This essay is the second installment of my interview with Mike Whitney published on Unz Review. This is quite lengthy as I was trying to cover many grounds in Mike’s expansive question about the underlying forces for China’s resurgence.
Here’s the question:
Western pundits seem perversely fixated on the size of China’s economy, but what interests me is the China Phenomenon, that is, how the Chinese government managed to transform a poor, agrarian country into a technologically advanced, state-of-the-art civilization in which poverty has nearly been eradicated, standards of living continue to rise, and the masses of people seem to support the government’s vision of the future. How did China become the expression of 21st Century modernity it is today? (Or am I overstating the case?)
China’s Revival in the Context of its History
The west likes to talk about the rise of China. For the Chinese, it is not a rise. It is a return to normalcy – the place China occupied in the world for most of its existence.
Most educated people are aware China is the oldest continuous civilization in the world with a history extending back 5 millennia. For most of the 5000 years, China was one of the wealthiest and most advanced civilizations on earth....
Read full text: https://www.unz.com/bhua/making-sense-of-chinas-meteoric-rise/
