Fair critique. Much of what I write about China's geostrategic ideals and practices is paywalled, I may have to do a follow-up regarding that.
About Communism, on the other hand, it's just no longer a thing in China. The country is Communist like United Kingdom is a Kingdom: yes, there's a king; no, nobody pays any attention to him, and he's irrelevant.
Words like "democracy", "authoritarian", "state", and "empire" are frequently used as categories for comparative purposes in historical narratives. This is problematic because the placement of a particular entity in a category can easily be contested. Instances: Do states that are monarchies with aristocracy owning significant inherited properties qualify as democracies? (England?) Are states that exclude or grossly limit participation of some residents democracies? (The US prior to the voting rights act?) (Isreal today?) Is there a deeply democratic state anywhere on Earth? My takeaway from Mr. Roman's narrative is to question the meaning and value of the construction "liberal democracy." Certainly, very contestable. The problems of categorization that I am raising suggest to me that the "liberal democracy" category may not be the useful category in which to put the offending nation states.
I will reference this article, potentially, due to what I will accept as a largely accurate historical depiction. However, the article's tail-end venture into categorization of significant, current concerns for Communist China applies too much of a blanket-statement-like perspective.
Like the historic rendering within the piece, you appear to gloss over the microcosm of the regard for the specific regard of China's COMMUNIST governance. The case against most human perspectives (particularly Social Science) is the failure to account for the macro-micro-level components to A Thing.
In Digress...
China's debt and land-purchasing within the U.S., particularly, and its intentional economical growth from intellectual property theft
(U.S. government-published data), Chinese-defect scholarly works depicting Communist China's long-term approach to world affairs speaks against your article's deduction. You present half of history's story, it appears - rendering the piece less historical, and more perspective (like Social Science).
Imperial Japan made a great deal of its plans for the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere only, so I don't think global domination under whichever guise was ever in the cards for them. They never even tried to coordinate with their supposed Axis allies.
Fair enough. It's hard for me to believe that, in the hypothetical world where the US does not push Japan out of the South Pacific, that the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere would have been any less imperial than, say, the Athenian Empire. But maybe that's my liberal democratic bias again. Its reasonable to take the stated intentions of states more seriously.
I basically buy that China sees Taiwan as within its orbit, but does not have designs beyond it. I suppose you could extend that to Russia and Ukraine (and maybe Poland?).
Perhaps neither aspires to 'world domination' but that seems like a high bar for belligerence?
It is a high bar, but at least goes to show that there are ways to compromise so you can lose something and that doesn't mean that you will lose everything. The main liberal argument always is MUNICH 38 IF WE GIVE GIVE AN INCH THEY WILL INVADE FRANCE. It's an argument that makes any sort of compromise with anybody impossible, and thus much more dangerous than any alternative, as we are seeing in the Ukraine.
While I agree with much of this article, it is important to realize that virtually ever agricultural society has regularly engaged in war with their neighbors. How much pre-agricultural Hunter-Gatherers did so is very much in debate.
Isn’t it possible the real reason for not engaging in a quest for global domination was because they lacked the capability to do so rather than being peace lovers? Geography and military opponents have done far more to contain global conquest than peaceful intent.
Many of the examples you give are not clearly intents to dominate the entire globe. Many just wanted to dominate a region or just their neighbors. It was really only after the Industrial Revolution that a society could even dream of global domination.
And to pushed the argument further, no society has ever come close to dominating the globe, so it seems likely that it is not even possible regardless of intent.
But China wants global domination, just not through military means. They continue the approach of the Chinese empire, strong core surrounded by tributary states. Ways how to achieve this have changed but the approach has not. And whether you dominate by sheer hard power or some combo of hard/soft power, you still dominate. Hell, US never tried to rule the world through military, it was its economic and soft power that really worker, the military was there as last resort (and when you are the hegemon, last resort happens more often than you would think). Basically, lets stop pretending Chinese arent like the rest of us.
>those Chinese, so stupid, they had these great ships, could have plundered the Africans blind before we even got there and didn’t.
I dont think this is about colonialism. The West also wanted to send a man to the moon. It was clear that there wasnt going to be anything up there thats exploitable soon, and by the time it was it wouldnt matter who was first - but we still wanted to do it. Columbus also didnt expect to get somewhere he could conquer, though he was open to it. When we ran out of globe to discover, we started the hobby of climbing up mountains.
What an interesting article. The idea that belief in one's own moral superiority (religious or, in the "liberal" case, civic) encourages "civilizing" imperialist expansionism connects with other similar ideas in the psychological and social sphere, such as those in Pablo Malo's book "Los peligros de la moralidad".
However, I disagree with the idea that, after Zheng He's expeditions, China showed no interest in expanding due to a sort of "autocratic pacifism." The feeling of moral superiority grows in citizens as the power of their own nation increases, and China is not an exception. All countries and tribes have conceived themselves as the center of the world, particularly China (literally, the "country of the center" https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhongguo). The current Chinese race to regain a preponderant geopolitical power - which it has held for millennia, except for the rise of the West and the "century of humiliation" - aligns with a very human expansionist character, whether under a more liberal or more autocratic government.
The reasons why China did not discover and colonize America had more to do with autarky and self-sufficiency, as well as a betrayal of its millennia-old tradition of innovation and discovery, than with a renunciation of expansionism to which "liberal" nations would be much more prone. I wrote about the chinese renunciation of curiosity here: https://jajugon.substack.com/p/cuando-china-renuncio-a-la-curiosidad.
Fair critique. Much of what I write about China's geostrategic ideals and practices is paywalled, I may have to do a follow-up regarding that.
About Communism, on the other hand, it's just no longer a thing in China. The country is Communist like United Kingdom is a Kingdom: yes, there's a king; no, nobody pays any attention to him, and he's irrelevant.
I can accept all but your "nobody pays attention" to China's rulership remark:
1. "Former Senior China Researcher" Yaqiu Wang would disagree, on grounds of censorship (https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/08/14/chinas-social-media-interference-shows-urgent-need-rules)
2. Emily Feng would disagree, on grounds that an individual and their family's visa status, property and commercial enterprises can be revoked (https://www.npr.org/2021/06/11/1005467033/chinas-new-anti-foreign-sanctions-law-sends-a-chill-through-the-business-communi)
3. The "Council on Foreign Relations" would disagree on grounds of "Beijing's" punishment of critics, silencing of dissenters, and general crackdown on individual "freedoms" (https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hong-kong-freedoms-democracy-protests-china-crackdown)
And, finally...
4. On grounds of IP and product theft research, COVID-19 coverups and killings of scientists who spoke up (https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/18/china-covid-19-killed-health-care-workers-worldwide/), and current forign policies...I, too, would beg to differ.
But, again...you write an excellent piece- with lots of research effort, knowledge and perspective for me to refer to in the future.
Words like "democracy", "authoritarian", "state", and "empire" are frequently used as categories for comparative purposes in historical narratives. This is problematic because the placement of a particular entity in a category can easily be contested. Instances: Do states that are monarchies with aristocracy owning significant inherited properties qualify as democracies? (England?) Are states that exclude or grossly limit participation of some residents democracies? (The US prior to the voting rights act?) (Isreal today?) Is there a deeply democratic state anywhere on Earth? My takeaway from Mr. Roman's narrative is to question the meaning and value of the construction "liberal democracy." Certainly, very contestable. The problems of categorization that I am raising suggest to me that the "liberal democracy" category may not be the useful category in which to put the offending nation states.
...fair points. In the least, characterizations, herein, may be debatable.
Excellent, but...
I will reference this article, potentially, due to what I will accept as a largely accurate historical depiction. However, the article's tail-end venture into categorization of significant, current concerns for Communist China applies too much of a blanket-statement-like perspective.
Like the historic rendering within the piece, you appear to gloss over the microcosm of the regard for the specific regard of China's COMMUNIST governance. The case against most human perspectives (particularly Social Science) is the failure to account for the macro-micro-level components to A Thing.
In Digress...
China's debt and land-purchasing within the U.S., particularly, and its intentional economical growth from intellectual property theft
(U.S. government-published data), Chinese-defect scholarly works depicting Communist China's long-term approach to world affairs speaks against your article's deduction. You present half of history's story, it appears - rendering the piece less historical, and more perspective (like Social Science).
Wait, they don’t hate us for our freedoms?
Pondering this piece: what about imperial Japan? Hard to say that's exactly an ethnic-based polity.
Imperial Japan made a great deal of its plans for the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere only, so I don't think global domination under whichever guise was ever in the cards for them. They never even tried to coordinate with their supposed Axis allies.
Fair enough. It's hard for me to believe that, in the hypothetical world where the US does not push Japan out of the South Pacific, that the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere would have been any less imperial than, say, the Athenian Empire. But maybe that's my liberal democratic bias again. Its reasonable to take the stated intentions of states more seriously.
I basically buy that China sees Taiwan as within its orbit, but does not have designs beyond it. I suppose you could extend that to Russia and Ukraine (and maybe Poland?).
Perhaps neither aspires to 'world domination' but that seems like a high bar for belligerence?
It is a high bar, but at least goes to show that there are ways to compromise so you can lose something and that doesn't mean that you will lose everything. The main liberal argument always is MUNICH 38 IF WE GIVE GIVE AN INCH THEY WILL INVADE FRANCE. It's an argument that makes any sort of compromise with anybody impossible, and thus much more dangerous than any alternative, as we are seeing in the Ukraine.
While I agree with much of this article, it is important to realize that virtually ever agricultural society has regularly engaged in war with their neighbors. How much pre-agricultural Hunter-Gatherers did so is very much in debate.
Isn’t it possible the real reason for not engaging in a quest for global domination was because they lacked the capability to do so rather than being peace lovers? Geography and military opponents have done far more to contain global conquest than peaceful intent.
Many of the examples you give are not clearly intents to dominate the entire globe. Many just wanted to dominate a region or just their neighbors. It was really only after the Industrial Revolution that a society could even dream of global domination.
And to pushed the argument further, no society has ever come close to dominating the globe, so it seems likely that it is not even possible regardless of intent.
Buen artículo, pero no responde la pregunta del título.
But China wants global domination, just not through military means. They continue the approach of the Chinese empire, strong core surrounded by tributary states. Ways how to achieve this have changed but the approach has not. And whether you dominate by sheer hard power or some combo of hard/soft power, you still dominate. Hell, US never tried to rule the world through military, it was its economic and soft power that really worker, the military was there as last resort (and when you are the hegemon, last resort happens more often than you would think). Basically, lets stop pretending Chinese arent like the rest of us.
>those Chinese, so stupid, they had these great ships, could have plundered the Africans blind before we even got there and didn’t.
I dont think this is about colonialism. The West also wanted to send a man to the moon. It was clear that there wasnt going to be anything up there thats exploitable soon, and by the time it was it wouldnt matter who was first - but we still wanted to do it. Columbus also didnt expect to get somewhere he could conquer, though he was open to it. When we ran out of globe to discover, we started the hobby of climbing up mountains.
What an interesting article. The idea that belief in one's own moral superiority (religious or, in the "liberal" case, civic) encourages "civilizing" imperialist expansionism connects with other similar ideas in the psychological and social sphere, such as those in Pablo Malo's book "Los peligros de la moralidad".
However, I disagree with the idea that, after Zheng He's expeditions, China showed no interest in expanding due to a sort of "autocratic pacifism." The feeling of moral superiority grows in citizens as the power of their own nation increases, and China is not an exception. All countries and tribes have conceived themselves as the center of the world, particularly China (literally, the "country of the center" https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhongguo). The current Chinese race to regain a preponderant geopolitical power - which it has held for millennia, except for the rise of the West and the "century of humiliation" - aligns with a very human expansionist character, whether under a more liberal or more autocratic government.
The reasons why China did not discover and colonize America had more to do with autarky and self-sufficiency, as well as a betrayal of its millennia-old tradition of innovation and discovery, than with a renunciation of expansionism to which "liberal" nations would be much more prone. I wrote about the chinese renunciation of curiosity here: https://jajugon.substack.com/p/cuando-china-renuncio-a-la-curiosidad.
Thanks for making us think.
True.