Thursday 28th of November 2024
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we were once the backward ones — and soon to be again?..….

An old missionary student of China once remarked that Chinese history is “remote, monotonous, obscure, and-worst of all-there is too much of it.” China has the longest continuous history of any country in the world—3,500 years of written history. And even 3,500 years ago China’s civilization was old! This in itself is discouraging to the student, particularly if we think of history as a baffling catalogue of who begat somebody, who succeeded somebody, who slew somebody, with only an occasional concubine thrown in for human interest. But taken in another way, Chinese history can be made to throw sharp lights and revealing shadows on the story of all mankind—from its most primitive beginnings, some of which were in Asia, to its highest point of development in philosophy and religion, literature and art.

In art and philosophy, many people think, no culture has ever surpassed that of China in its great creative periods. In material culture, though we think of the roots of our own civilization as being almost entirely European, we have also received much from Asia—paper, gunpowder, the compass, silk, tea, and porcelain.

We Were Once the “Backward” Ones

There is nothing like a brief look at Chinese history to give one a new and wholesome respect for the Chinese people. We are likely- today to think of the Chinese as a “backward” people who are less civilized than we are, and it is true that in what we carelessly speak of as civilization—mechanization and the fruits of scientific discovery—they have, in the last hundred years, lagged behind the procession and are only beginning to catch up. There are reasons for this temporary backwardness which we will take up later. It is wholesome to realize, however, that this attitude of superiority on the part of Western nations has existed for only about a hundred years.

Until the Opium War of 1840–42 the European merchants and voyagers who reached the distant land of China had looked upon the Chinese with a good deal of awe as a people of superior culture. They still had much the same attitude as Marco Polo, who, in the thirteenth century, had told the people of Italy that China under the rule of the Mongols had a much more centralized and efficient system of government than European countries had. Coming from the banking and trading city of Venice, he admired the wide use of paper money in China. To a Europe which had not yet begun to use coal he also described how the Chinese mined and burned a kind of stone which was much superior to wood as fuel.

China in fact had a civilization similar to that of Europe before the Industrial Revolution, and superior to it in many ways. The agriculture of China was more advanced and productive than that of Europe because of the great use of irrigation: and the wide network of canals that supplied water for irrigation also provided cheap transport. The Chinese bad reached a high level of technique and art in the malting of such things as porcelain and silk, and in general the guild craftsmen of their cities were at least equal to those of the cities of pre-industrial Europe.

Moreover the Chinese had gone a good deal further than Europeans in the use of writing as a vehicle of civilization and -government, and everything which that means. They had extensive statistics of government and finance at a time when Europe had practically none. They used written orders and regulations when Europe was still dependent on government by word of mouth.

The historical chart shows what was happening in China at the time of well-known events in the Western world. Note that some of the highest points in Chinese civilization came during the darkest days in Europe. The central column of the chart shows a succession of Chinese dynasties. A dynasty is the reign of one ruling family, and some families remained in power for several hundred years before they were overthrown either by another Chinese family or by barbarians from the north.

In the Beginning

The Chinese people did not come to China from somewhere else as did our own early settlers but are thought to be the direct descendants of the prehistoric cave men who lived in North China hundreds of thousands of years ago. Chinese civilization as we know it first developed along the great bend of the Yellow River, where the earth was soft and easily worked by the crude tools of China’s Stone Age men who lived before 3000 B.C.

From the Yellow River the Chinese spread north, east, and south, sometimes absorbing aboriginal tribes, until by the time of Confucius (500 B.C.) they occupied most of the coun­try between the Yangtze River and the Great Wall, and had developed from primitive Stone Age men to men who could domesticate animals, irrigate land, make beautiful bronze weapons and utensils, build walled cities, and produce great philosophers like Confucius.

At the time of Confucius, China consisted of many small states ruled by feudal lords. While they were loosely federated under an emperor it was not until 221 B.C., when the last of China’s feudal kingdoms fell, that China was united as a single empire. The imperial form of government lasted from 221 B.C. to 1911 A.D.

China’s first emperor, Shih Huang Ti, is known as the builder of the Great Wall, which runs from the sea westward into the deserts of Central Asia—a distance about as great as from New York City to the Rockies. The purpose of this stupendous job of engineering was to protect the settled Chinese people from the raids of barbarian nomads who lived beyond it. Much of this great walled frontier is still standing today.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/gi-roundtable-series/pamphlets/em-42-our-chinese-ally-(1944)/the-oldest-living-civilization

 

THEN THE WESTERN NATIONS "DESTROYED" CHINA.....

 

"China -- the cake of kings and... of emperors" (a French pun on king cake and kings and emperors wishing to "consume" China). French political cartoon from 1898. A pastry represents "Chine" (French for China) and is being divided between caricatures of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, William II of Germany (who is squabbling with Queen Victoria over a borderland piece, whilst thrusting a knife into the pie to signify aggressive German intentions), Nicholas II of Russia, who is eyeing a particular piece, the French Marianne (who is diplomatically shown as not participating in the carving, and is depicted as close to Nicholas II, as a reminder of the Franco-Russian Alliance), and a samurai representing Japan, carefully contemplating which pieces to take. 

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The Opium Wars were two wars in the mid-19th century involving China and the British Empire over the British trade of opium and China's sovereignty. The clashes included the First Opium War (1839–1842) and the Second Opium War (1856–1860). The wars and events between them weakened the Qing dynasty and forced China to trade with the other parts of the world.[1][2] The victorious British were successful in inducing an opioid crisis in China, which seriously undermined Chinese society.

In 1820, China's economy was the largest in the world, according to British economist Angus Maddison.[3] Within a decade after the end of the Second Opium War, China's share of global GDP had fallen by half.[4] In another research paper published by Michael Cemblast of JP Morgan and updated by the World Economic Forum, similar conclusions were reached—i.e. China was the largest economy in the world for many centuries until the Opium Wars.[3] In China, the period between 1839 and 1939 is referred to as the Century of Humiliation.

 

Read more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars

 

Now, we are warned that (https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/35424):

 

Are we entering the critical phase in the Great Power competition between America and China?

The answer seems to be affirmative, based on a new Pentagon report released recently.

The report — submitted to Congress by the Department of Defence and titled Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China — provides new insights into China's military restructuring and more aggressive posture in the Indo-Pacific region.

Given its importance, all countries in the region ought to take notice.

Predictably, some of the coverage in the American media has been breathless — seemingly surprised at the idea that America's great rival is training for a military conflict with it.

Surely, if American military preparedness is based upon a potential conflict with China, it shouldn't be news that China thinks the same way.

 

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-02/pentagon-report-on-chinas-military...

 

 

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time for new optics….

Through the 2,000 years of China’s empire, students can trace a sort of pattern of the rise and fall of dynasties. A dynasty would come into power after a period of war and famine had reduced the population to the point where there was enough land and food to go around. There would be prosperity, a civilized, sophisticated, and lavish court, families of great wealth and culture scattered over the country, and a flowering of art, literature, and philosophy. Then gradually the population would increase and the farms be divided, the landlords would refuse to pay taxes, thus weakening the government, and at the same time would collect more and more rent from the peasants. There would be savage peasant rebellions. Out of these rebellions would arise warriors and adventurers who enlisted the outlawed peasants, seized power by the sword, and overthrew the dynasty.

Once in power, the successful war lord would need to bring into his service scholars who understood administration and the keeping of records. These scholars were largely from the landlord class, the only class with leisure to acquire an education. While they built a government service for the new dynasty they founded landed estates for themselves and their heirs. As the power of the landlords grew the state of the peasants worsened and the same things would happen all over again.

Several times dynasties were founded by nomad warriors from beyond the Great Wall. The last dynasty of the empire was founded by Manchus from Manchuria, who ruled in China from 1644 until the empire fell in 1911. It is said that China has always absorbed her conquerors. Until the Japanese invasion her conquerors have been barbarians who looked up to the higher civilization of China and eagerly adopted it. The armored cars and tanks of a more mechanized civilization are not so readily digested.

Of What Use Today Is an Old Civilization?

One may ask, “What good does it do the Chinese to have such an old civilization?” There is a very real advantage, which visitors to China often sense when they cannot explain it. The values of culture and of being civilized have existed in China so long that they have soaked right through the whole people. Even a poor Chinese with no education is likely to have the instincts and bearing of an educated man. He sets great store by such things as personal dignity, self-respect, and respect for others. Even if he knows the history of his country and his native region only by legend and folklore instead of reading, still he knows it—usually a surprising amount of it. And he has a tremendous hunger and aptitude for education, which is one of the reasons why the future progress of China, once it is freed from foreign aggression, is likely to be amazingly rapid.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/gi-roundtable-series/pamphlets/em-42-our-chinese-ally-(1944)/the-oldest-living-civilization

 

IT'S GRAND TIME FOR THE WEST TO REALISE TWO THINGS:

 

CHINA ISN'T GOING TO GIVE UP ON ITS CLAIM ON FORMOSA (TAIWAN). HAVING A WORLD WAR ABOUT THIS ISSUE WOULD BE PATHETIC. 

 

RUSSIA ISN'T GOING TO ABANDON THE RUSSIANS IN UKRAINE. HAVING A WORLD WAR ABOUT THIS ISSUE WOULD BE PATHETIC. SENDING WEAPONS TO ZELENSKY IS ONLY PROLONGING THE AGONY OF THE REMNANT OF UKRAINE. UKRAINE HAS TO BE SPLIT INTO TWO REGIONS (INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES).

 

THEN WE CAN HAVE PEACE, AS LONG AS THE US EMPIRE DOES NOT CARRY ON LIKE AN IDIOT WHO WANTS TO OWN EVERYTHING....

 

 

BY Vladimir Platov

 

Considering Uzbekistan as a “point of support” in the Central Asian region, especially after the failure of US policy in Afghanistan, Washington decided to give additional impetus to its expansionist plans in this Central Asian republic. And the clear emphasis in this is planned to be placed on the separation of Uzbekistan from Russia and China. Especially from the Russian Federation, which has not only strengthened political cooperation with Tashkent in the last period, but also became Uzbekistan’s main trading partner in 2021, taking this status from China for the first time since 2014: by the end of 2021, the trade turnover between the countries reached $ 7.51 billion.

And in this regard, the United States, in contacts with representatives of Uzbekistan, increasingly began to pursue a line of rejection of maximizing ties between Russia and Central Asian countries, trying to dissuade Uzbekistan from its intentions of integration with the EAEU. Thus, in the recent period, with a certain aggravation in the interaction with Uzbekistan, various American representatives began to strenuously criticize Tashkent’s enthusiasm for acquiring full membership in the Russia-headed Eurasian Economic Union. Back in October 2019, speaking at an event in Washington, held by the American-Uzbekistan Chamber of Commerce, former US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross directly stated that membership in the EAEU could disrupt plans Tashkent’s efforts to integrate into the world economy, complicate and lengthen the process of joining the World Trade Organization and relations with the United States in general. This position was repeatedly voiced by Jonathan Henick, who already held leading positions in Central Asian affairs in the US State Department, in particular, emphasizing: “We certainly call on Uzbekistan should give priority to membership in the WTO, which includes states that make up 95% of the world economy, and therefore it is the WTO that should be placed high on the list of priorities of Uzbekistan”.

Actively dealing with US policy issues in Central Asia, Jonathan Henick was not only one of the initiators of Washington’s activization in this region in the format of the C5+1 platform, in which five post-Soviet Central Asian countries (C5) participate, and the US (+1) plays the role of an arbitrator or leader. As well as in the spearheading of the creation of a new three-way line of diplomatic dialogue in Central Asia by acting as Sherpa (a chief negotiator) for talks between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan as part of an experiment in pursuing its strategic objectives in the region. The first teleconference of this trilateral line, held on May 27, 2020, was devoted to the topics of security, economy, trade relations and infrastructure, although the priority item on the agenda was security.

The first in the list of joint commitments of this trilateral format is the promise to develop “cooperation in the field of security and intensify joint efforts to combat cross-border threats along the border between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, as well as to deal with the problems of combating terrorism, illicit trafficking in drugs and their means of production, smuggling, illegal migration and human trafficking throughout the region”. Its agenda also includes the development of railway service, support for energy transportation projects, including the CASA-1000 power transmission system and the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline.

Under these conditions, and taking into account the readiness demonstrated by Jonathan Henick to defend in the current conditions the directions of activization of work on Uzbekistan that interest the White House, Washington’s choice of his candidacy as the new US ambassador to Tashkent became obvious, as did the confirmation of that status by the US Senate on July 27.

Since last year, J. Henick works as the US Department of State Chair at the College of Information and Cyberspace at the National Defense University. He speaks Russian, Portuguese, Turkish and Azerbaijani. During his diplomatic career, he was Minister-Counselor for public Relations in Turkey, Deputy head of mission in Timor-Leste, worked in Azerbaijan, Turkey, Portugal and Uzbekistan. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Hawaii, a Master’s degree in International Relations from Columbia University in New York and a bachelor’s degree from Columbia College.

Jonathan Henick, in his opening statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on July 27, stressed that the strong US relationship with Uzbekistan has implications that extend beyond the bilateral agenda to the other countries of Central Asia, Afghanistan, Turkey, and the Indo-Pacific region.

According to Henick, “Uzbekistan’s natural resources, as well as its manufacturing and agricultural capacity, are attracting growing interest from American companies, including those seeking alternatives to Xinjiang-sourced cotton”. “A prosperous, greener Uzbekistan that generates jobs for its people and diversifies its international trade is very much in the interest of the United States”, he added.

Speaking to US senators, Henick promised to contribute in every possible way to the continuation of the preparation of the Government of Uzbekistan for joining the World Trade Organization. However, according to the line previously voiced by Henick himself, such a rapprochement of Tashkent with the WTO clearly should not take place in case of continuation of Uzbekistan’s policy of acquiring full membership in the Russia-headed EAEU.

At the same time, Henick, promising to “advance US interests and enhance … strategic partnership with Uzbekistan”, intends to give priority attention to expanding the US partnership in the field of security, especially given the transformation of this country into an important partner for Washington in maintaining stability in Afghanistan.

Jonathan Henick will soon replace the current ambassador Daniel Rosenblum, who is being transferred to work as the US ambassador to Kazakhstan.

 

READ MORE:

https://journal-neo.org/2022/08/02/us-intends-to-strengthen-its-influence-in-uzbekistan-by-appointing-a-new-ambassador/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

Do we smell the hands of the zionists merchants of bullshit? Who knows....

 

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