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clay dubeDebbie Seligsohn is a former US foreign services officer who headed the science and tech office at the US Embassy in Beijing. She's now a political scientist at Villanova. She spoke on US-China environmental issues at USC at our China Card conference in 2016. She published an op-ed on US-China environmental competition being good for all of us. I've attached it, but you can also read it here.
clay dubeSome may be interested in polling that the Pew Research Center has done on Asian views of the Biden agenda and on climate change to be of interest. You can see that here.
We are lucky that the internet makes it pretty easy to get news in English from Asian sources. As always, we need to nurture critical reading and thinking skills, but it is often useful to have students look at contrasting perspectives on issues (including how Asians differ in their views from one another).
In many places, but especially in diverse cities, you might also be able to empower some students to use languages they may speak at home to bring in views from those societies. What is being said in Mexico, China, India or some other place about East Asia? Anything that encourages students to retain and strengthen their non-English skills is to their advantage and ours. Our newsletter tomorrow will have some data about Chinese language learning in the U.S. Spoiler alert - it could be worse, but it's not great.
clay dube(everyone, please call me Clay)
Todd makes a really valuable point that the perception in the 1980s that Japan would dominate is not unlike some of what one hears today about China. One book about Japan's rise that I mentioned in the lecture is Japan As No. 1 (1980). It was written by Ezra Vogel, a legendary Harvard sociologist, best known now for his work on Deng Xiaoping. Vogel highlighted cultural, structural and political strengths that Japan possessed. published a follow-up in 2000 Is Japan Still No. One? (a review). What some forget is that Vogel's original work had "Lessons for America" as a subtitle. James Fallows published Looking at the Sun in 1994 and similarly focused on revitalizing America. The LA Times review of it by Andrew Horvat is quite negative: "It seems that for this politically influential writer and broadcaster, it is not enough that Japan be alien, the country must also appear to be outlandish. This tendency is not merely a flaw of this book but of current thinking about Japan in Washington, where being tough on Japan seems to be far more important these days than having accurate information about the country." I think the book is better than Horvat wrote, but he's absolutely right about the trend in commentary. And that is true today about commentary on China. We should certainly criticize China for many things, but we needn't exaggerate its strengths or argue that China's continued rise is a threat to the U.S. We have to work with China to address key issues and to learn from our shared failures. That certainly doesn't mean excusing human rights abuses or threatening neighbors, but it also does not mean that progress for China means a loss for the U.S.
clay dubeI invited Prof. Kamei to speak because I admire her work as an attorney and as a scholar. I thought her presentation was outstanding and I learned a lot from it. I hope that many will utilize her op-ed and her book with their students. I agree with what she's said and written. But even if I didn't, it is vital to listen to what she's got to say. One may not agree with any or all of it, but no one can be permitted to stop it by labelling it as propaganda. It is fine to oppose her conclusions, but that opposition must be articulated in a respectful way at an appropriate time.
Race may not have been the only motivating factor behind the incarceration of 120,000 people, without charge or any form of due process. But two things are abundately clear to me:
1. Racism undergird the many formal and informal restrictions already imposed on people of Chinese and Japanese ancestry at the federal and local levels. It permeated the thinking of most in power and was widespread among the general public. This is not speculation on my part, but readily found in the historical record. (Examine, for example, the exclusion act and the so-called "gentlemen's agreement" regarding the migration of Chinese and Japanese to the U.S. Examine the career and campaigns of James Phelan, SF mayor and CA senator.)
2. Racist assumptions powered the enforcement of the policy. And the efforts to represent it in more benign terms are well-known. Published photographs and stories sought to portray life in the camps as something other than a prison experience. You may find this Duke University collection and discussion of interest. Sports, Boy Scout troops and school yearbooks did make life a bit better, but the fundamental reality is that people were imprisoned because of their Japanese heritage.
The abuse of people of Japanese descent was accompanied by a legal change to the benefit of Chinese. Because China was an ally in the war, in late 1943 the US began to legally permit Chinese to immigrate to the U.S. and some of those already here to become naturalized citizens. It took wartime need to change official hostility to Chinese migration and citizenship. It is this new exception that reminds us of the underlying racism.
There is no question that the attack on Pearl Harbor generated great fear. Some of that fear stemmed from racist beliefs that people of Japanese descent were not and could not be "real" Americans. People in power wanted to be seen as protecting the U.S. and played on racist assumptions in identifying people of Japanese ancestry as potential threats. In this instance, racism made the policy possible and drove its implementation. We know, though, that racism isn't the only things that can produce discrimination. Anti-German policies and practices exploded during World War I. At various times there was hostility towards Irish immigrants and those from southern Europe. People are often suspicious of the unfamiliar and that can produce legal or extralegal discrimination.
For me the most pernicious human habit (it isn't uniquely American) is to focus on differences among us, beginning with easiest to spot such as how one looks. The institutionalized hostility towards people of Japanese ancestry didn't start with Pearl Harbor. Nor did it end with the emptying of the camps. Some may wonder why people of Asian ancestry might be upset when someone they've never talked with starts a conversation with "what country are you from?" or "what are you?" It's offensive because the assumption is that you couldn't have been from the US. And remember, please, two-thirds of those imprisoned were from the US. Rounded up because of racist assumptions they couldn't be trusted.
Race may not have been the only thing policy makers considered, but it undergird their assumptions and helped them sell it to others. Not everyone went along with racist policies or practices. Lon Kurashige, a USC historian, writes of Asians and others who fought back in his excellent Two Faces of Exclusion.
Those teaching about the battle for civil rights will naturally address the struggle over segregation. The legality of segregation was shattered by Brown vs Board of Education in 1954 (and it had been chipped away at before then). Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren is credited with pulling together his eight colleagues for a unamious repubdiation of the doctrine of "separate but equal." They found that separate could never be equal. One of Warren's former clerks argues that it was Warren's slow realization that the incarceration of people of Japanese descent was fundamentally racist and unjust that helped him reach the Brown decision. Warren was CA's attorney general when incarceration began and was subsequently CA governor as it continued. Click here for that 1979 article which lays out how even a fellow who became known as a defender of civil rights had been a prisoner of racist thinking. And that thinking meant he defended the incarceration. In 1942 he described Japanese in California as a strategic weakness for the U.S. But he later came to described his defense of what he called relocation as a tragic blunder.
clay dubeBillibilli is a hugely popular Chinese video/social media site. Here a fellow has created an 11 minute video summary of the animated version of Animal Farm: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1U4411j7KD/ Even if you can't understand Chinese, you can follow the story. Hold on to 9:30 when the revisionist message comes through. The full animation is available on the platform: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1oF411a7Dd/?spm_id_from=333.788.recommend_more_video.-1 Both the original English narration and Chinese subtitles are included. （Billibilli is hugely popular in China. The video is also on YouTube with Chinese subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlBLSqRBmIA .
Here's a Beijing University professor's notes about Animal Farm (in Chinese): https://www.guancha.cn/LiLing/2013_03_18_132531.shtml
clay dubeWashington Post
BEIJING
Just hours after China's new leaders took a bow and the curtain fell on the Chinese Communist Party's 16th Congress last month, the curtain rose on a Beijing stage production of George Orwell's "Animal Farm."
The timing of the production of Orwell's blistering critique of totalitarian society and revolution gone awry had all the ingredients for cultural and political fireworks. Orwell's novel had been banned for decades here, and only published in a limited edition in 2000. Though inspired by Stalin's Soviet Union and published in 1945, four years before China's communists took power, Orwell's fable reads like a startlingly apt indictment of the Chinese communist system. So when I heard about the play, I imagined a packed house, bookish Chinese students discussing its meaning in hushed voices -- and maybe a police raid to shut it down.
Instead, director Shang Chengjun's version of "Animal Farm" at the 700-seat Central Drama Academy Experimental Theater is playing to half-empty houses and is unlikely to make back the money Shang invested. Moreover, the audience's reception has been tepid. Apparently, not even the police are interested.
This twist in China's political story is one that would have dismayed Orwell. While he worried that the misuse of words would render them meaningless, he said he wrote "to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people's idea of the kind of society they should strive after." That Orwell's story, intended to provoke readers, has been greeted here with mere indifference explains much about contemporary China. While Orwell envisioned totalitarianism sustained by force and terror, the Chinese Communist Party is sustained by the public's political apathy as much as the party's capricious, intense, yet intermittent oppression.
Why this indifference? One reason: The Chinese are too busy to think about what they euphemistically call "the big things of the nation." The unprecedented opportunities presented by China's economic reforms have concentrated people on getting rich, not making revolution, be it democratic, Cultural or otherwise. China's economy has grown by an average of 9.3 percent a year since 1989, perhaps the longest rapid growth streak of any modern nation. Besides, the last time a lot of Chinese got together to think about "the big things of the nation" in Tiananmen Square in 1989 -- they were crushed by the tanks and armor of the People's Liberation Army.
It would be a mistake to confuse this indifference to politics with indifference in general, however. The sheer energy of the Chinese at the turn of the 21st century is mind-boggling. They already own more mobile telephones than Americans. While world trade stagnates, China's exports are up 21 percent for the first 10 months of 2002. Foreign investment is falling almost everywhere except here; it has risen 20 percent so far this year to more than $46 billion. And domestic car sales this year have jumped 55 percent.
China's energy is focused on production and consumption -- not self-reflection. This country is all id and no superego. Its citizens hunger for sex, food, money, goods and cheap thrills. Ecstasy flows freely in the nightclubs; heroin is cheap; hashish is cheaper. Most of mymale friends older than 40 have a mistress and are proud of it. Most of my friends younger than 40 will do the same when they make enough money.
Communism as an ideology is dead. It has been replaced by hedonism in the Peoples Republic of China. Nationalism may appeal to a few hot-headed students but it can't compare to a night on the town with a hot hostess at a Karaoke bar.
"In the eyes of the post-communist personality," Wang Xiaoying, a professor at Hong Kong University writes, "there is 'communist' morality and there is naked self-interest, but nothing in between. Thus the abandonment of communism means . . . farewell to all values and scruples." What's left, she says, is a "frenzied scramble for money or pleasure."
Those kinds of party animals aren't interested in "Animal Farm."
Some people here blame the director for the lackluster reception to his theatrical version of "Animal Farm."
They have criticized Shang's version as Orwell-Lite, a cartoon, fun for the whole family. The actors sport goofy costumes -- pigs, mules, horses and chickens. One newspaper compared it favorably to Disney's "Lion King." The production features slapstick comedy, dance, and music ranging from klezmer to tango to the Irish singer Enya. It also has inside jokes that refer to current Chinese television shows.
Little of that seems true to the original Orwell satire about animals who capture their farm from its drunken owner and try to establish a model community in which all animals are equal. Two of the revolutionary elite, the pigs, battle each other for control of the revolution, and the victor, named Napoleon, triumphs amid bloody purges. He then negotiates an alliance with the humans, establishes his own personal dictatorship, and modifies revolutionary slogans, most famously: "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others."
Shang's critics say he has soft-pedaled Orwell's message to please China's preternaturally paranoid censors. The dogs loyal to the porcine dictator Napoleon only kill one character during the play -- and it's offstage. In the book, they rip the throats out of numerous of Napoleon's perceived enemies.
For sure, Shang substantially re-wrote Orwell, but he did so to make a point. In his version of "Animal Farm," Shang keeps Orwell's critique of dictatorship but adds an important and subtle twist. Instead of blaming the dictatorial Napoleon for Animal Farm's ills, the director blames the common animals for being too stupid or weak to stick up for themselves. Shang's play is more Ayn Rand than George Orwell.
"My play is about how stupid and devious the common people can be," he says. "In my play, they are the ones to blame." Sounding like a character out of "Atlas Shrugged," he continues, "I didn't like Orwell's idea that it was all the fault of the leaders. People should take responsibility."
Shang turns the relationship between Napoleon and his rival Squealer into husband and wife -- an echo of China's late dictator Mao Zedong and his wife and propagandist, Jiang Qing. He also has rewritten the animals under their control into archetypes of Chinese society. There's the honest but stupid horse who labors selflessly for the revolution and ends up thinking he's going off to a martyr's graveyard only to be sold as horsemeat. There's the donkey who is only interested in protecting himself and dies alone. While in Orwell's book, "traitors" of the revolution are ordered executed by Napoleon, the tragic chicken in Shang's version is pressured into committing suicide for speaking the truth, reminiscent of vicious episodes from China's Cultural Revolution. Finally, in a nod to the exodus of thousands of Chinese students, there's the parrot, who flies off to "paradise" (read the United States), and finds it, well, paradisiacal.
Shang's criticism of the masses resonates only among educated Chinese, who blame the country's predicaments on their fellow countrymen, not their government. Chinese refer to each other as having "low quality" -- lacking in education, values or beliefs -- thereby justifying authoritarian rule. "China needs an emperor" is a common saying.
In just a few short years, the egalitarianism once advocated by Chinese has been replaced by cutthroat social Darwinism. While once one of the world's most equitable societies, China is now one of its least fair. The vast wealth gap has opened up between the gated communities in rich Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou and the laid-off men and women roaming around their railway stations, not to mention dirt-poor Ningxia or Gansu provinces in the west.
This wealth-gap hasn't spawned sympathy for China's underclass of laid-off workers and underemployed farmers. In the cities, among China's intellectuals, it's spawned contempt. Orwell wrote "Animal Farm" from the perspective of the proletariat. Shang directed it from the perspective of the budding middle class. Orwell's innocents have been rewritten as idiots.
Shang's own life explains his attitudes. His family expected him to get a job on an assembly line, but he got himself into business. He sold sundries on a street-side stall, ran a restaurant and finally owned a candy factory employing 90 workers. A chance meeting with an elderly actress in his hometown, Dalian, changed Shang's life. "She discovered that I had other talents besides making money," he says. "She pushed me to go to university."
To Shang, China's opportunities outweigh its injustices. "If I made it," he says, "other people could have made it, too."
Perhaps that's why he tweaks the final scene of "Animal Farm" by omitting a dispute that breaks out over cheating in a card game between Napoleon and one of the once-reviled humans the pig-dictator has befriended. In a gesture that would be appreciated by a Communist Party that recently welcomed capitalists into its ranks, Shang ends with man and pig raising their glasses in a toast to their new business alliance.
clay dubeHi Folks,
Here are a couple of the links we shared in the discussion session today.
Biden-Xi meeting (US and Chinese summaries of the discussion): https://china.usc.edu/us-china-governments-virtual-summit-between-xi-jinping-and-joseph-biden-nov-15-2021
Chinese Communist Party issues its official history:
https://china.usc.edu/ccp-central-committee-resolution-major-achievements-and-historical-experience-party-over-past
The US Census video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbqv8aT9RNE
The passage on 1957-1976:
Regrettably, the correct line adopted at the Party’s Eighth National Congress was not fully upheld. Mistakes were made such as the Great Leap Forward and the people’s commune movement, and the scope of the struggle against Rightists was also made far too broad. Confronted with a grave and complex external environment at the time, the Party was extremely concerned about consolidating China’s socialist state power, and made a wide range of efforts in this regard. However, Comrade Mao Zedong’s theoretical and practical errors concerning class struggle in a socialist society became increasingly serious, and the Central Committee failed to rectify these mistakes in good time. Under a completely erroneous appraisal of the prevailing class relations and the political situation in the Party and the country, Comrade Mao Zedong launched and led the Cultural Revolution. The counter-revolutionary cliques of Lin Biao and Jiang Qing took advantage of Comrade Mao Zedong’s mistakes, and committed many crimes that brought disaster to the country and the people, resulting in ten years of domestic turmoil which caused the Party, the country, and the people to suffer the most serious losses and setbacks since the founding of the People’s Republic. This was an extremely bitter lesson. Acting on the will of the Party and the people, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee resolutely smashed the Gang of Four in October 1976, putting an end to the catastrophic Cultural Revolution.
遗憾的是，党的八大形成的正确路线未能完全坚持下去，先后出现“大跃进”运动、人民公社化运动等错误，反右派斗争也被严重扩大化。面对当时严峻复杂的外部环境，党极为关注社会主义政权巩固，为此进行了多方面努力。然而，毛泽东同志在关于社会主义社会阶级斗争的理论和实践上的错误发展得越来越严重，党中央未能及时纠正这些错误。毛泽东同志对当时我国阶级形势以及党和国家政治状况作出完全错误的估计，发动和领导了“文化大革命”，林彪、江青两个反革命集团利用毛泽东同志的错误，进行了大量祸国殃民的罪恶活动，酿成十年内乱，使党、国家、人民遭到新中国成立以来最严重的挫折和损失，教训极其惨痛。一九七六年十月，中央政治局执行党和人民的意志，毅然粉碎了“四人帮”，结束了“文化大革命”这场灾难。
clay dubeClick here to download a pdf of Prof. Le's presentation. (It has been compressed to 9.5 mb.)
clay dubeProf. Suzuki highlights the importance of article 9 of Japan's constitution. He notes LDP interest in changing it and opposition party commitments to article 9. The Library of Congress has a booklet devoted to article 9.
The text of article 9:
Some lesson plans tied to the article:
Foreign Policy Research Institute (2016 examples)
University of Kansas NCTA
clay dubeProf. Suzuki highlights the importance of article 9 of Japan's constitution. He notes LDP interest in changing it and opposition party commitments to article 9. The Library of Congress has a booklet devoted to article 9.
The text of article 9:
Some lesson plans tied to the article:
Foreign Policy Research Institute (2016 examples)
University of Kansas NCTA
clay dubeTodd, thanks for asking. Below are my favorites. None is perfect. I've added Amazon links, but you should buy or borrow them wherever it is convenient for you.
For comprehensive coverage of East Asia. It will eventually be surpassed, but the best work is
Ebrey and Walthall, East Asia: A Cultural, Social and Political History, 3rd edition (2013)
The pre-1800 half of the book: https://www.amazon.com/Pre-Modern-East-Asia-Cultural-Political-dp-1133606512/dp/1133606512/ref=dp_ob_title_bk
The post-1600 half of the book: https://www.amazon.com/Modern-East-Asia-1600-Political/dp/1133606490/ref=pd_sbs_2/140-7090806-8919865?pd_rd_w=mqqYr&pf_rd_p=690958f6-2825-419e-9c16-73ffd4055b65&pf_rd_r=WZZREXVC5VB4K2QFW5B1&pd_rd_r=9fa75819-d65a-43f2-9316-95b0a531dffb&pd_rd_wg=FylVb&pd_rd_i=1133606490&psc=1
For China:
Mitter, Modern China: A Very Short Introduction https://www.amazon.com/Modern-China-Short-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0198753705/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=rana+mitter&qid=1634334287&s=books&sr=1-4
Spence, The Search for Modern China, 3rd edition: https://www.amazon.com/Search-Modern-China-Third/dp/0393934519/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=spence+modern+china&qid=1634333825&s=books&sr=1-1
For Japan:
Friday, ed., Japan Emerging: Premodern History to 1850: https://www.amazon.com/Japan-Emerging-Premodern-History-1850/dp
/0813344832
Gordon, A Modern History of Japan, 3rd edition: https://www.amazon.com/Modern-History-Japan-Tokugawa-Present/dp/0190920556/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2BH60HP9AQEJH&dchild=1&keywords=modern+history+of+japan+gordon&qid=1634333691&s=books&sr=1-1
clay dubeFirst, thanks to Todd and others for brainstorming on this and other applications of this simulation. I find that having to present the arguments of another really causes students to engage with them. Years after a class I taught at UCLA, a former student came up to me and said, "I'm Mencius." Preparing to represent that 4th century BCE philosopher was clearly a highlight of the course for him. Obviously, allowing folks more preparation time and allowing students to share ideas about their camp's concerns and the weaknesses of the others further deepens the learning. You might also use "Each One, Teach One" to have the students create and present mini-lessons on their camp's positions.
Second, there are the usual group assignment hazards. You have to guard against free riders and rein in some who really like to perform. But the bigger hazard is the danger of inaccurate representations, so you have to intervene to correct errors and to get clarity.
I think the payoff for students in these kinds of activities is worth the investment of class time. Students who may be more graphically oriented could be asked to create campaign posters or the like. I've found that after the first such effort with a class that students become quicker and better at the necessary learning and presenting. Those skills are readily transferred in other spaces and with other tasks.
clay dubeHi Folks,
For the late Qing dynasty and for the 1911 Revolution, here are some outstanding resources. The first two are great traditional narrative histories. Many will be available in large public libraries and all should be in academic libraries.
Platt, Stephen. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom, Knopf, 2012. (About the Taiping rebellion and much more.)
Platt, Stephen. Imperial Twilight, Knopf, 2018. (About the Amherst mission to China, the Opium War and much more.)
Esherick, Joseph. The Origins of the Boxer Rebellion, University of California Press, 1987.
Esherick, Joseph. Reform and Rebellion in China, 2nd edition, University of Michigan Press, 2002.
Elman, Benjamin. Civil Service Examinations and Meritocracy in Late Imperial China, Harvard University Press, 2013. (free sample)
Marks, Robert. China: An Environmental History, 2nd edition, Rowman and Littlefield, 2017.
Ebrey, Patricia. Women, the Family in Chinese History, Routledge, 2002. (available for free download, with registration: https://www.academia.edu/42670537/Women_and_the_Family_in_Chinese_History?auto=download)
clay dubeWe'll be talking more about climate change and the threat it poses at the end of the class. As you folks are aware, though, the latest climate summit will be in Scotland and opens at the end of the month: https://sdg.iisd.org/events/2020-un-climate-change-conference-unfccc-cop-26/ . China has long suffered from flooding and other disasters, but this year has been hit with devastating floods in the north-central regions. 2 million have been displaced in Shanxi in the current floods: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58866854?piano-modal
Earlier this summer, South Korea and Japan also suffered terrible flooding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9QMejOTdsI and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYlin8BSfhY
Many are aware of the severe fires and flooding that has beset the U.S. in recent months.
clay dubeJennifer - you've captured the sense of outrage that many felt. This was the first of what became known as unequal treaties. Additional ones were imposed on China, but also on Japan. And Japan sought to impose its own later on China (https://china.usc.edu/japanese-government-%E2%80%9Ctwenty-one-demands%E2%80%9D-april-26-1915).
In 1919 the Soviet Union renounced Russia's unequal treaties with China, but then forged its own to secure control over the Chinese Eastern Railway in Northern Manchuria. That railway was the single largest railway concession in China. In 1925, the Soviet Union signed a deal with Japan recognizing Japan's control over the South Manchuria Railway. Soviet propaganda always called on foreign powers to emulate it's renunciation of unequal treaties, but it was quite happy to secure its own privileges.
The US follow-up to the Treaty of Nanjing was the Treaty of Wangxia: https://china.usc.edu/treaty-wangxia-treaty-wang-hsia-may-18-1844
