Faith That Never Had Been

Today is Thursday, all day long.  Up early in Japan.  The light pours in the hotel window and the day is underway.  If it were Beijing I’d probably roll over.  It’s 4:30 in the morning back home.  But here in Tokyo it’s an hour onward and we may as well get on with it.  I read a book on the plane that was disappointing.  I could have guessed. Regina Abrami, William Kirby and Warren McFarlan, a Harvard trio have cobbled together thoughts on the au courant topic: “Can China Lead?”   Any of the authors on their own, in their own milieu might have been interesting but Frankenstein-ed together as a “China book of the moment” offered nothing particularly original to support their tart disdain.  “Can China Lead?”  Well, their short answer was “no.”  Surprise.  They’re not ready.  We spend one-hundred pages to determine that succession is a weakness in the political system.  We know all this.  There was nothing new nor particularly prescient in what they had to say. 

I came upon this book and a half-a-dozen others from different professor’s syllabus, which I inherited.  It’s the second book from this list that I’ve read and I tried to read it with an open mind.  But not unlike “Will the Boat Sink the Water?” which also came from this list, this was, for different reasons, completely underwhelming.  You begin to understand why Chinese people can become so knee-jerk dismissive of foreign analysis.  Every chapter that is supposed to be examining the weighty question:  Can China Lead, ends with a “What does this mean for your company?” type summary.  “Who Are Your Chinese Technology Competitors?”  “What are their Strengths?” Business books can be so infantilizing, at times.  All the worse if you’re lulled into seriousness with a chapter or two written by a historian.    

I made it through this glorified HBR article, some two hours into the flight.  I kept hoping William Kirby, whose work as a historian I do respect would offer something interesting.  This format doesn’t suit him, at all.  I stood up and put the book back in my backpack overhead and pulled down my “Cambridge Illustrated History of China” ahh, now that is another matter.  That’s a text I’m using for my upcoming course.  This is glorious. 

Fair enough, it’s easier to offer substantive insights about the past than it is to “offer useful prognostication about the future. The “China 2034” chapter of “Can China?” taught me little beyond how not to write a scenarist’s consideration of one country’s fate.  In the ‘Cambridge History’ we’re into the Sui period between the Han and the Tang.  In the main tomb like Cambridge History of China series where each dynasty is afforded a few thousand pages, the book about this unique period has yet to be written. The Age of Division:  The Three Kingdoms, “The Sixteen Kingdoms, The Eastern Jin, The Northern Wei, the Northern Zhou . . .  It all gets rather confusing and reminiscent of European Medieval period with which it is contemporaneous.

I suppose Chinese and Westerners alike tend to disregard these periods in their civilizational past.  I like the disorder. The possibilities that never were, the introduction of a new faith that never had been.  But in Europe the pagan faiths don’t last long.  The Vikings perhaps are the last hold outs, but in China native genius and Buddhist faith will spar and embrace for the rest of Chinese time.  China is remarkable to be so resilient when we consider the fate of the Aztecs or say the Buddhist grottos of Afghanistan. 

Thursday, 4/26/18