Why China Will Never Rule the World: Travels in the Two Chinas [Kindle Edition]

The title of this interesting book is pretty uncompromising, wouldn't you say? There is no need to labour fine shades of meaning in 'rule', because whatever it may mean China ain't gonna do it. Let me be clear at once - this book is no kind of right-wing tract. Besides being extremely independent-minded Troy Parfitt is clearly very well read in Chinese history and culture, and it is precisely his interpretation of these that brings him to the conclusions that he comes to. On p297 (just as an example) you will find a debate with students at Xiamen University concerning the Analects of Confucius, a seminal Chinese text. Any apologists, sentimentalists or other credulous parties who may believe that China has something to offer the world in terms of culture will encounter vigorous scepticism on that score here. As for what China's history proves to Troy, there is a handy précis of that on p394 'For thousands of years China has been a land of tribalism, practically uninterrupted warfare, unimaginable tyranny and indescribable upheaval.' And in case we had forgotten p297 by this time, that is followed with 'There isn't much that is spiritual or mystical involved in burning bundles of ghost money or praying to bug-eyed statues for good grades and winning lottery numbers, and Chinese classics like the Analects of Confucius and the Tao Te Ching are so profound as to be almost completely meaningless.'

Troy deserves full credit for mental honesty at least. He does not take statements or people on faith, and after the incessant chatter he had been subjected to regarding the supposedly growing influence of China in the wider world, he went on a 3-month tour of his own. There is no mistaking the candour of his accounts, and his experiences do not incline him to suspect that he is encountering any world-dominating superpower, something his background reading and his own mental disposition would not have lent any credence to anyway. Troy speaks fluent Chinese and I speak none, but as it happens I myself spent three weeks in various parts of China over roughly the same period. I ought to have been at a disadvantage, but the strange thing is that I was not encountering the taxi drivers who did not know where anywhere was, or unhygienic-looking restaurants, or no-can-do functionaries. Good heavens, when it comes to the latter read Lucy Wadham's account in The Secret Life of France of just how unhelpful their personnel can be, or Joseph O'Neill's in Netherland concerning the USA itself. I met helpful people certainly, but basically I was my own navigator. I was not looking for problems obviously, but they were not looking for me either, and as a rough generalisation I felt more at my ease in China than I do in Brazil, fond as I am of that now-democratic country where I can speak at least a little of the language.

It's not something I would dream of trying to 'prove', but I could not help the faint suspicion that Troy was finding what he expected to find in the first place. China does not get credit from him for much. The major figures of Chinese history get cut down to size, not unreasonably, and not only Mao and Chiang Kai-shek but Sun Yat-sen himself will never be the same for you if you had thought of them as giants. For Troy the Chinese provoked the dangerous clashes with the Soviet Union back in the 60's, a point of view certainly, but one that surely requires a bit of arguing. They intervened in Korea too, shock horror, and apparently in Vietnam, which may surprise you. They also 'seized' Tibet, which simply begs the question whether Tibet is a province of China or not. That topic is not pursued, but the last section of the book, devoted to Taiwan, ends with a ringing declaration that Taiwan, now democratic, should be independent of mainland China because a majority of its democratically-polled citizens say so. Not so fast please, and not so simple either. Troy makes the good point somewhere that China has never been very precisely defined, but I recall Chris Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong before the handover, saying that everyone accepts a one-China policy except for the (then) American ambassador at the UN, the odd-looking Mr Bolton. The UN has never recognised two Chinas, and I don't suppose that, say, Spain and France are going to grant Basques a separate homeland on the basis that a majority of them want it. What Patten did was to negotiate not a bad agreement, and I'd say that Taiwan had better think that way too, with the greatest respect to Troy. It's Realpolitik, national delimitations are inherently fluid and subject to conflicting definitions, and in that sense it's a matter of - Who do they think they are?

I also think that earnest debate over whether China will become more democratic is a busted flush by now. Another British Conservative who made sense to me was our late prime minister Sir Edward Heath, who accepted entirely Deng Xiaoping's view that there had to be political control in China simply to keep the place together. Representative democracy is great where and when the circumstances are right, but in many cases it is worse than useless, and China is as clear an instance of the latter as I can think of. It's not actually all that long that Britain has been the paragon of democracy that it likes to think it is - the thing takes time, and China's history and sheer size make me rather unkeen on seeing it there in my own lifetime, or maybe in my children's.

So will China rule the world? Search me, but one thing I'm sure of is that economics always trumps politics, and that economic hegemony is the kind that matters. Then there's the question of how long 'nations' as we know them will survive modern technology. Good reading, all the same.

Having lived in Taiwan for 10 years and speaking good Mandarin, Parfitt is far from an oblivious Western tourist. In traveling through mainland China he's a far more serious investigator than the typical sightseer. He aims to check China's pulse, and determine if the country has superpower potential. When he talks to Chinese people, he tends to play hardball. Is there anything China has to teach the world? Parfitt feels that nobody has an intelligent reply. Does Confucianism offer anything of value to global society? What do people think of democracy? Independent thought? Parfitt seems to find none. Is there any basis for considering China a burgeoning superpower? The ugliness, poverty, inefficiency, and general ignorance Parfitt finds in city after city seems to say not. Actually, Parfitt finds very little he can respect in China, and he has no hesitance in saying so. His verdict resembles that of Bo Yang (1920-2008), who wrote "The Ugly Chinaman and the Crisis of Chinese Culture." And Bo was downright disgusted by most of his countrymen or women. Under such criticism, the whole notion that China has a great civilization starts to seem laughable.

For sure Parfitt is an acute observer and brutally honest. But a few questions came to my mind. Concerning Confucius, didn't he spend his career challenging the morality of abusive rulers? Doesn't that suggest there is more to Confucianism than blind obedience to authority? Also, at one point Parfitt expresses relief and surprise to have a normal pleasant conversation with a woman in a tea shop--a woman who doesn't try to cheat him or sell him a "massage" in his hotel room. But wouldn't that normal woman be more representative of Chinese people than the hucksters who cluster around Western tourists?

Anyway, for those who like hardball tourism, this is the clash of cultures for you. The book has numerous well researched, extremely irreverent asides on the careers of major Chinese leaders. And Parfitt's tour encircling Taiwan is a highlight of the book.

The selected title of this review comes from a 1948 song by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans from the film 'The Paleface' (the song goes on to be known as 'Buttons and Bows'). And the Inscrutable East was also address by Rudyard Kipling in his 1889 poem, The Ballad of East and West:

Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!

That may serve as a bit of the background to this fascinating, well-constructed, delightfully written by Troy Parfitt: so many misconceptions, prejudices, myths, and sense of the 'unknowable inscrutable' world of China have been a part of our lack of knowledge about a very large country who seems to be growing into greater and greater power by the day. China owns the majority of US Treasury bonds, makes most of the toys and computer parts fund in this country, and has recently surpassed Japan as a major world power financially. So where does the magical mysticism of the Far East become distilled into reality so that we all have a better idea of the potential of China to be the world leader? Well, this book WHY CHINA WILL NEVER RULE THE WORLD: TRAVELS IN TWO CHINAS pulls together a lot of information that makes much of what have been ambiguous facts, digestible alternative observations on what the media would have us believe.

While there is little doubt that China's influence on the world is significant, careful examination of the truths by a young writer who has lived in Asia for twelve years (Korea and Taiwan) and speaks Mandarin fluently, a Canadian man with degrees in American history and Canadian political science, and a certificate to teach English as a second language in Asia, brings home the realities of one who has traveled in China, met with the people, absorbed the history and traditions, and the has taken the time to sort all of this out into a very readable book. Much of the pleasure of delving into this book is the format in which it is related. Parfitt uses the travelogue approach: he spent months traveling about China as a 'tourist', getting to know the people and interviewing some very important sources, and as a result he brings home far different concepts than dwell in the golden clouds that hang above China's mysterious presence.

Parfitt looks beyond the shining skyscrapers of the new 'Westernized' China and pulls focus to the realities of how China truly looks up close. He shares with the reader that China's great rise as a potential leader of the world is an illusion, that simply because China has imitated the facades of the West, the belief systems are in a disparate state. One of the more interesting aspects Perfitt shares is the Confucian Hierarchy is the chief social structure in Chinese society - a very rigid 'top-down rubric' manner of life that is not compatible with the Western manner of living or functioning. A bit of definition here: 'Following the abandonment of Legalism in China after the Qin Dynasty, Confucianism became the official state ideology of China, until it was replaced by the "Three Principles of the People" ideology with the establishment of the Republic of China, and then Maoist Communism after the ROC was replaced by the People's Republic of China in Mainland China. The core of Confucianism is humanism, the belief that human beings are teachable, improvable and perfectible through personal and communal endeavour especially including self-cultivation and self-creation. Confucianism focuses on the cultivation of virtue and maintenance of ethics, the most basic of which are ren, yi, and li. Ren is an obligation of altruism and humaneness for other individuals within a community, yi is the upholding of righteousness and the moral disposition to do good, and li is a system of norms and propriety that determines how a person should properly act within a community. Confucianism holds that one should give up one's life, if necessary, either passively or actively, for the sake of upholding the cardinal moral values of ren and yi. Confucianism is humanistic and non-theistic, and does not involve a belief in the supernatural or in a personal god.'

That said, Parfitt discovered through his conversations and interviews from throughout China that most educated Chinese people do not want democracy and blame the West for many of its problems. He also discovered that many of the myths about China are fiction and that given the direction of the country at present makes the potential for becoming the ruler of the world highly unlikely. He also points our the human rights abuses, peasant revolts, growing concern over an expanding military, tainted exports, natural disasters, pollution, and the constant friction and unrest in Tibet and Xinjiang - all of which negate many fears that China is set to rule the world. His commentary on the opium use is an eye-opener, and his relating of the history of Chiang Kai-shek and Chairman Mao Tse-Tung makes for fascinating reading. Parfitt came across a list of items that were not allowed to enter China: printed matter, films, photos, gramophone records, and any form of cinematographic films, CDs, and any form of storage media that would be detrimental to the political, economic, and moral interests of China!

There is so much in this book that could be quoted, but one of the aspects few reviewers are touching on is Troy Parfitt's writing skills in painting simply stunning images of the grand scenery and the atmosphere that abounds in this near-indecipherable land. There are likely to be readers who disagree with Parfitt's findings - and that just makes for al the more reason to read this book for yourselves. It is a different view, a challenging view, a comforting view in some ways, and a bit of a needed does of reality as the globe makes less and less sense daily. And after reading the book between East and West, perhaps the tile of the review will alter thinking a bit! Highly recommended. Grady Harp, September 11