Hello All
I very much enjoyed Prof Spence's third Reith lecture, American Dreams.
My favourite bit is the way he ended his lecture, quoting Chinese mass English teacher Li Yang’s slogan, "Conquer English to Make China Stronger!”
Yes, his is no ordinary English teacher who teaches a class that can only be smaller than the legal size – and the general consensus is that the smaller the class the better the teaching/learning.
Li routinely teaches in arenas, to classes of ten thousand Chinese people or more! Why? To overcome the fear of opening one’s mouth.
As the slogan is just an abstraction, it has been subject to many interpretations. Some Western media have associated it with “Chinese nationalism” and so on.
My feel is that it is only an expression of the Chinese enthusiasm to learn and improve their English communication skills – a precondition for many who are planning to come to the US to realise their American dreams.
But I doubt that every American would be happy to agree with me.
During the Q&A of the lecture, two people from the audience raised essentially the same question. One was the former US ambassador to the UN, if I am correct, who asked Prof Spence about his view on whether China’s astonishing rise would inevitably lead to her attacking the US one day. The other was an American school parent, who described a situation where her little son once suddenly asked her the question: “Is China going to attack us?” And she asked Prof Spence about how to answer it.
I felt that Prof Spence did not answer the two questions to my satisfaction. In other words, I guess that the two questioners’ concerns have remained with them.
Not only so, having listened to the lecture, many many more Americans will begin to ask the same question. But where is the answerer?
I have opened this thread with the end to explore with you guys, hoping to find a more informed answer to this grand question: “Will China attack the US?” – Possibly the most important question of the 21st century.
My gut feeling is that our answer or even reaction to this question will determine the future shape of the relations between China and the US, which in turn, as the former US ambassador to the UN has suggested at the recording studio, will be impacting the whole world – given the size (whatever that may be) of the two countries.
So, come on and join this debate!
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Reith 3: Will China attack the US?
Hello All
I very much enjoyed Prof Spence's third Reith lecture, American Dreams.
My favourite bit is the way he ended his lecture, quoting Chinese mass English teacher Li Yang’s slogan, "Conquer English to Make China Stronger!”
Yes, his is no ordinary English teacher who teaches a class that can only be smaller than the legal size – and the general consensus is that the smaller the class the better the teaching/learning.
Li routinely teaches in arenas, to classes of ten thousand Chinese people or more! Why? To overcome the fear of opening one’s mouth.
As the slogan is just an abstraction, it has been subject to many interpretations. Some Western media have associated it with “Chinese nationalism” and so on.
My feel is that it is only an expression of the Chinese enthusiasm to learn and improve their English communication skills – a precondition for many who are planning to come to the US to realise their American dreams.
But I doubt that every American would be happy to agree with me.
During the Q&A of the lecture, two people from the audience raised essentially the same question. One was the former US ambassador to the UN, if I am correct, who asked Prof Spence about his view on whether China’s astonishing rise would inevitably lead to her attacking the US one day. The other was an American school parent, who described a situation where her little son once suddenly asked her the question: “Is China going to attack us?” And she asked Prof Spence about how to answer it.
I felt that Prof Spence did not answer the two questions to my satisfaction. In other words, I guess that the two questioners’ concerns have remained with them.
Not only so, having listened to the lecture, many many more Americans will begin to ask the same question. But where is the answerer?
I have opened this thread with the end to explore with you guys, hoping to find a more informed answer to this grand question: “Will China attack the US?” – Possibly the most important question of the 21st century.
My gut feeling is that our answer or even reaction to this question will determine the future shape of the relations between China and the US, which in turn, as the former US ambassador to the UN has suggested at the recording studio, will be impacting the whole world – given the size (whatever that may be) of the two countries.
So, come on and join this debate!
Will China attack the US?
One way to approach this question is to look for an approximate historical precedent. One such possibility is Germany after 1871. Like China today, Germany was a new and rapidly expanding economic power. Like America today, Britain saw a resurgent Germany as a threat to its vital economic and imperial interests. Like China today, Germany had territorial claims which it was prepared to back with force. Like China today, Germany saw itself surrounded by hostile powers. Like America today, Britain did not have a consistent policy towards Germany: it sometimes sought accommodation with the new power and sometimes tried to restrict it.
Eventually, a combination of nationalism and paranoia on the one side, and arrogance and a self-serving sense of mission on the other, led to war. Nevertheless, war was not inevitable - it never is. If Germany had stopped feeding its people a diet of xenophobia and Britain had been prepared to recognise Germany as an equal, we could have avoided the slaughter of tens of millions in the trenches of Belgium and the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
Re: Reith 3: Will China attack the US?
Thanks for being the first respondent, weiminfuwu.
Your suggested approach is interesting. Yes, there is much to be learnt from history about how wars start. However, despite the complexity of history – the number of wars took place in the past were countless and they began for all sorts of reasons, I believe that there is a general trend we can grasp, i.e. overall, mankind has learnt from history that war is bad and is not inevitable (you good self is one example, as vividly shown in your posting, if you like), and therefore has been embracing peace more and more.
Yes, there are similarities between countries, but just like human beings, every country is also unique. And it is their unique, innate characteristics that will determine its path in the future. True, external factors do play a part but increasingly we see that countries want to have their own attitude toward and approach to these factors. In other words, they want to chart their own course in the immensely complex international waters rather than simply being driven by outside forces.
Prof Samuel Huntington predicted in his global bestseller The Clash of Civilisations (p. 313) that, in 2010, because of the competition for oil resources in the South China Sea between China and Vietnam, “China announces that it will establish its full control of the entire sea.” And when the Vietnamese resist, fighting erupts between Chinese and Vietnamese warships, which leads to China’s invasion of Vietnam, then involvement of other neighbouring countries, including Japan, and finally of course the US’s dispatch of its carrier task forces to the South China Sea – hence the start of the war between China and the US.
Yet, if we look at the recent breakthrough between China and Japan toward resolving their long-running dispute over oil and gas reserves in the East China Sea – remember that hard feelings between the two had been much stronger and deeper than those between China and Vietnam (which Huntington cites as seeds for the escalation of the conflict between them), the prediction by Huntington reads like nothing but fantasy.
Perhaps most ironically for Huntington, following the Chinese and the Japanese shaking their hands celebrating their find of a creative, peaceful solution to their dispute, the Chinese are now exploring ways to help the Vietnamese get through the latter’s financial crisis.
Despite being sold in its many millions, Huntington’s book is constructed on this simple formula: find a small source of conflict and use abstract, linear thinking to expand it into a grand clash (or rather clashes). And it is because of the human fear for such tragedies that everybody wants a copy.
But the trouble is that, instead of reading the book with a critical mind, many people, including intellectuals, only read the title of the book, believing that the hundreds of pages are just proof of the conclusion reflected in the title.
Has the book played a part in framing President Bush’s mind toward deciding to launch the Iraq war in 2003? I think so.
Reith 3: Will China attack the US?
Hello Wei Wang
I confess that my comparison of modern China and 19th century Germany was slightly tongue-in-cheek, and we should certainly see prof Huntingdon's book in the same light.
However, I am genuinely concerned about the widespread belief among Chinese people I meet that there is some kind of Western conspiracy to contain China. It is utterly irrational since if it were true the West could easily have decided not to do business with China and thus constrained her economically.
I'm also not so sure that the recent rapprochement with Japan is indicative of a new relationship. Maybe I'm projecting here, but if the Germans had been so ambivalent about their crimes as the Japanese I think that the French, the British, the Dutch, the Belgians, the Poles, the Czechs and so on would have, at least, turned their backs on Germany. The Germans since 1945 have been a model of decency and honesty concerning the crimes of their fathers. Until Japan does the same I find it difficult to believe that a genuine normalisation of relations is possible.
Re: Reith 3: Will China attack the US?
Wonderful comments! Thank you, weiminfuwu.
(1) In general, there is, in my view, a natural communication gap between Westerners and the Chinese. Because of the former's outside-in orientation, the Chinese generally feel pressurised by the former's big, abstract ideas, which, as you pointed out in one of your earlier postings, tend to "sweep all before" them. In the mean time, because of the latter's inside-out orientation, Westerners generally are unsure of or even worry about the intentions of the latter. So I am not surprised.
(2) When somebody did something wrong, there are two ways for him to learn. One is that he will publicly confess that he was wrong, and if not, others will put pressure on him to do it. The other is that he will learn by himself, i.e. knowing he was wrong without having to publicly admitting it. In either case, it is his action in the future that matters.
Re: Reith 3: Will China attack the US?
Wei Wang wrote:
the Chinese generally feel pressurised by the former's big, abstract ideas
I am intrigued by your proposition regarding Western abstraction and Eastern pragmatism - if I have it correctly. I have opened up a new thread so that we can debate the matter.
As regards this thread, it strikes me that the progress of globalisation raises the prospect that, for perhaps the first time in history, two civilisations will not clash because we will come to understand that the ordinary Chinese person (or Indian person or African person) wants no more than the ordinary American (or Brit or Polish person): a decent job, a decent place to live and a decent education for our children.
Re: Reith 3: Will China attack the US?
Dear weiminfuwu,
I am touched by your conclusion in your posting at 08:48 pm on 2 July. Thank you!
I will continue to make my contribution to this thread, and also do my best to contribute to the new thread you have opened: East is East and West is West.
Wei
Re: Reith 3: Will China attack the US?
Dear Wei Wang
Again you are too kind and I cannot claim the credit. We Westerners are so used to the bubble of privilege that accompanies our passports that we don't even notice it. What first attracted me to Confucianism was its core principle of humaneness. You cannot be humane and then run around the world expecting to be treated better than the citizens of the country you are in.
It was brought home to me by a Burmese refugee friend who had been a mathematics lecturer in Yangon University until he took part in the 1988 protests. He was jailed and tortured but eventually released. He ended up as a waiter in Thailand. One day he asked me if I thought a Burmese life was worth as much as an English life. Naturally, I said 'yes' but in reality I knew it was not so. And so it remains today.