{"id":424,"date":"2008-05-12T09:52:34","date_gmt":"2008-05-12T14:52:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/china\/?p=424"},"modified":"2014-08-30T13:38:47","modified_gmt":"2014-08-30T13:38:47","slug":"different-understandings-of-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/2008\/05\/different-understandings-of-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Different understandings of history"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles links below to an interesting piece from China Digital Times<\/a> (original from Sina.com<\/a> ) It is a piece by Xiong Peiyun (\u718a\u57f9\u4e91) defending (sort of) Chinese nationalism. Thomas Bartlett<\/a> analyzes the use of the term \u201ctianxia zhuyi\u201d \u5929\u4e0b\u4e3b\u4e49 in the piece, but what struck me was its odd (meaning different from mine) understanding of world history.<\/p>\n

That Chinese popular understanding of world history is different from that elsewhere is not surprising, nor is it surprising that most Chinese people don’t understand non-Chinese history all that well. It is not a subject that the Chinese historical profession has (until recently) invested much effort into. One of Xiong’s goals is to deny that the Beijing Olympics should be compared to the Berlin Olympics of 1936. A lot of people have been making that comparison, but what I find interesting is the end of the piece Xiong suggests that this comparison actually works pretty well.<\/p>\n

Western politicians and Western media have not made a lot of progress in their political wisdom in nearly a century. The Nazis in Germany were a product of World War I victor nations, whose fear of a rising Germany led to an over-punishment of Germany, thus sowing the seeds of hatred and revenge and feeding the German nation\u2019s nationalism, which were the best yeast to ferment Hitlerism. And all this, of course, is something nobody, from the Chinese government to all others, wants to see happening.<\/p>\n

So, if the West continues to hypothesize China as their \u201cenemy,\u201d and stoke up the \u201cChina threat\u201d theory, it will surely fan up the emergence of China\u2019s extreme nationalism, and provide support for those who oppose opening up and want to backpedal history.\u897f\u65b9\u653f\u6cbb\u5bb6\u548c\u897f\u65b9\u8206\u8bba\u754c\u5728\u653f\u6cbb\u667a\u6167\u4e0a\u5e76\u6ca1\u6709\u592a\u5927\u957f\u8fdb\u3002\u5fb7\u56fd\u7eb3\u7cb9\u4e5f\u662f\u201c\u4e00\u6218\u201d\u6218\u80dc\u56fd\u4eb2\u624b\u5236\u9020\u7684\u7978\u60a3\uff0c\u4ed6\u4eec\u5bf9\u5fb7\u56fd\u5d1b\u8d77\u7684\u6050\u60e7\u5bfc\u81f4\u4ed6\u4eec\u5bf9\u5fb7\u56fd\u7684\u8fc7\u5ea6\u60e9\u7f5a\uff0c\u4f7f\u5f97\u5fb7\u56fd\u7684\u6c11\u65cf\u4e3b\u4e49\u60c5\u7eea\u88c2\u53d8\u4e3a\u4ec7\u6068\u548c\u62a5\u590d\uff0c\u8fd9\u6b63\u662f\u917f\u9020\u5e0c\u7279\u52d2\u4e3b\u4e49\u7684\u6700\u597d\u9175\u6bcd\u3002\u800c\u8fd9\u4e00\u5207\uff0c\u663e\u7136\u662f\u4eca\u65e5\u4e2d\u56fd\u653f\u5e9c\u4ee5\u53ca\u6240\u6709\u5916\u56fd\u653f\u5e9c\u90fd\u4e0d\u613f\u610f\u770b\u5230\u7684\u3002<\/p>\n

\u5982\u4e0a\u6240\u8ff0\uff0c\u5982\u679c\u201c\u897f\u65b9\u4e16\u754c\u201d\u7ee7\u7eed\u5c06\u4e2d\u56fd\u8bbe\u4e3a\u5047\u60f3\u654c\uff0c\u9f13\u5439\u201c\u4e2d\u56fd\u5a01\u80c1\u8bba\u201d\uff0c\u52bf\u5fc5\u6fc0\u8d77\u56fd\u5185\u6781\u7aef\u6c11\u65cf\u4e3b\u4e49\u7684\u9ad8\u6da8\uff0c\u540c\u65f6\u4e5f\u4e3a\u90a3\u4e9b\u53cd\u5bf9\u5f00\u653e\u3001\u60f3\u7740\u5f00\u5386\u53f2\u5012\u8f66\u7684\u4eba\u63d0\u4f9b\u652f\u6301\u3002<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I find this a weird sort of historical analogy. For one thing, if I were going to pick an analogy for the possible rise of an ultra-nationalist China (which I don’t see as likely) the obvious comparison would be Showa Japan.1<\/a><\/sup> Perhaps more to the point he is using the Nazi analogy in a way that it is hard to imagine a westerner of any sort doing. If there is one universal lesson that almost everybody in the West takes from the rise of the Nazis it is the Munich analogy. I actually think this is often a bad thing, since any time a suggestion is made that negotiating with a unsavory types might have good (or less bad) results people will start yelling “Munich!” I can’t imagine too many people using Xiong’s argument here, which I think can be summarized as “China’s feng qing \u6124\u9752youth are like nascent Nazis. You (we?) should appease them.”<\/p>\n

A lot of historical analogies are getting tossed around, by academics and others in China and elsewhere, and it seems to me that we are working not only from different sets of analogies (Who is Hai Rui<\/a>?) but different understandings of the same events.<\/p>\n

  1. Among other things while resentment of foreigners was part of the rise of Nazism, internal enemies, above all the Jews, were far more important. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Charles links below to an interesting piece from China Digital Times (original from Sina.com ) It is a piece by Xiong Peiyun (\u718a\u57f9\u4e91) defending (sort of) Chinese nationalism. Thomas Bartlett analyzes the use of the term \u201ctianxia zhuyi\u201d \u5929\u4e0b\u4e3b\u4e49 in the piece, but what struck me was its odd (meaning different from mine) understanding of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[99,165,112,119,129,132],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs-and-carnivals","category-china","category-current-events","category-english","category-historiography","category-identity"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9yoH3-6Q","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4828,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions\/4828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}