The Beatles were the
best band ever. This morning an odd
“classic” I knew from my earliest days of Beatle worship as a 10 year-old playing
a scratchy copy of the LP of “Something New, The Beatles”, their third U.S.
release, popped on my headphones at the gym:
“Komm Gib Me Deine Hand.” This,
the remarkable German version of “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” As nearly everyone knows the Beatles
regularly performed in Hamburg from 1960-1962 and later they were pressured by their
label to record the hits in German as it would sell more records and so we have
a Teutonic version of “Sie Liebt Dich” (a.k.a. “She Loves You”) as well. (“My Bonny” and later, even “Get Back” were
also done in German). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komm,_gib_mir_deine_Hand/Sie_liebt_dich
My mind was back to the post from two days ago with Eric
Lomax the British soldier who was tortured in Thailand by a Japanese officer
whom, years later he met and forgave.
What a simple, brave thing it must have been to be young and British
playing in Germany a mere 15 years after the fall of Berlin. And, regardless of the motivations, what a kind
gesture it seems, for them to record the tunes in German as they explode upon
the world in 1964. As usual there are no
easy parallels for North Asia. We can
find Chinese bands who sing in Japanese or play in Japan, and vice versa and it
doesn’t mean a thing. The Beatles were sui generis, uber diplomats with unique
power and influence in the world of popular music. And that’s all it was, as well. The Fab Four
also played Japan, of course, despite protests by many older Japanese about
their presence in the sacred Budokan, in Tokyo and, obviously, the lads never
had an invitation to play revolutionary China.
Suffice to say that if kids whom themselves, survived German
air raids could overcome their hatred, why is it so impossible to imagine
Chinese or Korean kids who’s parents, parents survived Japanese atrocities
can’t do the same? Every day it feels as
if positions widen and harden round these parts. The Snowden revelations keep trickling out,
exacerbating things. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/15/us/nsa-effort-pries-open-computers-not-connected-to-internet.html?hp Surprise.
More reminders that we’re no better than anyone else in the pursuit of
our self interest. We have a low level
security competition that is escalating.
It’s important to look to times like 1960 AD, or perhaps 420 AD, when there
were different possibilities.
After the fall of the Han Dynasty in 220 AD, China descended
into the Three Kingdoms Period, which was made forever famous in “The Romance
of the Three Kingdoms” as a semi-historical adventure epic penned by Luo
Guanzhong in the 14th century.
The opening line of that story is engrained in the consciousness of
every Chinese person and helps to explain a great deal about the hopes and fears
of the contemporary ruling party:
It is a general truism of this
world that anything long divided will surely unite, and anything long united
will surely divide.
Three Kingdoms period was followed by the Jin Dynasty, 265-420
AD and then the Southern and Northern Dynasties from 420 to 589 AD. This was followed by the Sui Dynasty from
581 to 618 and then, finally, comes the Tang Dynasty, seemingly every Chinese
person’s favorite, which rules from 618 nearly three hundred years to 907. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_and_Northern_Dynasties
Thinking of western history it would be reasonable to
consider the Han Dynasty and the Roman Empire as contemporaneous. The western Roman Empire teeters for some
time and ultimately, officially falls with Romulus Augustus defeat in 476. Europe was a land of battling kingdoms until Charlemagne
unites a broad swath of the continent about 150 years after the Tang have
united China. But then his son, and his
son’s son, can’t hold it. And Europe
falls back apart. And so it remains
until, say Napoleon, and then Hitler make another go at it, only to fail.
The European version of the opening line of above might read
something like:
It is a general truism of Europe
that it will stay divided, but intermittently some megalomaniac will surely get
it in his head to try to unite the place, but this will never hold and it will
surely divide once again.
I was a student of the European Middle Ages and I love the
period for its chaotic uncertainty, the slow reassembly of civilization that
occurred and, against all odds cemented the platform from which the modern
western world would then miraculously spring forth from with all its glory and
indignities. The same chaotic period in
China between the Han and the Tang is, (besides the adventure of the Three
Kingdoms,) never much talked about, in the China of today. China, fought amongst itself and was not
united and powerful as it would be in the Tang.
It is, regardless an extraordinary period when Buddhism, a truly foreign
philosophy first sweeps the nation, not unlike the way Christianity sweeps
Europe at the same time. There is
extraordinary art work, like the Yungang carvings as well as architectural and
technical innovations.
I’m on about all this because we now have a new window into
the period. An extraordinary Northern
Dynasties Tomb has suddenly been unearthed near the city of Xinzhou in Shanxi
province. There are elaborately painted
frescos that depict a hunt in great detail.
Northern Dynasty elites 飞鹰走马[1] They
look extraordinary. Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CMejBMZU14&feature=c4-overview&list=UUgrNz-aDmcr2uuto8_DL2jg For all the places you visit and learn that it was re-“discovered”
in 1920, or 1975, here is one, that was only properly unearthed, now. I checked and it is about a five hour drive
to the south west from here in Beijing.
I would love to talk the family into an overnight out there. Without a doubt it will be a hard-sell.
Now, it has been said that anything “long divided will surely unite.” It isn’t written but it is usually understood
that with the unity of a dynasty comes a rise.
At least for a while. Alas there
is no truism or historical evidence such that “these rises tend to be
peaceful.” Rhetorically and certainly
practically, China is trying to have a rise, at present, that is peaceful. Can it hold?
Realist political theorist John Mearsheimer says “no.” Have a look at this fascinating debate
between him and another realist theorist Yan Xuetong, on this very question:
“Can China Rise Peacefully.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBrA2TDcNto
If you haven’t time for the full one-hour, discussion
Mearsheimer’s assumptions are laid out in this short article: http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/A0051.pdf Essentially his point is that it is in the nature of
hegemon’s like the United States to control their region, which they do and
ensure that no one is able to control any other region, for if they do they
will have the luxury to begin messing with other hemisphere’s such as
America’s. China, for security reasons
wants the U.S. out of their region, and the U.S. will necessarily do whatever
it takes, in part through partnering with others like China’s neighbors who
also do not want to see them dominate the region. The interests are at odds and will not
necessarily lead them to open conflict, in part because of the specter of
Mutually-Assured- (Nuclear) Destruction, (MAD) but intense “security
competition” will be the norm, for the foreseeable.
Let’s assume that economic interdependence, will not do
enough to mitigate an acrimonious competition.
Is that were left with for the rest of my life time, an intense security
competition that waxes and wanes and at best simply avoids open conflict the
way the U.S. and the Soviet Union danced, until the latter’s fall? The U.S. and the Soviets of course did not
have economic interdependence. And
though Europe one hundred years ago did have economic interdependence but did
not have nuclear war, and descended into open conflict, are the two mitigating
factors in tandem, enough to keep China and the U.S. in sufficiently
cooperative to accommodate China’s rise peacefully?
At the core of my thesis in “Seven Deadly Starbucks”
manuscript was that the Koreas may be central to a rapprochement between China
and Japan. In the Americas the U.S.
clearly dominates. In Europe, no one
does, in anywhere near that proportion.
In Asia the playing field for now and the immediate future, seems much
more volatile and complicated. Waning powers
like Russia are nuclear. Waning
economies like Japan are still enormous.
And China is by no means the only rising power of note. The growth of India’s power, albeit trailing
China, has no immediate end in site.
This plays well to the American hegemonic enterprise for the immediate
future, perhaps. But it will also call
upon something different from China, because to pretend otherwise, too early,
will be disastrous.
If we are to avoid open conflict, we must, it would seem,
use the time of “intense security competition” to innovate with accommodations
and sharing of power that have never been tried in quite the same way,
before. It may be that neither the
global hegemon nor the aspiring one have the ability to reflect or create in
this way. It may be the good work of
other nations that ultimately help the giants to artfully consider their own
and each other’s mutual self-interest anew. Perhaps it is now the world, “long
divided” that will “surely unite.” That’s
certainly not a “realist” critique. But
neither was “Sie Liebt Dich.”
[1] fēiyīngzǒumǎ: to ride out hawking (idiom); to hunt
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