Chinese Civilization: Constant Renewal or Constant Faliure?

Everyone wants a piece of China

The History of China is an long one. Very long and it can be confusing unless using the right resources. Nevertheless it IS interesting and it serves to guide the modern Chinese leadership to this very day about the ancient country they're trying to run. I just want to lay out some facts first.

1) There's only one continuous history of China. If we were going by dynastic terms, this would be the Communist Dynasty or Period.

2) Despite what the People's Republic of China's government tells you, it's just acting in the same way other Chinese governments have acted. You're just too young to remember it.

3) Unlike other world histories, Chinese history does repeat itself.

China today is lucky however. It doesn't have to deal with the threat of nomadic Turco-Mongol horsemen ransacking Northern China for silk and silver. Especially of the Mongol variety. In the whole entirety of Siberia and North East Asia there's less than 40 million people excluding the Korean peninsula. China does have to deal with events it can and cannot control.

Plague coming from the teeming millions which compose the Chinese population, diseases like SARS aren't a new phenomenon. As long as the Chinese peasants dwell with pigs and other rodents we can expect a new infectious disease every 20-30 years or so. Ethnic unrest especially in the Far West homeland of the Uighurs and the Tibetan plateau since Communist China is an empire ruling over a polygot of peoples but this time around, at least the Han Chinese are over a billion strong. Of course, the natural problem of droughts, desertification, floods and earthquakes never cease to kill large amounts of the Chinese.

However, the most dangerous threats the Chinese had to face before and now come from within their own borders. There's no warring-states period but one could argue such a state of affairs existed when the Nationalist Chinese were in power prior to the Japanese Invasion. The Chinese are getting religion (again) and it's Christianity (again). The last time the Chinese got this Jesus crazy 20 million of them died and the British/Manchus had to fight a river-campaign to kill the Jesus-Freaks. This reminds me of the time after the epidemic of 161 AD...

3 out of every 10 Chinese dead. "The Way of Peace" or Yellow Turbans (a sect of Taoism) helped people the same way the early Christians helped Romans after the Antonine Plague. Healing the sick and offering hope to survivors. Of course the Yellow Turban fanatics were defeated but this had come at a terrible cost. The Han dynasty collapsed and was replaced by the Three Kingdoms period where again, millions of Chinese died. Religion is bad for China and that's why the Chinese leadership fears it. It can excite and motivate people the same way Mao's Cultural Revolution did.

Keeping out outside influences appears to work well for any Chinese government which is why the Great Firewall of China exists to keep out the modern barbarism of democracy, representative government and human rights for Tibetans, Uighurs and others at bay. Democracy, is a strange thing. Even the US founders feared it and opted for a Republic instead (whatever that really means). I can easily forsee China being a Republic but I can't forsee any political parties other than the Communist party. Unity keeps China strong and foreigners weaken China.

Every Chinese schoolchild can recall the humiliation their country faced in the 19th century. Especially the Opium Wars in which the United Kingdom had to push British India opium onto Chinese addicts to keep the "Jewel of the Crown" profitable. Or the Taiping religious rebellion where a man claiming to be the Chinese son of Jesus Christ killed millions of Chinese. Or where France defeated the Chinese navy and conquered Indo-China and finally those cultural-copycats Japan who defeated the Manchus by the late 1890s. All of these things stem from foreigners and their devilish influences. Another time period where this was self-evident was during the "Fullness of Tang".

Chinese ingenuity and creativity exploded during the 700s after the Sui Dynasty was replaced by the Tang. Civil servants running a good bureaucracy helped more than 52 million Chinese live in a prosperous Empire. Then, the foreigners came in to get some profit from this rich China. Things started getting real bad after the Turks rebelled an western China and a Arab-Persian-Turkish army crushed the Tang Dynasty at the battle of Talas River and stole the Chinese recipe for making paper. A Central Asian general named An Lu-Shan rebelled against the Tang. It got so bad that the Uighurs had to help out the Tang Emperor's son get back his Empire.

Soon after this trouble, the peasants struggled to pay taxes. The Tang's tax base collapsed due to inability to pay cash-money instead of crops or livestock. The Tang blamed it on foreigners and they had to melt down precious bronze Buddhist statues. Then came drought, locusts, famine and peasant revolt in 870 in which 100,000 foreigners died. The Fullness of Tang gushed out by 906 AD during chaos and civil war.

Not like that's going to happen right?

Plague is a greater worry. If Bird Flu becomes epidemic, I could easily see the ChiCom's getting the boot just like the Mongols did around 1360 leading onto the Ming Dynasty. The Ming had it going on for a bit, they tried to bring back China's power through treasure fleets that didn't rape, enslave and pillage for a profit unlike the Iberian Europeans but they still profited from our Spanish friends due to a trade imbalance that saw Mexican-Spanish silver going to the Philippines ending up in China's coffers allowing the Ming to build a mighty empire but earthquakes and foreign invaders too brought it down. Not to mention the direction of that silver going to Spain to help pay for Spain's reconquista of the Netherlands.

So, China's history is like a revolving door. The question is, the is the Chi-Com's on the way in.. or out?