development. It raised a few issues that I'll sum up.
One theory is that China is just too dang big, hard to govern, but relatively unified for most of its history. With these aspects, there is both little impetus to develop in a competitive way. Where as the Europeans had to go out of Europe to look for soft targets, it was viewed in China as almost exile to go out and deal with the rest of the world.
One example, during the Ming Dynasty, Zheng He made six separate voyages to Africa. Here is a summary of the results:
quote: Zheng He's fleets visited Arabia, East Africa, India, Indonesia and Thailand (at the time called Siam), dispensing and receiving goods along the way.[8] Zheng He presented gifts of gold, silver, porcelain and silk;in return, China received such novelties as ostriches, zebras, camels, ivory and giraffes.[8][10][11]
Zheng He generally sought to attain his goals through diplomacy, and his large army awed most would-be enemies into submission. But a contemporary reported that Zheng He "walked like a tiger" and did not shrink from violence when he considered it necessary to impress foreign peoples with China's military might. He ruthlessly suppressed pirates who had long plagued Chinese and southeast Asian waters. He also intervened in a civil disturbance in order to establish his authority in Ceylon, and he made displays of military force when local officials threatened his fleet in Arabia and East Africa. From his fourth voyage, he brought envoys from thirty states who traveled to China and paid their respects at the Ming court.
In 1424, the Yongle Emperor died. His successor, the Hongxi Emperor (reigned 1424–1425), decided to curb the influence at court. Zheng He made one more voyage under the Xuande Emperor (reigned 1426–1435), but after that Chinese treasure ship fleets ended. Zheng He died during the treasure fleet's last voyage. Although he has a tomb in China, it is empty: he was, like many great admirals, buried at sea.
I bring this up for a couple reasons. First, the tributary system doesn't really encourage interaction with foreigners. The value of gifts given was normally greater than what was received. This was to show how great China was. Condescending, yes. But ultimately not an incentive to trade.
So that handles the economic sphere. Without incentives to colonize, trade, or settle, both are sunk.
The last sphere is military. On that one, we did go out and pillage. The Mongols are still known in Europe and did a pretty daring (and crappy) invasion of Japan and the Qing weren't particularly nice people either. Zheng He also illustrates that we had the ability to do these things.
So, we have one sphere out of three. We had capability but are particularly lacking in motive. Would we have developed more in time? I don't know. Possibly. But we didn't, which is perhaps good for the world, but ambiguous for us.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I'm not sure why you're taking particular umbrage at me, as I don't think I've been offensive or vitriolic, but if this particular subject has special significance to you and you've taken extra offense on account of that then I apologize if any of my statements, through that lens, were taken with extra offense.
OK, I think burning off some steam to BlackBlade and taking a few breathers helped.
I think I can address why you pressed my buttons that you did and why I specifically went off on you versus a more hawkish conservative, which would be more predictable.
quote: Though, apologizing for the packaging doesn't mean I'm retracting the substance of what's inside.
Thats OK. I don't think many people change minds here, the best I think we can do is understand one another.
So first, I've been doing a bit of reading on things Chinese recently, history, movies, media, etc. And not even all that much from PRC, mostly Western/CBC books about China or media from Hong Kong. But in effect, its partially heightened my sense of identification, but not necessarily with the current Chinese government, just in a very diffuse general way.
So, the type of rhetoric is almost bringing to my mind images of me as a regular Chinese person back in the age of imperialism and hearing you say stuff like "protecting China", freeing China from the Japanese, and then acting as though we should be grateful. You could almost imagine a black American hearing from a white American about how slavery wasn't all that bad and it could have been a lot worse with Europeans. Well, maybe ... but not the best button to push.
I don't think that Americans (or truth be told, Canadians) really have moved all that far away from the years of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1948). I don't have to go far to read stuff telling Chinese Americans to go back to China, so I'm especially sensitive to any back-sliding, particularly when it comes the "good guys" (that would be you ... I'll get back to this).
Second, you first insinuated I was racist for bringing up that "Plus from an Asian POV ... you're just another set of white guys who were just a bit late to the imperialism party." You further added "You either really don't know what you're talking about, or you do, and you're being either really disingenuous, or really racist. Or a both."
Well, no. You don't get to call me ignorant, you don't get to call me disingenuous and you especially don't get to call me a racist. At least the way I was educated, we're taught to debate over the issues and the facts, if we're wrong then thats what we focus on, but we don't go for the name-calling and the insults.
But back to race, I think I'll split this out.
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posted
This will just be on race. (The next is on you (Lyrhawn) as one of the good guys)
The simple fact of the matter is that for both Americans and Europeans (let alone Asians), imperialism as it was historically practiced is explicitly tied up with race.
You can examine the *very first* phrase that I referenced on page 2, "white man's burden."
quote:"The White Man's Burden" is a poem by the English poet Rudyard Kipling. It was originally published in the popular magazine McClure's in 1899, with the subtitle The United States and the Philippine Islands. Although Kipling's poem mixed exhortation to empire with sober warnings of the costs involved, imperialists within the United States latched onto the phrase "white man's burden" as a characterization for imperialism that justified the policy as a noble enterprise.
I don't want to go through each and every point I brought up, but the fact is I didn't just make this stuff up, Europeans created it and Americans adopted it with enthusiasm. Its actually kind of generous to view this cultural problem as being a result of American ideas being the product of European ideas. The alternative is to think that Americans created it de novo.
Now let's examine the focal issue of how Japan turned into an imperialistic power. Consider the following fairly conventional historical text:
quote: On the other hand, few Europeans would admit that Japanese culture, however defined, qualified as being fully civilized. So the elite Japanese who struggled to master European culture faced a most vexing attitude from many of the very people they tried to emulate: you may not because you cannot, and you cannot because you may not! Many European commentators reacted negatively to alleged Japanese "aping" of European ways. There seem to have been two related tendencies underlying this negative reaction. First was a desire in the minds of many Europeans for Japan to remain quaint and exotic. Second was a feeling of cultural and racial superiority such that no non-European people could possibly master the ways of Europe in any deep or "true" fashion. Japanese adoption of European cultural forms must, therefore, be a case of mere superficial imitation or "aping" of their European betters. To what extent do such ways of thinking continue in the present? ... Japan, however, was still part of Asia in Western eyes, and thus, by definition, could never become fully civilized. Notice in the links between technology and machines, forms of government, religion, race, and degree of civilization expressed in the passages above. In this way of thinking, Japan could, at best, merely imitate the world's most civilized countries, never quite coming up to the same level. Recall Wirgman's admonition that "you may wear spectacles till you are blue in the faces, [but] you never can look like Germans, positively never." Recall also the images of Japan and its people that came to the fore during the Second World War (see the first chapter).
Why the obsession with rigidly fixed categories? Part of the answer is the racial thinking discussed above. If races are a hard-wired biological entity, they cannot be easily changed. But underlying this way of thinking was, among other things, Western imperialism: the economic, military, and cultural dominance of the world by a small number of countries. These countries were *reluctant to let any new members, especially from exotic lands,* into their exclusive club ( http://www.east-asian-history.net/textbooks/MJ/graphics/ch3/14.htm ). By the turn of the twentieth century, many Japanese had grown deeply resentful of the hypocrisy that relegated Japan to the ranks of the "semi-civilized" because it lacked Western cultural forms but derided and ridiculed its attempts to master those very cultural forms. This resentment took several different forms, and it was a major background contributor to conflict of the middle twentieth century. ... By the 1920s, two distinct positions had emerged among Japan's elites with respect to foreign policy. One position said that Japan was functionally a Western country and should therefore cooperate with the Western powers in the conduct of world affairs. Though they did not say it this way, what they meant was that Japan was an imperialist power just like England, Germany, France, and the others, and would thus be better off in the long run by playing along with the imperialist "club," even if the other members of the club had the unpleasant tendency to look down their noses at Japan culturally. Notice that this position adopted the view of Fukuzawa that Japan should not be part of Asia, albeit with some modification.
The opposing position adopted the Miyake/Okakura view that Japan was and should be a part of Asia and that it should opposed Western imperialism there. "Asia for the Asiatics" was one of their slogans. Advocates of this point of view thought that Japan should stop trying to cooperate with the West and should instead forge a mighty empire out of the vast resources of Asia. The more extreme elements of this point of view envisioned a massive Armageddon-like war between "Asia" and "the West" in which one group would completely destroy the other. This way of thinking mirrored "Yellow Peril" fears on the part of many Europeans and Americans who shared the same gloomy view of the future. This position combined elements of both cooperative and chauvinistic nationalism.
Sadly, we know which side "won." Even more gloomy, one can see China and America heading along a partly similar course.
But on race, one should note two major points. First, the pivotal role race played in the way the West viewed Japan. Second, and more damning ... the fact that imperialism as defined by the West themselves was so inextricably tied to race, they couldn't conceive of the Japanese joining the "imperialist club."
The full article is worth reading, it demonstrates how the Japanese viewed themselves as going on an imperialist rampage to impress Europeans and just how condescending the West was to them.
Most importantly, its even a standard Western view (its not even an Asian one), written in the United States by a Western professor.
So yes, one can be politically correct and whitewash (hmm) the issue by claiming that there's something objectionable to the phrase "white guys" to describe Western imperialism or we can look at the truth and see that that was the way that everyone viewed it at the time, Western or Asian.
It would be racist to claim that white people practiced imperialism because they were white. It would be racist to claim that non-whites couldn't have done the same thing if they were working off of the same ideas and had come up with "scientific racism" as its called in the article.
Its not racist to observe that "Western imperialism" as it is called in the article was practiced both by white guys who saw themselves as white (click on the cartoon for a disturbing example ... the author's name is Bigot for example) and seen from an Asian perspective as coming from white guys (and explicitly no or very few women too).
I can sympathize and see how it kinda sucks if you're a white guy to hear this. But thats how it was and I don't think one should hide that.
Onto why explicitly you as one of the "good guys."
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However, I had just finished watching the Daily Show, a fairly typical (but one-day delayed) show but one that illustrated a list of the ways that Americans tortured people, the judgment that probably no one will be brought to justice (even with a new administration) despite lying about it, representatives of a significant portion of the American population who would rather believe that it didn't happen or just want to sweep it under the rug, and in the interview even a brief jab to the large influence of evangelicals in America's military in Iraq.
Thats one show. Only one episode of one show. A comedy show.
This illustrates one of the most troubling aspects of the situation as going forward. See, China tortures people, period. But everyone knows that. Practically every Chinese person knows that. We don't have to be reminded. On both sides of my family, I'm only a couple degrees away from relatives who fled the land reforms, or survived the worst of the cultural revolution, or who have to deal with institutional corruption today. We *know* the government is lying.
What insidious about the American situation is the way it can all be swept under the rug and then the next moment, the US is held up as a moral exemplar for the world to admire. The United States isn't like everyone else, its an exception to all that. What we just did or are doing now, its justified. Or at least thats the press. And many many Americans buy it.
But you're part of the "good" guys. You're supposed to be bringing change and pushing the Bush ideas out.
Let's observe something that predates even my first upset response.
quote: South America and Africa are about the only continents I'm willing to listen to criticism from when it comes to American imperialism. Europe and Asia should look to their own wounds, for they're either just as great or far greater.
Think about this rationally and if you had heard this from President Bush. You'd expect him to ignore *whole continents* and to forge on ahead blindly. But rationally, does this make any sense? Who better to know what oppression is than people who had to live through it? Do their leaders at some nebulous time really write off the experience of the people there forever?
If a British person calls out an immoral act, does his leader multiple generations back discard his opinion permanently? Or does he maybe have some special perspective having had vicariously done the same thing and regretted it? And what if he's immigrated somewhere else?
No, I expect terms like "Old Europe" used to discard the opinions from whole areas from the last administration.
I expect better now.
You have to be willing to hold your own feet to the fire otherwise you become complicit in stuff like:
Well, yes, they tortured people ... but we'll just not punish anyone (and embolden future torturers). Well, yes, they started warrantless wiretapping ... but we'll just keep it anyways.
If one views the US as an exception and better because, well, its the US ... it just lets you rest on your laurels and ends up being corrosive to the admirable American phrase about eternal vigilance.
I think thats all. Yikes. Damn thats long and I hope I toned it down from what BB got enough.
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quote: This illustrates one of the most troubling aspects of the situation as going forward. See, China tortures people, period. But everyone knows that. Practically every Chinese person knows that. We don't have to be reminded. On both sides of my family, I'm only a couple degrees away from relatives who fled the land reforms, or survived the worst of the cultural revolution, or who have to deal with institutional corruption today. We *know* the government is lying.
That poses an interesting question.
Which is worse? Everyone knowing that torture is going on, but no one being allowed to say or write about it for, well, fear of imprisonment or torture? Or some people knowing that torture is going on, but many not, while those who do are free to shout from the rooftops that it's happening?
I think that latter is the reason we are, and should be, held up as an example, though thankfully as time has passed many have taken our very imperfect example and adopted it for themselves, to be examples in their own right.
---------
As to historical Chinese might-have-been colonialism, it seems the foundation of their not going out and colonizing was basically a staggering cultural and racial sense of superiority. Middle Kingdom and all. That's...well, not really a very persuasive moral platform for favorably comparing China to Europe or America, in my opinion.
It's different, but that's about it.
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posted
Rather than a massive response, I'll do it in pieces like you did:
quote:So, the type of rhetoric is almost bringing to my mind images of me as a regular Chinese person back in the age of imperialism and hearing you say stuff like "protecting China", freeing China from the Japanese, and then acting as though we should be grateful. You could almost imagine a black American hearing from a white American about how slavery wasn't all that bad and it could have been a lot worse with Europeans. Well, maybe ... but not the best button to push.
Grateful? Maybe not grateful, but I'd hope you'd recognize the differences. If you don't see a substantive difference between economic and physical imperialism, then I think we're already worlds apart. Forcing China to trade with everyone in the world, which is what we did, was certainly unfair, and not something I'd be grateful for...but what would have happened if we hadn't done that would have been the carving up of the country by European powers. And if you want to know how well that goes, look at Africa, now look at China again. Now tell me there's no difference. I don't want a thank you from China. We did it for selfish reasons; we wanted a place to offload trade goods. But banging down the door as a door to door salesman is a heck of a lot different than banging down the door and then taking your house. We'd just done that in the Philippines and it was atrocious, and Americans knew that and were sick of it after one helping.
quote:I don't think that Americans (or truth be told, Canadians) really have moved all that far away from the years of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1948). I don't have to go far to read stuff telling Chinese Americans to go back to China, so I'm especially sensitive to any back-sliding, particularly when it comes the "good guys" (that would be you ... I'll get back to this).
Second, you first insinuated I was racist for bringing up that "Plus from an Asian POV ... you're just another set of white guys who were just a bit late to the imperialism party." You further added "You either really don't know what you're talking about, or you do, and you're being either really disingenuous, or really racist. Or a both."
I've never really understood how the special emphasis on anti-Chinese feeling ever really proliferated here. Racism isn't a surprise, we were born and bred on racism (Europe was the same way, China and Japan were and still are, that way, to varying degrees), and anti-Catholicism, and anti-immigrantism, despite being a nation of immigrants. We've always been oddly fond of shrugging off the shackles of oppressors so we can come to America and by golly do some oppressing on our own terms.
But nothing I've said to you has had anything to do with the fact that you're Chinese (I'm guessing you're Chinese?) or Asian, or even Canadian (I sympathize with the last one, I'm French Canadian on my mother's side). The reason I tend to get heated in these debates is two fold, and I'll admit that it's usually with Europeans rather than fellow North Americans: I'm sick to death of Europeans wagging their finger at us, having seemingly forgotten the sheer mass of crap that they did to the world, and I'm mostly looking at you Britain, and the sheer mass of the problems that continue to perpetuate because of the things they've done. I don't mind someone telling me not to do something that's bad if they've done it themselves. They'd know better than anyone how bad it was! But to do it lathered in moral superiority is irksome, just as irksome as when the US does it to other people, which I also hate by the way. The other thing I don't like, and this is going to sound 100% typical American, is not getting credit for having done things better, and this is mostly I'd say pre-1950s, as, sadly, and honestly, I don't really know the details of all the crap we did post 1950s, but before that, you could say we were on equal footing with Europe, and we looked at Europe and we tried the whole imperialism thing in the Philippines, and we didn't have the stomach for it.
That's exactly why Rudyard Kipling was writing White Man's Burden. The subtitle of the poem is something like "To America in the Philippines," he was writing a recommendation and a call to arms. We listened, but regretted it, and we tried to make amends. You talk down about the Monroe Doctrine, but that ignores the fact that without our selfish need to treat the Caribbean like an American lake, the whole area would have been in thrall under Europe, and everything they touched had a tendency to wilt. We really weren't just like every other white guy out there...more on this later.
I honestly don't think I was ignoring facts and reason to throw insults. But I'm honestly offended by what you've said. I think that in the balance, what you've said has equated to "all white people were the same," and I while I can't imagine that's what you're intending to say, that's how it's come across. As far as ignorance, you're ignoring a lot of American history in your accusations, and European as well, as far as the comparing and contrasting goes, especially if you think we're all just one blob of unsortable white people.
So alright, you aren't racist, or ignorant, or disingenuous, but you are ignoring a lot of things, or were anyway, and you were saying some borderline offensive things to me. I'll apologize for the backhanded swipe at you, as one shouldn't put a label on someone after a single offense, but generally I don't have a problem calling a spade a spade when spadelike behaviors are present. That's why I said it.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: That poses an interesting question.
I thought so
quote: Which is worse? Everyone knowing that torture is going on, but no one being allowed to say or write about it for, well, fear of imprisonment or torture?
Well, thats not quite true. I'm obviously saying something about it. Obviously, my relatives had to say something for me to know about it. Empirically, people in Hong Kong say or write about it and if you take a glance at blogs that cover the Chinese media like RConversation and EastSouthWestNorth, you'll see that while there is an attempt at suppression but its not all that effective.
In fact, its pretty much a consensus that everyone is more free to talk about these things than at any other point in Chinese history and it has been getting better for quite some time.
quote: Or some people knowing that torture is going on, but many not, while those who do are free to shout from the rooftops that it's happening?
Well, its a bit of a wash really.*
See, does it matter all that much in the end? Either way, the torturers get away with it. As you mentioned in the other thread, there probably will be no trials or any real reprocussions beyond maybe a slap on the wrist for a few scapegoats.
And both ways, it may very well happen again. Waterboarding in its Western incarnation afterall has been used in Vietnam and has been developed since the Korean War.
* And at the juncture that it starts looking like a wash, you have to ask the question. If you find yourself benchmarking against China, a self-admitted developing nation, dictatorship, and corrupt ... but not coming up fundamentally better, maybe you should be holding yourselves to higher standards.
quote: As to historical Chinese might-have-been colonialism, it seems the foundation of their not going out and colonizing was basically a staggering cultural and racial sense of superiority. Middle Kingdom and all. That's...well, not really a very persuasive moral platform for favorably comparing China to Europe or America, in my opinion.
First, I want you to acknowledge that wasn't actually the question. Your question was about "why" the Chinese never developed it or practised it. A question about the moral implications of that is a different question
But if we must move on, the way I see it, yes. There is a difference.
Because its really only one step away from pacifism. From the belief that one's nation is superior to others and because of that it shouldn't conquer others, its not a huge step to pacifism as its practiced now.
i.e. Don't occupy others, don't fight with others, it doesn't drag them down, it drags you down. At the very bare minimum, wait for an international consensus.
These were the ideas that compelled Canadians to *not* enter the Iraq War, the refrain summing up all of that was, "We don't invade other countries, we're not like the Americans." Cultural superiority.
Sometimes it matters less *why* you don't do something, it matters more that you don't.
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quote:I don't want to go through each and every point I brought up, but the fact is I didn't just make this stuff up, Europeans created it and Americans adopted it with enthusiasm. Its actually kind of generous to view this cultural problem as being a result of American ideas being the product of European ideas. The alternative is to think that Americans created it de novo.
It's true, for a time we did adopt Kipling's exhortation wholeheartedly, but there was an extremely vocal subsection of the population that condemned imperialism, including former presidents like Grover Cleveland and presidential candidates like William Jennings Bryan, and leading authors like Mark Twain. The same month that the White Man's Burden appears in McClure's, The Real "White Man's Burden" was published as well. It's people like Crosby who would end up having their way. I think after the Philippines, we lost our stomach for it. Censorship tamped it down a bit, but there was no hiding the horrors of the Bolo War. The British and the French just kept going, but we stopped. You can point to occasional interventions in the Caribbean and Latin America, but the difference is that they were interventions (just like China had), and when we were done, we left. We didn't stay and force them to worship America.
quote:Its not racist to observe that "Western imperialism" as it is called in the article was practiced both by white guys who saw themselves as white (click on the cartoon for a disturbing example ... the author's name is Bigot for example) and seen from an Asian perspective as coming from white guys (and explicitly no or very few women too).
The part that I take issue with is the assumption that Americans and Europeans are one in the same simply because we're all white. You don't see a difference? That difference is the crux of what we've been discussing.
Also, if your excuse for Japan is "he started it," then you have to excuse the United States too. The only reason we even took the Philippines or stretched beyond our continental borders was the idea that to be a first rate power in the world, one had to have an empire. We wanted to be a first rate power, so we gave into peer pressure. I think by the way, there's a disconnect somewhere in your logic and understanding of what was going on in America when we took our foray into imperialism. Why are you giving Japan excuses and us the blame? Following your logic, we're in the same boat as Japan.
The difference of course being, when we got in that boat, we didn't form a massive Pacific empire and use people for medical experiments. Again, they didn't learn either of those things from the US.
I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to read the linked article in full, I will later. I have to go now, I have two finals later today and I need to study, one oddly enough is in a Japanese studies course.
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posted
(This was written before the immediately preceding post)
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Grateful? Maybe not grateful, but I'd hope you'd recognize the differences.
Yeah, but not on an emotional level. Note the analogy with slaves. Americans from some POV may have treated the slaves better, heck, they went to war about it. But you're not going to just say it to a black guy, eh?
quote:And if you want to know how well that goes, look at Africa, now look at China again. Now tell me there's no difference.
I really don't. I guess we might be working off different assumptions. My assumptions are that the Europeans already mostly did their thing, Hong Kong, Macao, Shandong, etc. Even the Europeans knew they couldn't split the whole country up so they did it in drips. And when the Europeans did do stuff like invade during the Boxer Rebellion, Americans tagged right along.
So KoM really summed it up. I don't think the differences are due to the US, they're just due to the circumstances.
quote:Racism isn't a surprise, we were born and bred on racism (Europe was the same way, China and Japan were and still are, that way, to varying degrees)
Similar ways, not the same. Read the section in the article on "scientific" racism. The European variant is much different from the Chinese variant which is much more akin to ethnocentrism.
quote: But nothing I've said to you has had anything to do with the fact that you're Chinese (I'm guessing you're Chinese?) or Asian, or even Canadian (I sympathize with the last one, I'm French Canadian on my mother's side).
Then how could you possibly have said that I was a racist? I mean I could have been a self-hating white person, but that just seems fairly improbable.
quote: The reason I tend to get heated in these debates is two fold, and I'll admit that it's usually with Europeans rather than fellow North Americans ... But to do it lathered in moral superiority is irksome, just as irksome as when the US does it to other people, which I also hate by the way.
Understood on both counts. But realize that being irritating doesn't make someone wrong.
quote: That's exactly why Rudyard Kipling was writing White Man's Burden. The subtitle of the poem is something like "To America in the Philippines," he was writing a recommendation and a call to arms. We listened, but regretted it, and we tried to make amends.
I was under the impression that it was supposed to be ironic/satirical rather than a recommendation as it was taken. But thats a quibble.
quote:... and you were saying some borderline offensive things to me. I'll apologize for the backhanded swipe at you
Not particularly, unless you assume implications about the motives for what I said. Thats a difference between what we said, you need to assume and extrapolate from what I said to take offence. The literal terms you used, they're offencive on their own.
But I will apologize for causing offence and I would also like to ask how you made that leap in order to prevent it in the future.
* Oh and if its not explicit. Thanks for the retraction of the terms, I appreciate it.
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quote:Well, thats not quite true. I'm obviously saying something about it. Obviously, my relatives had to say something for me to know about it. Empirically, people in Hong Kong say or write about it and if you take a glance at blogs that cover the Chinese media like RConversation and EastSouthWestNorth, you'll see that while there is an attempt at suppression but its not all that effective.
Granted, but if I'm not mistaken, both you and your parents no longer live in the nation that suppresses dissent, right? So obviously y'all don't count.
Hong Kong residents count, of course, since they do live in that nation. And while I will admit it's an unknowable question, I have to wonder that if Hong Kong hadn't ever been ceded to Britain after the 19th century War for Drugs, would those people living in Hong Kong be able to blog so freely? Why was Hong Kong afforded unique status once Britain's contract expired?
quote:In fact, its pretty much a consensus that everyone is more free to talk about these things than at any other point in Chinese history and it has been getting better for quite some time.
Granted. I think anyone can see that. The near-pacifistic Chinese haven't been running folks over with tanks lately that I can recall.
quote:* And at the juncture that it starts looking like a wash, you have to ask the question. If you find yourself benchmarking against China, a self-admitted developing nation, dictatorship, and corrupt ... but not coming up fundamentally better, maybe you should be holding yourselves to higher standards.
Just to be clear, I'm not benchmarking my country against China. I think it's horrid that even on a few issues we're in the ballpark of China. I was responding more to your tone, really, which has been distinctly adverserial and pro-China when comparing to the United States (or 'Europe' as you call it:p). That's probably just a product of the discussion itself, though, and largely unavoidable.
quote:First, I want you to acknowledge that wasn't actually the question. Your question was about "why" the Chinese never developed it or practised it. A question about the moral implications of that is a different question [Smile]
Well, it's a bit irritating to have demands like that set to me, but I do acknowledge it. I never meant to suggest it was the original question.
I do, however, think it's an implicit question to the other one.
quote: Because its really only one step away from pacifism. From the belief that one's nation is superior to others and because of that it shouldn't conquer others, its not a huge step to pacifism as its practiced now.
i.e. Don't occupy others, don't fight with others, it doesn't drag them down, it drags you down. At the very bare minimum, wait for an international consensus.
No, it's not really pacifism at all. Nor even a cousin. Not even a kissing cousin to pacificism. That comparison would only be fair if that reluctance to do violence because they're 'above it all' manifested itself across the board in their dealings with difficulty.
Plainly that is not the case.
Of course it should be said that ever since there was a PRC, they haven't been in a position to get colonial on anyone's asses in most places. If we're going to talk about modern times, surely that bears mentioning. Where could the PRC expand right now?
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Granted, but if I'm not mistaken, both you and your parents no longer live in the nation that suppresses dissent, right? So obviously y'all don't count.
Depends on what you mean by count. We're still Chinese. And trivially, I never said that we only socialised and disseminated these things after we got to Canada. And its not as if these issues don't arise when we go back.
The whole system is incredibly porous, which is why I'd like to re-emphasize those two blogs RConversation and EastSouthWestNorth if you want to learn more about how the censorship in China works.
quote: I do, however, think it's an implicit question to the other one.
I think that they're fairly different. The question as to why China developed the way it did is still an open question which occupies much work and study. But its one that can be studied in a decently objective way.
The hypothetical question about the moral implications of how China developed and how to weigh that against others? That requires much interpretation based on culture.
quote: That comparison would only be fair if that reluctance to do violence because they're 'above it all' manifested itself across the board in their dealings with difficulty.
Plainly that is not the case.
I disagree. Chinese reluctance to do violence IS manifest across the board in many ways. It explains the attraction of Chinese people to decidedly non-violent religions. It explains why a relatively small number of Mongols or Qing easily controlled a much larger Chinese population before ultimately being assimilated. It explains the lowly social status of the soldier in comparison to the scholar or the bureaucrat as compared to the West. It explains the building of the Great Wall and associated city walls. It even explains why the Japanese committed their massacre in Nanking, the development of actual Chinese resistance in Shanghai was totally unexpected to their understanding of Chinese character. The examples go on and on.
It is precisely a counter-reaction to the failure of this reluctance to do violence in dealing with foreign imperialism that lead to events such as the May 4th Movement and which explains the popularity of the CCP.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Yeah, but not on an emotional level. Note the analogy with slaves. Americans from some POV may have treated the slaves better, heck, they went to war about it. But you're not going to just say it to a black guy, eh?
I don't buy the analogy, sorry. While I do think that American slavery was different than other forms, and that could be a separate argument, I don't think that European vs American slavery is analogous to European vs American imperialism.
quote:I really don't. I guess we might be working off different assumptions. My assumptions are that the Europeans already mostly did their thing, Hong Kong, Macao, Shandong, etc. Even the Europeans knew they couldn't split the whole country up so they did it in drips. And when the Europeans did do stuff like invade during the Boxer Rebellion, Americans tagged right along.
So KoM really summed it up. I don't think the differences are due to the US, they're just due to the circumstances.
I don't get that. It was there for the taking. Look at those places that the Europeans already had, and they wanted more. We chose not to take a piece of the pie. I don't see how you can't see the difference there. We didn't go right along. Going right along would have meant taking our piece of the pie European style, like they'd always done there and elsewhere. Instead we said no, you can't have territorial concessions as punishment. That was a HUGE break with the normal way of doing business. I don't understand why you fail to recognize this.
quote:Similar ways, not the same. Read the section in the article on "scientific" racism. The European variant is much different from the Chinese variant which is much more akin to ethnocentrism.
Scientific racism only came about like 150 years ago. That, and religion, where some of the principle motivating factors used to justify imperialism, and we used them a little bit here too, but it was a temporary phase of American racist views. Americans far more often fit into the vein of ethnocentrism you describe, with the exception of a multi-decade love affair with men like William Graham Sumner and social darwinism, which actually applied equally to whites and blacks, and in fact serves only to emphasize I think the differences you're bringing up. Below blacks on the American social strata were the Irish. And they used scientific explanations for that too, though more importantly they used religious justifications.
quote:I was under the impression that it was supposed to be ironic/satirical rather than a recommendation as it was taken. But thats a quibble.
Among Kipling's many nicknames was "The Tubthumper of Empire." He was being extremely literal. Basically he was telling America to get over herself, grow up, and take her part in civilizing the world, because up to that point the Europeans had been doing it all themselves. Hell, even the Europeans at the time were trying to get us into something we hadn't been doing and never did very much of. The link that I posted from Ernest Crosby is the anti-imperialist viewpoint in America, the men who opposed that type of expansion. That's your satirical point of view.
quote:Not particularly, unless you assume implications about the motives for what I said. Thats a difference between what we said, you need to assume and extrapolate from what I said to take offence. The literal terms you used, they're offencive on their own.
That's splitting hairs. I qualified my statements. I said how it looked to me and gave you a chance to defend yourself. I didn't say "Mucus, you are a racist!" I said you sounded a certain way, but I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt despite what sounded pretty obvious. There needed to be assumption on my part to assume offense, that's true, but nothing I said to you was offensive unless you chose to take what I said as a literal attack. If you don't fit the bill, it shouldn't have been particularly offensive.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
On on the third post of yours that I never had a chance to cover:
quote:Think about this rationally and if you had heard this from President Bush. You'd expect him to ignore *whole continents* and to forge on ahead blindly. But rationally, does this make any sense? Who better to know what oppression is than people who had to live through it? Do their leaders at some nebulous time really write off the experience of the people there forever?
If a British person calls out an immoral act, does his leader multiple generations back discard his opinion permanently? Or does he maybe have some special perspective having had vicariously done the same thing and regretted it? And what if he's immigrated somewhere else?
I covered this earlier a little bit. I'm not writing anyone off, and I'm willing to listen to criticism, but I can't stomach hypocrisy. We're dealing with enough of our own messes and for that matter, a lot of the legacies of Europe's messes too. I can rattle off a half dozen problem spots in the world that are the direct creation of Britain's meddling in world affairs, and a couple more from France, maybe a few from Spain and Portugal, and one or two from Germany, Belgium and Italy. Pretending that Europe is the high and mighty defender of morality against their crazed little American brother makes my blood boil. It forces a small part of my brain to clamp shut and ignore everything that comes out of their hypocritical mouths, and it's an uncontrollable autonomic response.
If they want to talk to me in a way that actually gets through, they'd start a lot of their sentences with "Hey, we know about the problems you have, I mean look at all the messes we created, maybe you could try doing this..." I don't even need them to say "you aren't screwing up NEARLY as bad as we did, here's what NOT to do."
Comparing me to Bush is nearly laughable. I think I get why you'd try to make such a comparison given the quote we're referencing, but I'm not even close to Bush on the jingoism scale.
The problem with Bush is that he only ever emphasized the good qualities in America. The problem with Europe, and the rest of the world, tends to be that they only ever emphasize the bad things we do. Personally I try and toe the line by recognizing and emphasizing both, demanding that we do better than we have in the past, while not forgetting all the good we've done as a people, and realizing that American exceptionalism has been a goal as often as it's been a reality. You're falling into the latter category in my mind at the moment, hence my reaction.
You're carving out a lot of interesting exceptions that puts America to blame for things I don't think are fair. And you're carving out a lot of interesting exceptions that blames America for Asian problems despite the fact that we have been in similar positions with respect to Europe. I'd like a response to my 12:19 post, then I think I'll see where you really stand on that question. You seem to be going out of your way to assume American fault, and to ascribe something in the core of American thinking that got us to where we are, and then whenever we chose NOT to do something the bad way, you say it was all timing or opportunity. Sounds like a bunch of excuses to me when you really get to the heart of the issue. And you're going out of your way to excuse Asia as well, and some of it I think isn't justified. That's strange too because my real problem isn't with Asia, it's with Europe. But feel free to defend away, anyway.
I'm off to study for my second of two finals today now; Astronomy. I think I did pretty good on the Japanese final. This one I'm not so confident about.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: You either really don't know what you're talking about, or you do, and you're being either really disingenuous, or really racist. Or a both.
Three possibilities linked by OR clauses.
(And not entirely dissimilar from the structure of "Lord, Liar, or Lunatic" without the Lord)
Not even the possibility that I may know what I'm talking about but simply disagree with you.
quote:No. You take responsibility because you *exploded* open their door, forced them to buy your stuff, taught them to go empire building, sold them precisely what they needed to fight in China and create an empire, and then when they started doing too well you added the "yellow peril" racial crap. Only when they turned on you, then you took notice.
I don't have time to get into this thread much at the moment - hopefully tomorrow - but this was bothering me all afternoon at work.
We taught Japan 'how to go empire building' in a Western style. We certainly didn't teach them empire building.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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(In context this was a response to the serious understatement that all the US did was kick down Japan's door. If that is the only serious quibble you have with the paragraph, I think I've made my point sufficiently)
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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(And not entirely dissimilar from the structure of "Lord, Liar, or Lunatic" without the Lord)
Not even the possibility that I may know what I'm talking about but simply disagree with you.
Its fairly stark.
Based on some of what you've said, I'm not entirely sure you know what you're talking about. Not as far as US History goes anyway. You're painting a picture that I think comes closer to historical fiction than non-fiction. I'm still waiting for a lot answers to questions I raised throughout the day. You're hoisting a whole lot of blame on us that I think is greatly misplaced, and I think your understanding US imperialist history is incomplete.
quote:Sure.
(In context this was a response to the serious understatement that all the US did was kick down Japan's door. If that is the only serious quibble you have with the paragraph, I think I've made my point sufficiently)
I don't agree with this. We were learning it the same time they were, from the same teacher. I would agree that, along with other countries, we played an equal part in giving them the tools necessary to create an empire, however.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: ... Pretending that Europe is the high and mighty defender of morality against their crazed little American brother makes my blood boil.
I'm going to try to be more concise and address two points. One that I think is important and the one you highlighted at 12:19.
First, this is actually the third time (at minimum) that you've gone off on Europeans in this thread in responses to me.
Now, since I am both a) Canadian and b) Chinese *, this somewhat puzzles me. I've never pretended that Europe has been much superior to the US and it may be more productive for you to point out where you think I have.
* I don't think this is a contradiction anymore although I fully realize this may be controversial to the audience. But I assert that there are interesting Canadian and Chinese viewpoints that make this possible.
Restated shortly, my consistent thesis has been that (in the age of imperialism, a Western term mind you) Europe not only committed their crimes but had plentiful opportunities. The US on the other hand had much fewer crimes but also much less opportunity.
So your consistent anger at Europeans, its a bit puzzling to me. If I may be so bold, I can only wonder if you're having some trouble separating me as a Chinese-Canadian from Europeans that you may have interacted with before.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Restated shortly, my consistent thesis has been that (in the age of imperialism, a Western term mind you) Europe not only committed their crimes but had plentiful opportunities. The US on the other hand had much fewer crimes but also much less opportunity.
You'll have to expand on this. How did we have less opportunity? You've mentioned this multiple times, but I still don't see the reasoning behind it.
quote:First, this is actually the third time (at minimum) that you've gone off on Europeans in this thread in responses to me.
That specific instance was in reference to the charge that I'm writing off whole continents (such as Europe) a la Bush. I'm not, but for a very specific reason, and that's why I emphasized the point with Europe. And that includes Asian nations with imperialistic pasts in the same way that I'd use it against a Sioux American Indian.
I'm not particularly sure why you keep emphasizing your Chinese heritage. It couldn't possibly matter less to me, except theoretically as a clue to your own defense of Asian history, though I don't know why it'd lead you to defend Japan so much, I didn't realize there was so much intercountry Asian brotherhood in that sense, so I don't think that's the reason.
By the by, just because Westerners invented a term for it, doesn't mean it hasn't happened before in other places that didn't call it that. Murder isn't not murder just because no one came up with a term for it.
Indeed you haven't pointed out that Europe is superior to the US. You've emphasized many times over, that but for some historical timing issues, and not even that in many cases, we're not even separable from Europe, and that we're one in the same.
You're putting forth the theory, by implication, that if America had had more "opportunity," we have been just as bad as Europe. I see no evidence thus far put forth to support this other than your own opinion. This might be the crux of the argument right here.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Based on some of what you've said, I'm not entirely sure you know what you're talking about.
Sure, if that is the way you wish to go about it. But remember that charitable interpretations go both ways.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: It's true, for a time we did adopt Kipling's exhortation wholeheartedly, but there was an extremely vocal subsection of the population that condemned imperialism ...
Sure. You get marginal points for that. But actions speak louder than words.
Let's take a more modern example. There was an extremely vocal subsection of the population that objected to the war in Vietnam or Iraq too.
Due to your anger with Europeans, I would note that Canadians didn't join Vietnam and we didn't join Iraq despite considerable American pressure both times. Results do matter.
quote:The British and the French just kept going, but we stopped. You can point to occasional interventions in the Caribbean and Latin America
See, this is a good example of what I'm taking about. By this time we're already on the brink of the 1900s. If you accept that American history up to this point is correctly deemed as imperialistic as Europe, my case is already roughly three quarters complete.
Remember, the original point of conflict is whether the US should have gotten as you put it "the benefit of the doubt" from the Chinese of 1950.
Even if the remaining quarter of the time was indisputably great (and I think even you can agree that there is plenty of room for alternative opinions here. Latin American perception of American Imperialism is not a tea party either), you're already sunk.
quote: The part that I take issue with is the assumption that Americans and Europeans are one in the same simply because we're all white.
Not the same, the best word I've used before is "product." Americans of that time were not native Americans, they weren't Africans, they weren't Asians. They were products of Europeans, both in heritage and in culture. Even if every single European that became American had immigrated before 1800, that still only gives 200 years for divergence. Plus, as you acknowledged, the cultural ideas that motivate imperialism still flowed back and forth until at the very least your admission of the Philippines at the turn of the century.
So, no, not the same. But I think its telling of a lack of perspective to simply declare and expect the rest of us accept by fiat that you're Americans and that means a clean break from Europe. From the Asian perspective there's less difference between you and the Europeans and say ... Chinese and Japanese people with more than a thousand years of divergence, a different language, etc. (And as Tom pointed out, we still felt very close to them)
quote: Also, if your excuse for Japan is "he started it," then you have to excuse the United States too. The only reason we even took the Philippines or stretched beyond our continental borders was the idea that to be a first rate power in the world, one had to have an empire.
Sure. Like I said, product.
quote: Why are you giving Japan excuses and us the blame? Following your logic, we're in the same boat as Japan.
I don't really. If was talking to Japanese people that were proclaiming a lack of responsibility, I'd have even more choice words. Following the crowd isn't really an "excuse" that deflects moral responsibility. Its a statement about historical causality.
(ex: Germans started WWII partly as a product of their treatment after WWI. It in no way excuses their behavior, it explains it.
Maybe you're reading more into my words than I'm really saying and that is upsetting you.
(Oh, and I hope you had good luck on your exams)
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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