FIGHTING THE COURSE OF HISTORY

Thursday, April 12, 2018

THE WHIG INTERPRETATION OF CHINA

The Real China:
eg Taiping Rebellion and Civil War

Devolving into total war—with any and all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets—the conflict was the largest in China since the Qing conquest in 1644, and it also ranks as one of the bloodiest wars in human history, the bloodiest civil war, and the largest conflict of the 19th century, with estimates of the war dead ranging from 20–70 million to as high as 100 million, with millions more displaced.

(Our Civil War, by comparison, roughly at the same time, was like a microscopic, mildly unpleasant, foolish, picnic.)

This struggle was nominally triggered by conversion to Taiping Ism (Christian millenarianism) of its leader by an American Baptist missionary, although there were all stripes of Christian and other missionaries working in China. European imperial activities were also a factor among the causes.

American conservative Christian millenarian stooges of orthodox Jews are even now trying to make come true their vision of Armageddon in the Middle East, moving the Capitol to Jerusalem, etc.

Just as happened in the Taiping conservative Chinese egalitarian populist Christian Millenarianist struggle in China, in the 19th Century, it won't turn out, in the Middle East or elsewhere, anything like what they here anticipate.

This radical Chinese Christian equalitarian democratic revolution message was similar to the radicalism of Lincoln and the Republican Party, which also required a civil war to force revolutionary equalitarian principles on the South: a house divided cannot stand.

US Whig Interpretation of China (Kennan):

"Out of all these ingredients there was brewed the curious view of China that seems to have animated American statesmanship during the war; the picture of a helpless, deserving nation, for whose virtues we alone, among the great powers, had understanding, whose interests we had to sponsor in the face of Japanese enmity and British callousness, and whose grateful support in the postwar period we could take for granted as a mainstay of the world position we hoped to occupy.  China was, in fact, and on this we insisted with a most extraordinary vehemence, to be one of the future great powers--- one of what F.D.R. called the 'four world policemen'"

"In this highly subjective picture of the Chinese, there was no room for a whole series of historical and psychological realities.  There was no room for the physical ruthlessness that had characterized Chinese political life generally in recent decades; for the formidable psychological and political powers of the Chinese people themselves; for the strong streak of xenophobia in their nature; for the lessons of the Boxer Rebellion; for the extraordinary exploitative talent shown by Chinese factions, at all times, in turning outside aid to domestic political advantage."

"It was this idealized view of the Chinese, rather than any illusions about the relationship between the National Government and the Chinese Communists, which was most damaging to our Far Eastern policy.  We did, to be sure, underrate the depth of the antagonism between these two elements.  Our memories of what had transpired in 1927 were certainly shorter (if they existed at all) than were those of Mao and Chiang and Stalin.  There also seems to me to have been a certain naivete, but nothing worse, in our efforts to bring about a political compromise between these two factions, and to induce Stalin to join us in this effort....".  Russia and The West Under Lenin And Stalin, p 374.

Naivete is quite an understatement, when you consider that this was grand strategy...

Cf Michael Pillsbury: Apostate China Whig Pundit