Taiwan: Would War be viable?

[GePap]

Originally posted by TCO


I think the point being made was that the existing regime or a new one, might find that security of it's own position was more important (to it) than growth.

How would cutting growth enhance the security of any Chinese regime? China's regime troughout history has always been in greatest danger when it:
a. failed to provide what the people expected, and thus gets thrown out by revolt
b. Incapable of turning away foreign invaders due to some weakness, or having fallen behind.

Strong eocnomic growth is the foundation of negating BOTH those fundamental threats- cutting back on economic growth aggrevates that- China can't make itself a hermit like NK or Burma, too big, too many people, too long a history. Maybe with nukes it can no ward of foreign aggression, but internal revolt is always there, and poverty is the danger- do we think the 300 Million new budding middle class Chinese would sit back while econmic growth was curtailed? Do we think the 800 Million Chinese peasants would say: heck, at least we are all poor now, goody, lets not revolt?

The final part of this is that as much as some people might find it hard to believe, authoritarian governments can buy the people's love- as long as they have or can provide enough. The biggest source of legitimacy for the comunist leaders today, having junked communism, are nationalistic fervor and providing economic growth. NUmber 1 explains the issue of taiwan, number 2 in my mind shows why ending reforms i no longer a real option, specially since that path has allowed the Party to remain in power 15 years after simply crushing the nascent pro-democracy movement.

[Wycoff]

I wonder how US-China relations are being affected by the fact that a large number of Americans beleive that there will be an army of 200 million Chinese slaughtered by God outside Jerusalem during Armageddon...

[GePap]

We just make sure those Americans never leave the country, or at least, only go to Africa....Which is already what goes on anyways.

[Mr. Harley]

Plato - overall a very good summation.

Note in support of Molly Bloom's post on early religious fundamentalist settlers in the United States. The Constitutional Convention after the War of 1776 (I've avoided stepping on US or GB toes - PC rules ) included banning religious tests for office. Maybe, just maybe, they did that because they were various locations in the United Colonies - soon to be States - that did exactly that. Like up in New England, where all those oh-so-tolerant religious fundamentalists settled, and their frictions with the native Americans (read their letters about them to realize the utter contempt they held them in and the righteously justified viciousness they treated the Native Americans with) led to King Phillips war. Where large numbers of neutral Native Americans were slaughtered by aforementioned good Christians because they happened to be Native American.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by molly bloom



Might I suggest you read 'Society and Puritanism' by Christopher Hill or 'The Protestant Mind of the English Reformation' by C.H. & K. George.

There's also an American two volume anthology of extracts from the works of Puritans, Dissenters and Presbyterians in England and the English colonies in North America (the name of whose author escapes me alas) which, using excerpts from diaries, letters, sermons, pamphlets and political and religious works shows how a variety of ecclesio-theocracy was the preferred form of government, where 'parliament' or monarchical or aristocratic rule had been replaced by the 'spiritual' rule of a select group of laymen (the elders or the elect).

Any society or colony based on the idea of the moral superiority of a special group and spiritual discipline rather than the rule of law, is going to find the notion of democracy as alien.

Have you read Walzer, "Revolution of the Saints"? Though he focuses heavily on left offshoots, like levelers, etc.

Yes they believed they were the elect, but there were democratic tendencies within that elect - certainly hostility to aristocracy, though IIUC there were tensions in terms of how democratic church governance should be. On the kirk, im recalling Trevelyan I think, who Im sure is considered out of date now.

ISTM you're confusing democracy with liberal democracy - they were illiberal, in much the way that Leninists were illiberal - but they definitely had egalitarian tendencies.

WRT rule of law - did they ever propose disposing of the common law? - Puritan Massachusetts, even at its most oppressive, usually acted according to legal procedures, IIUC.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Plato - overall a very good summation.

Note in support of Molly Bloom's post on early religious fundamentalist settlers in the United States. The Constitutional Convention after the War of 1776 (I've avoided stepping on US or GB toes - PC rules ) included banning religious tests for office. Maybe, just maybe, they did that because they were various locations in the United Colonies - soon to be States - that did exactly that. Like up in New England, where all those oh-so-tolerant religious fundamentalists settled, and their frictions with the native Americans (read their letters about them to realize the utter contempt they held them in and the righteously justified viciousness they treated the Native Americans with) led to King Phillips war. Where large numbers of neutral Native Americans were slaughtered by aforementioned good Christians because they happened to be Native American.

King Phillips war was in the late 17thc, while the US constitution was written in 1789. By which time New England was heavily Unitarian, and the remaining Congregational establishments were far lighter than the Anglican establishments in the South, IIUC. Also I am unaware that the record on Native Americans of Anglican colonies in the South was any better than that of the New England colonies. The New England states post 1776 WERE however taking the lead on the abolition of slavery.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by GePap


How would cutting growth enhance the security of any Chinese regime? China's regime troughout history has always been in greatest danger when it:
a. failed to provide what the people expected, and thus gets thrown out by revolt
b. Incapable of turning away foreign invaders due to some weakness, or having fallen behind.

Chinese history, pre Deng, has no examples of a rising industrial middle class endangering the state. Not surprising, as thats a modern issue charecteristic of the industrial era. An authoritarian regime can buy off a rising middle class up to a point - theres some debate about just where that point is in terms of GDP per capita, and questions about the role of other factors. How far China can get before it hits that point, and what the leadership attempts when it reaches that point, remain open questions.


Look there are several nova here

1. Can a nation of 1 billion plus people grow the way a country of 50 million or 100 million can - and if not, at what point does a divergence set in? Note well - Japan, the 4 tigers, and all followers of that model have relied largely on trade as an engine of growth. The only 2 large powers to industrialize primarily in closed economies, the USSR and the USA, had much more favourable land-resource/population ratios. Can a nation of 1 billion export its way to modernity without disrupting the global marketplace? If not, can China achieve primarily internal growth, with its huge market but unfavorble resource position?
2. Can a nation of 1 billion transition to democracy? Again the tigers all did this at some point, but were much smaller. India is a democracy, Fareed Zakaria notwithstanding, but it started with certain legal and constitutional elements from Great Britain, and with a democratic founding ideology in the Indian National Congress. China is in a different position. Doesnt mean they cant, but there isnt a completely comparable precedent
3. Can a transition of number one powers take place without a major war? The transition from the UK to US involved two world wars (though both were on the same side) and prior transitions also involved largescale war. We live in a different international climate, but still these are uncharted waters.
4. What is the demographic future? Prior transitions, at least those based on new adopters of the capitalist model (thus excluding the different case of the rise of Spain), involved shifts from countries with intrinsically small resource bases to ones with larger resource bases. Venice to Netherlands, Netherlands to UK (and France) and UK to US. The US has a larger resource base than China (or India)- China has a larger population at this time due to accidents of history. Will the transition be different because of this?
5. How will Chinese potential isolationism affect the transition? The US surpassed UK in GDP in 1905, but didnt clearly emerge as number one world power till 1942. Due to a deep reluctance to bear the costs and responsibilities. How does this play out with India and China today?
6. The transitions we spoke of came at the same time as transitions from an essentially commercial economy to an industrial economy. However these transitions went hand in hand. Will there be another economic transition comparable in impact to the IR? Will it go hand in hand with the rise of the new powers, or could it favor others?

[Mr. Harley]

LOTM - the New England States of 1789 were still very closely related to those of King Phillip's war, both culturally and religiously. I don't know where you get your data - I attended a Unitarian Church at one time, so I will post from a Unitarian Church's web site - took me under two minutes to find this and three other easy sources. www.cucw.org/uudev.htm

The old Puritan churches of Massachusetts were the suprising cradles of Unitarianism in America. Reacting to the hellfire and damnation preaching of the Great Awakening of the 1730's and 40's many ministers and congregations of the New England Standing Order (the Congregational Churches) began to quietly explore alternatives to rigid Calvinism. Influenced by the rationalism of the Enlightenment they began to adopt Arian or non-Trinitarian theologies. The political atmosphere of the American Revolution accelerated the movement. By the late Eighteenth Century many of the oldest of the "First Parishes" including the Pilgrim Church at Plymouth, the Salem Church where a century earlier witches had been burned, John Adams's home church in Braintree (now Quincy), and important Boston churches were unitarian in theology although remaining in fellowship with the Standing Order.

There were other independent sparks of Unitarianism. As mentioned, Joseph Priestly had established a congregation in Philadelphia and was influencing religious thought in the Middle States. Thomas Jefferson, the champion of religious liberty, became unitarian in theology though a member of no sect. In 1785 the Anglican King's Chapel in Boston revised its Book of Common Prayer deleting all references to the Trinity and thus became the first openly unitarian church in New England.

By the early 19th Century the strain between liberals and Calvinists in the Standing Order became too great to sustain. In 1819 William Ellery Channing, a beloved Boston minister, laid out his explicit challenge to orthodoxy in an ordination address in Baltimore. He boldly asserted unitarian doctrine, elevated the role of reason in religious inquiry, and maintained that revelation was not sealed, but ongoing. Thus began the "Unitarian Controversy" that led to the formal break with Congregationalism and the establishment of a new denomination. Sometimes this entailed bitter law suits over the property of a parish between its unitarian and Calvinist members, but the right of parish to retain its property if the membership decided to become unitarian was established by the court.

In 1820 the first efforts at organizing the independent unitarian congregations began with the Berry Street Conference in Boston. In 1821 Channing and associates began publication of The Christian Register, an important national voice for unitarianism. Finally, in 1825 the American Unitarian Association (AUA) was established and the break with Congregationalism was complete and formal.

By the 1840's younger ministers were restive at the vestiges of orthodoxy in Unitarianism. Influenced by eastern religions, particularly Hinduism, they looked beyond Christianity and the Bible. The Transcendentalists, as they were called, believed in the direct experience with the divine in each individual, unity with nature, and a duty for religious individuals to provide prophetic witness to the social issues of the day. Ralph Waldo Emerson articulated these beliefs in his Harvard Divinity School address in 1839. Although fiercely opposed by more traditionalist ministers, Transcendentalism spread through the denomination. Its most eloquent spokesman was Boston preacher Theodore Parker. After Civil War Transcendentalism successfully synthesized itself with Channing style liberal Christianity and become the dominant strain in what was called the Broad Church Movement.

I simply bring them up because we were discussing the popular but fictional notion of the poor persecuted religious colonists in New England. They came them to establish their own little closed religious society where they could establish what we would today call a theocracy. It was extremely intolerant, and they engaged in wholesale slaughter.

Egalitarian? Not if you were one of those terrible savages, most especially if you wouldn't convert. Individual's claiming egalitarianism that slaughter entire villages including women and children, while not even bothering to verify they were involved in the current conflict, strike me as "protesting" too loundly. If people had been claiming wonderful Southern hospitality and used Pochohontas as an example - I probably would even be more obnoxious along the same vein.

By the way, many of the cases concerning the "wall" between Church and state come out of those same "Egalitarian" New England protestants when they became upset over the spread of Unitarians. A series of decisions were made because of how unpleasant the situation became. For example, local towns had taxes to support the local churches, but those Unitarians had to pay the tax, yet couldn't get it anything back. It's also where the laws on who owns the actual Church and property came from, it got quite unpleasant up there.

[lord of the mark]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by lord of the mark

7. In all prior transitions, the new power was at a combarable level of GDP per capita, as well as total GDP, when it emerged as number one power. UK and France were not noticelably particularly poorer in terms of living standards than the Netherlands when they emerged as greater powers (at that time total GDP was less important than available state resources, or Netherlands would have been surpassed much earlier). US was close to UK living standards when it surpassed UK GDP (empire population being a crucial factor in the math) China looks set to pass US in total GDP while having a MUCH lower GDP per capita, due to demographic disparity. No real precedent I know of - what does that do to cultural and political relations?

[Sandman]

Given all these 'points', it's a miracle that China hasn't imploded over the last 25 years it's been using capitalism.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Sandman
Given all these 'points', it's a miracle that China hasn't imploded over the last 25 years it's been using capitalism.

3 through 7 all relate to the transition between number one powers, which hasnt happened yet. Point 2 is about a transition to democracy, or China reaching a level of development associated elsewhere with transition to democracy, which also hasnt happened yet. Point one is about China reaching a size where it potentially disrupts world markets - we got a taste of that in 1998, and we're getting another taste of it in commodity markets right now - but we're still some way from what will happen as the Chinese economy approaches the size of the US economy.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Sandman
Given all these 'points', it's a miracle that China hasn't imploded over the last 25 years it's been using capitalism.

believe me, capitalism contains contradictions,and the Chinese cant avoid them

[GePap]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Chinese history, pre Deng, has no examples of a rising industrial middle class endangering the state. Not surprising, as thats a modern issue charecteristic of the industrial era. An authoritarian regime can buy off a rising middle class up to a point - theres some debate about just where that point is in terms of GDP per capita, and questions about the role of other factors. How far China can get before it hits that point, and what the leadership attempts when it reaches that point, remain open questions.

Hello, no state had a history of an industrial middle class prior to development!

Look there are several nova here

1. Can a nation of 1 billion plus people grow the way a country of 50 million or 100 million can - and if not, at what point does a divergence set in? Note well - Japan, the 4 tigers, and all followers of that model have relied largely on trade as an engine of growth. The only 2 large powers to industrialize primarily in closed economies, the USSR and the USA, had much more favourable land-resource/population ratios. Can a nation of 1 billion export its way to modernity without disrupting the global marketplace? If not, can China achieve primarily internal growth, with its huge market but unfavorble resource position?

China has already disrupted the global market. If opne believes in capitalism and globalization, this notion of "not having lots of internal resources" should not matter, since the free movement of materials makes it an outdated worry. China is currently in an export mode, but at some point it builds enough of an internal market to boom. IN fact, China exports to get the money to buy resources- in an open world market, there should be no issue. UNless you predict the collapse of the global commodities market, I don;t think this is too great a worry.

2. Can a nation of 1 billion transition to democracy? Again the tigers all did this at some point, but were much smaller. India is a democracy, Fareed Zakaria notwithstanding, but it started with certain legal and constitutional elements from Great Britain, and with a democratic founding ideology in the Indian National Congress. China is in a different position. Doesnt mean they cant, but there isnt a completely comparable precedent

Size affects organization and implementation, but there is no theoretical reason why 200 Million and 1 billion should make a difference in having a dmeocracy, specially as communications tehcnology becomes more powerful.

3. Can a transition of number one powers take place without a major war? The transition from the UK to US involved two world wars (though both were on the same side) and prior transitions also involved largescale war. We live in a different international climate, but still these are uncharted waters.

1. Today great powers have nuclear weapons- the cost of direct wars on the world war scale is unthinkable, and even the winner of said war would suffer immensely. Besides, there was no real transition between "UK to US"- the UK was the ex- strongest power in a multipolar system, and by 1905 it was clear the strongest European power was Germany, with Russia's accendence unclear. The two world wars were sorting out the multi-polar system in flux. Today we don't have a real multipolar system.

4. What is the demographic future? Prior transitions, at least those based on new adopters of the capitalist model (thus excluding the different case of the rise of Spain), involved shifts from countries with intrinsically small resource bases to ones with larger resource bases. Venice to Netherlands, Netherlands to UK (and France) and UK to US. The US has a larger resource base than China (or India)- China has a larger population at this time due to accidents of history. Will the transition be different because of this?

Russia has more resources than the US, but you don;t see them going anywhere. Population certainly matters more, in a world were services are the largest percentage of GDP, and trade solves the commodities issue.

5. How will Chinese potential isolationism affect the transition? The US surpassed UK in GDP in 1905, but didnt clearly emerge as number one world power till 1942. Due to a deep reluctance to bear the costs and responsibilities. How does this play out with India and China today?

The global UN system changes the equation significantly, as "world policing" has been codified, and responsibilities set. I would dispute the notions that 1. The Uk was the top power until 1942- heck, from 1900 on they were NOT, specially after 1918. And the uS became accendant in 1945, not '42.

6. The transitions we spoke of came at the same time as transitions from an essentially commercial economy to an industrial economy. However these transitions went hand in hand. Will there be another economic transition comparable in impact to the IR? Will it go hand in hand with the rise of the new powers, or could it favor others?

What transition? The world economy in 1900 and 1950 was an industrial one. The transtion in power form a complex multipolar system in 1900 to a bipolar system in 1950 was not caused by eocnomics, but politics and conflict.

[GePap]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by lord of the mark

Originally posted by lord of the mark

7. In all prior transitions, the new power was at a combarable level of GDP per capita, as well as total GDP, when it emerged as number one power. UK and France were not noticelably particularly poorer in terms of living standards than the Netherlands when they emerged as greater powers (at that time total GDP was less important than available state resources, or Netherlands would have been surpassed much earlier). US was close to UK living standards when it surpassed UK GDP (empire population being a crucial factor in the math) China looks set to pass US in total GDP while having a MUCH lower GDP per capita, due to demographic disparity. No real precedent I know of - what does that do to cultural and political relations?

The Dutch were NEVER the "world leaders"- at one point they were cetrainly commercially the richest, but they never eclipsed French or Habsburg, or English power. So I don't see where you statement that the Dutch were the leading power comes from- they were a power, but by no means the leading power. GDP alone does NOT measure being a great power. Also, I am extremely doubtful on many of your numbers. Germany certainly passed the UK in the early 1900's, and the US did even earlier.

And there are certainly precendent for a relatively poor state becoming a great power- Russia was always behind the Western European powers when it entered that club. The sheer size of Russia and thus the army it made possible made the Tsars rulers of a great power.

[GePap]

This site gives estimates of GDP per capita at various times:

http://woodstock.wesleyan.edu/acsocsci/jmcguire/table/income.htm

Witht he estimated US population being 76 Million in 1900, 38 Million for the UK and 56 Million for Germany,the comparative GDP's in 1900 were:

UK: 174.5 Billion
Germany: 175.5 Billion
US: 311 Billion

BY 1900 Germany and the US had both surpassed the UK. Even after its defeat in 1918, germany remained a more powerful state than the UK, as the second world war shows. BY 1900 the uS was well beyond either of these states, and this was clear in 1918 and beyond.