Chip,
Thank you for your thoughtful articulate contributions greatly assisting
my dim understanding of matters monetary. I haven't contributed here
for a while and your amply demonstrated intellectual generosity prompts
me to post.
I have just finished reading the 1997 Pulitzer Prize winning book for
non-fiction; Guns, Germs and Steel, The Fates of Human Societies,
by Jared Diamond and recommend it highly to the thread. Henry in one
of the first postings on the thread used an interesting word which
actually may originate in the book's 14th chapter: "From Egalitarianism
to Kleptocracy."
For the benefit of the current topic of China on the thread I would like
to quote two paragraphs from page 411 of the Epilog: The Future of
Human History as a Science.
" ...The long list of its [China's] major technological firsts includes
cast iron, the compass, gunpowder, paper, printing, and many others
mentioned earlier. It also led the world in political power, navigation,
and control of the seas. In the early 15th century it sent treasure
fleets, each consisting of hundreds of ships up to 400 feet long and
with total crews of up to 28,000, across the Indian Ocean as far as
the east coast of Africa, decades before Columbus's three puny ships
crossed the narrow Atlantic Ocean to the America's east coast. Why
didn't Chinese ships proceed around Africa's southern cape westward
and colonize Europe, before Vasco da Gama's own three puny ships
rounded the Cape of Good Hope east ward and launched Europe's
colonization of East Asia? Why didn't Chinese ships cross the Pacific
to colonize the Americas' west coast? Why in brief, did China lose its
technological lead to the formerly so backward Europe?
"The end of China's treasure fleets gives us a clue. Seven of those
fleets sailed from China between A.D. 1405 and 1433. They were then
suspended as a result of a typical aberration of local politics that
could happen anywhere in the world: a power struggle between two
factions at the Chinese court (the eunuchs and their opponents). The
former faction had been identified with sending and captaining the
fleets. Hence when the latter faction gained the upper hand in a power
struggle, it stopped sending fleets, eventually dismantled the
shipyards, and forbade oceangoing shipping. The episode is reminiscent
of the legislation that strangled development of public electric
lighting in London in the 1880s, the isolationism of the United States
between the First and Second World Wars, and any number of backward
steps in any number of countries, all motivated by local political
issues. But in China there was a difference, because the entire region
was politically unified. One decision became irreversible, because
no shipyards remained to turn out ships that would prove the folly of
that temporary decision, and to serve as a focus for rebuilding other
shipyards."
A good subject for contemplation would be to compare the non-shipbuilding
policy of yore with the current policy of one family one child representing,
as it does, a significant adjustment of the most basic fundamental of
human society, the family. Net net, the Chinese, should they have their
way, will eliminate from their society the following family categories:
brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins.
Pertinant to the topics of this thread are the considerations of the
monolithic nature of monopolistic governmental power existing now and
throughout most of the history of China and the effect it will continue
to have on the rest of the world. Is there a chance they will "Culturally
Revolve" themselves once again to chaos and instability?
The struggle between consolidation and fragmentation whether in China
and its global policy or the current wave of merger mania justified by
the imperatives of strategic corporate global positioning may be an
issue resolved by the embryonic Science of History as envisioned by Mr.
Diamond.
End of book report.
Jerard P |
