opium war, some question...

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pissybits

Junior Member
montyp165 said:
Again conflating certain Qing Dynastic trends as Chinese culture as a whole=crap is little more than blindly worshiping western culture as the end all-be all of culture, as again things like the White Lotus Rebellion, Celestial Order Rebellion and Taiping Rebellion already indicated the amount of adaptability and flexibility of Chinese culture to develop new forms and methods. Your attacks on others who try to point this out is far more indicative of Red Guard behaviour than pointing out flaws in blindly worshiping western methods and culture. As someone who has studied Chinese cultural history there are far more elements involved than simple reductionism of Autocracy=bad, western civil society=good, especially when Chinese civil economic behaviour mirroring western trading patterns produced similar cultural behaviour trends despite coming from different sources entirely (e.g., Song Dynasty).

My own observations is that Chinese are more like Americans than any other culture in Asia, which is also why US political elites get nervous about that.
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you acuse him of "blindly worshiping western culture" and "reductionism" of the west's methods's as good while "chinese autocracy" as bad, yet your own comment reveals the same thought tendencies.

civil society is not something unique to the west, and your example of "similar cultural trends coming from different sources" is not informed by fact.

the reason that chinese culture and trade flourished during the song dynasty was because of something very much like your "western" civil society; as merchants were allowed to become rich and trade freely, they became more powerful and thus politics was more decentralized and more pluralistic.

however, the song dynasty was actually when neo-confucian thought first started the trend of increasing centralization and the emperor became more and more paranoid of the power held by regional authorities: ie. military units. this is part of what led to the downfall of the songs: military organization became weak because local commanders were not allowed to become close with the troops for fear of mutiny. the tang dynasty was when china was truly more decentralized in its political organization and thus the tang military was powerful and tang society was freer, more creative, and more tolerant.

in the end, centralization and decentralization each have their advantages and drawbacks in different situations, this is widely studied in industrial organization as well as political science; you are right in criticising a reductionist view of civil society as strictly good and autocracy as strictly bad, but you still seem to hold the belief that civil society is a purely western phenomenon and that the chinese have always been autocratic. perhaps power was always more decentralized in the west and in china more centralized, they are not and need not be mutually exclusive.
 
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Lezt

Junior Member
pissybits said:
you acuse him of "blindly worshiping western culture" and "reductionism" of the west's methods's as good while "chinese autocracy" as bad, yet your own comment reveals the same thought tendencies.

civil society is not something unique to the west, and your example of "similar cultural trends coming from different sources" is not informed by fact.

the reason that chinese culture and trade flourished during the song dynasty was because of something very much like your "western" civil society; as merchants were allowed to become rich and trade freely, they became more powerful and thus politics was more decentralized and more pluralistic.

however, the song dynasty was actually when neo-confucian thought first started the trend of increasing centralization and the emperor became more and more paranoid of the power held by regional authorities: ie. military units. this is part of what led to the downfall of the songs: military organization became weak because local commanders were not allowed to become close with the troops for fear of mutiny. the tang dynasty was when china was truly more decentralized in its political organization and thus the tang military was powerful and tang society was freer, more creative, and more tolerant.

in the end, centralization and decentralization each have their advantages and drawbacks in different situations, this is widely studied in industrial organization as well as political science; you are right in criticising a reductionist view of civil society as strictly good and autocracy as strictly bad, but you still seem to hold the belief that civil society is a purely western phenomenon and that the chinese have always been autocratic. perhaps power was always more decentralized in the west and in china more centralized, they are not and need not be mutually exclusive.
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Why do you claim it is his "western" society? this is a open forum and not one of personal assaults or speculations.

Your argument about how Chinese society is open or closed is very cherry picking, summarizing each dynasty that last several centuries with one sentence concepts does not do them justice. Each dynasty had a period of which they flourished, Qing was not inherently closed and very tolerant of foreigners during the reign of Qianlong; Ming on the other hand was a closed society after the reign of Yongle.

Also, the fall of the Song you mentioned is simplistic; I would argue to the death that the song military was the second strongest on earth at that time after the Mongols. It took the Mongols, 80 years to conquer the Song; It took the Mongols 20 years to conquer western Europe and the middle east. It takes a very competent Song navy to raid up and down the coast of the Mongol conquest of China. There were see-saw battles for cities that the Song retook lost ground and defeated Mongol armies.

So unlike Europe and the Middle East that was practically steamrolled until the Mamluk defeat in Egypt. So the Song must have been a hard nut to crack for the Mongols.
 
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montyp165

Senior Member
Pissybits completely misinterpreted my point of how the so-called western civil society trends were also present in the Song Dynasty as an example of non-western development of civil social elements, he just interpreted my argument as claiming civil society=western when I was trying to point out how similar effects can occur from different trends, this is known as parallel development and convergence.
 
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pissybits

Junior Member
Lezt said:
Why do you claim it is his "western" society? this is a open forum and not one of personal assaults or speculations.

Your argument about how Chinese society is open or closed is very cherry picking, summarizing each dynasty that last several centuries with one sentence concepts does not do them justice. Each dynasty had a period of which they flourished, Qing was not inherently closed and very tolerant of foreigners during the reign of Qianlong; Ming on the other hand was a closed society after the reign of Yongle.

Also, the fall of the Song you mentioned is simplistic; I would argue to the death that the song military was the second strongest on earth at that time after the Mongols. It took the Mongols, 80 years to conquer the Song; It took the Mongols 20 years to conquer western Europe and the middle east. It takes a very competent Song navy to raid up and down the coast of the Mongol conquest of China. There were see-saw battles for cities that the Song retook lost ground and defeated Mongol armies.

So unlike Europe and the Middle East that was practically steamrolled until the Mamluk defeat in Egypt. So the Song must have been a hard nut to crack for the Mongols.
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whenever did i attack him personally？ i only pointed out flaws in his argument as i interpreted what he was saying, now your response is an example of the pot calling the kettle black if there ever was one. i got the impression from his post that he was criticizing how the western method shouldn't be blindly worshipped, which i agreed with, but it seemed to me that he was still conflating civil society as a purely western thing.

sure the dynasties each lasted a long time and policies changed in that duration, but they each had their administrative trends. the song was more conservative than the tang without a doubt and no matter how advanced their military was (a fact i never doubted) it was poorly administered and that is why they lost china. also the song did not lose china in 80 years, the southern song may have lost to the mongols in 80 years but overall it was a progressive decline starting much earlier with territory ceded to the jin and liao. ever heard of yue fei?
if anything your comparison of of how long the mongols took to take china compared to the west is overly simplistic, as well as irrelevant to why they lost.

additionally, qianlong was the first qing emperor to institute the policy of 闭关锁国，so please get your facts straight before you start lecturing others about their viewpoints on history being "overly simplistic."
 
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pissybits

Junior Member
montyp165 said:
Pissybits completely misinterpreted my point of how the so-called western civil society trends were also present in the Song Dynasty as an example of non-western development of civil social elements, he just interpreted my argument as claiming civil society=western when I was trying to point out how similar effects can occur from different trends, this is known as parallel development and convergence.
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alright that i can agree with, but why keep calling them "western civil society" trends to begin with? it's simply the existance of more pluralistic elements in politics that can result anywhere and anyplace.
 
rhino123

rhino123

Pencil Pusher
VIP Professional
pissybits said:
additionally, qianlong was the first qing emperor to institute the policy of 闭关锁国，so please get your facts straight before you start lecturing others about their viewpoints on history being "overly simplistic."
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Actually, I believe that even at Xunzi and Kangxi era, they did practice to a certain level of closing the country to foreigners... however at his time, it was to isolate Taiwan from China. Thus from what we see, Qing Dynasty had been practicing this policy for 200 over years.
 
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pissybits

Junior Member
rhino123 said:
Actually, I believe that even at Xunzi and Kangxi era, they did practice to a certain level of closing the country to foreigners... however at his time, it was to isolate Taiwan from China. Thus from what we see, Qing Dynasty had been practicing this policy for 200 over years.
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the policies enacted during the kangxi era were not strictly anti-foreign but involved the 遷海令 to undermine mainland han chinese support for the ming loyalists in taiwan.

the qing were not the first to enact isolationist policies in china by any means, but it was during qianlong's reign that the the mccartney affair occured, which was a massive diplomatic failure and helped send china toward restricting foreign interactions of all kinds. it is arguable that this set china up to miss out on many major industrial changes happening in many parts of the world in the first part of the 19th century.
 
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hardware

Banned Idiot
last year there;s anti foreign propaganda launched in Chinese state control TV and foreign press, blaiming foreigner in China for creating trouble. but it generate a public backlash.wondering if this anti foreigner is all abou .sensing this, the whole anti foreigner propaganda suddently dissappear.
according to HK newspaper, the propaganda was launched by hardliner with the party and pla.they actually believe report about poison milk scandal and other report of corruption and scandal was part of conspiracy by the west government.
 
solarz

solarz

Brigadier
hardware said:
last year there;s anti foreign propaganda launched in Chinese state control TV and foreign press, blaiming foreigner in China for creating trouble. but it generate a public backlash.wondering if this anti foreigner is all abou .sensing this, the whole anti foreigner propaganda suddently dissappear.
according to HK newspaper, the propaganda was launched by hardliner with the party and pla.they actually believe report about poison milk scandal and other report of corruption and scandal was part of conspiracy by the west government.
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I call BS on this. Show some sources so we can examine the validity of your claim.
 
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delft

Brigadier
Western open society had very little to do with the rise of the West. That rise was made possible by the development of military superiority during the Middle Ages which according to William H. McNeill was largely a result of many polities in Europe being able to survive against powerful neighbors for geographical reasons thus providing very many opportunities for military development and for trade around the wars. See
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and The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-56157-7.
It also allowed in some countries ( after early experience in Italian city-states ) control by merchants, first developed in The Netherlands in the late 16th century.

"Western open society" doesn't mean democracy. Until about a century ago the British Conservative Party was formally opposed to democracy. It presumably means that anyone can rise in society by his or her own means. While there are examples of this, i.e. a Norman bastard becoming king of England ( but Genghis Khan did something similar on a larger scale ) and "traditionally" an American newspaper seller becoming a millionaire this was always rare and often impossible. According to recent US newspaper headings ( I didn't read the articles ) such an era has now closed in the US ( or are they afraid that it has ? ). At any rate those possibilities were never prevalent in all Western countries at the same time.

History has been too complex to allows discussion using slogans.
 
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