Jottings from the Granite Studio

I’m in Beijing right now and will be until Saturday. Richard at The Peking Duck was so very kind to put together a (last minute, my fault) dinner for bloggers, commenters, and lurkers on Friday night near the Kerry Center in Beijing. Leave a comment or send me an email (address is in my profile) if you’d like to come.

Some great stuff from around the blogosphere in today’s afternoon tea, but first:

All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are rich and well-born and the other the mass of the people…The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct permanent share in the government? Can a democratic assembly who annually revolve in the mass of the people be supposed steadily to pursue the public good? Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy.

Mao Zedong? Chen Duxiu? Sun Yat-sen? Deng Xiaoping? Find the answer below.

• Ben Landy’s fabulous and terrifically informative new blog, China Redux, has a post this week on The Five Lessons of the Africa-China Lovefest. Landy writes:

While the US and Europe have had little choice but to divest from oil-rich, governance-poor countries like Sudan, China has swooped in to claim precious resources for a virtual song.

In this light, China’s strategy in Africa looks like a slam dunk. But it is a complete disaster in another — the international community — because it has served to confirm fears that China is not equipped to lead globally, or even play by the rules.

• Mutantfrog Travelogue has a two-part series on the rectification of names on Taiwan providing excellent analysis and historical context for the changes. It’s important to remember that throughout history the concept of zheng ming 正名, the rectification of names as a means to order the world, recurs again and again. Westerners might think of the changes as mere window-dressing, but I assure you that people on both Taiwan and in the PRC are taking this seriously.

• I like historical teledramas. I just do. Towards a Republic (走向共和) is one of my favorite pieces of television in any language. I didn’t have time to see the new Ming Dynasty 1566 大明王朝1566, but it’s definitely on my DVD list. Danwei has a great post on teledramas regarding the new directives to reserve prime time for “main theme” dramas that feature soft, ethically inspiring, politically correct and wholesome characters and plots. Yet Ming 1566, like Towards a Republic, seems subtly subversive. Joel Martinson at Danwei writes:

This is not an imperial drama that preaches reverence for royal power. What it describes is not the “rise of a great nation,” but rather the lessons of a great nation’s fall. This is the critical era when feudal Chinese society moved from prosperity into decline. Here, we see the corruption of the political system and the loss of humanity, we see the rulers issuing decrees and the insecurity of the common people, and we see the long-absent Hai Rui - he lambasted the emperor, was dismissed from office, and 400 years later even became the fuse that set off the Cultural Revolution - at odds with the bureaucratic system. The show discovers the impotence of morality yet praises moral beauty. It seems to lead us to believe that the just, upright, filial Hai Rui is the backbone of the Chinese people, a representative of outstanding culture, the hope of modern China. There is no question that the Hai Rui of Ming Dynasty 1566 is yet another performance of the “main theme” of the traditional spirit of the Chinese people.

However, in that age of exploding population, a calcified system, slack law enforcement, and an insular country, regardless of how pure or corrupt the officials or how worthy or foolish the emperor, the sun would ultimately set on the massive, once-flourishing empire that had exhausted its potential. Hai Rui used a Puritan-like moral self-discipline and lofty ideals as instruments to transform society, intervening in land rights, placing limits on the brutal gentry, and controlling corruption, but ultimately things could not be repaired, and things even turned out contrary to his desires. Morality evidently cannot replace the rule of law; public opinion cannot replace the rule of law; severe penal codes cannot represent a true legal system. Hai Rui used all his strength to sound the “main theme,” but it was the “Guangling Melody” of the old era, and ultimately never entered the powerful current of modernity.

• Finally, the quote at the top of post? Alexander Hamilton. Progressive Historian has a provocative post on the “Myth of American Democracy” even as Ying Ma at the Hoover Institute wants the US to more aggressively push China down the democratic path. Ying Ma’s article requires a more critical response than I have time for right now, but it’s worth reading anyway.