The Chinese eradication of extreme poverty in one generation
There have been write-ups in the media of the decline of extreme poverty due to a World Bank data release in the past few days. This is kind of a pretty big deal, and one of the reasons that books like Enlightenment Now are still worth writing: much of the American public is unaware of the “good […]
The education the people of Tianzhu
Someone on Twitter mentioned that there were references to Shakespeare in the recent ruling to decriminalize homosexuality in India. This is reflective of the fact that some of the ambition to create “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect” did succeed. The … Continue reading “The education the people of Tianzhu”
Perhaps India is not special in resisting Islamicization
I have posted my thoughts as to why India, unlike Iran or Central Asia, resisted total Islamicization, before. It seems to be a phenomenon that demands an explanation. And yet does it? As I read F. W. Motte’s Imperial China 900-1800 I am struck by Han civilization’s resilience and absorptive capacity. What does that remind … Continue reading “Perhaps India is not special in resisting Islamicization”
Complementarity in the 21st century
The late Gordon R. Dickson wrote a series of books in a (mostly) future history termed The Childe Cycle. I’ve read a substantial number of the books in this series, and it’s rather uneven. On the whole, I would say that the earlier books are better than the later works. Dickson died before he could […]
The Insight show notes: Episode 29, The Genetics of China, Han & Beyond
This week Razib and Spencer discussed the genetics and history of China on The Insight (iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play).Chinese history looms large in the podcast, and there are many books one can read on the topic. In particular, John King Fairbank’…
History and genetics of the Han
About 20 percent of the world’s population lives in the People’s Republic of China.Taking their name from the Han dynasty of ancient China, they are the core ethnicity of the People’s Republic of China: making up about 90% of the total population. When…
India vs. China, genetically diverse vs. homogeneous
About 36% of the world’s population are citizens of the Peoples’ Republic of China and the Republic of India. Including the other nations of South Asia (Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc.), 43% of the population lives in China and/or South Asia. But, as David Reich mentions in Who We Are and How We Got Here China is […]
Diving into Chinese philosophy
Back when I was in college one of my roommates was taking a Chinese philosophy class for a general education requirement. A double major in mathematics and economics (he went on to get an economics Ph.D.) he found the lack of formal rigor in the field rather maddening. I thought this was fair, but I […]
Henan, the heart of China
I haven’t posted on one of these in a while. Mostly because I don’t know what to say about Henan. Henan is where China began. As noted in Wikipedia four of the eight ancient capitals of China are located in this province, in the heart of the North China plain. Chineseness, as we understand it, […]
Variation with the 1000 Genomes data set in China
I have mentioned before that the 1000 Genomes Chinese are heterogenous. Many of the ones sampled in Beijing are North Chinese. But there is structure within the South Chinese samples as well. The PCA above shows it. I’ve pruned some of the data for clarity (it’s probably a cline really, with cut-offs and breaks happening […]
Anhui, in the shadow of Shanghai
Anhui is inland of the prosperous lower Yangzi river valley. According to Wikipedia this province is a recent creation, dating to the Kangxi Emperor. The northern part of the province is part of North China while the south closer to the Yangzi river valley regions. It’s relatively poor in comparison to the provinces to the […]
Zhejiang, the heart of Jiangnan
Zhejiang is the province to the south of Jiangsu, and the heart of Jiangnan, the lower Yangzi river area. As noted in my previous post this region is notable for its economic productivity and wealth, which dates back more than 1,000 years, and persists down the present. Like Jiangsu, Zhejiang is outside of the core […]
Jiangsu, from the margin to the center
When I was eight years old I memorized all the capitals in the world…because (well, because a friend had done the same). I’ve always been into geography. But there is one thing I’ve been guilty about for nearly twenty years: I can’t point to all the provinces of China on a map and name them. […]
The Elephant, dragon and eagle
The relationship between China and India is clearly one-sided: India is obsessed with a China which is approaching lift-off toward becoming on the verge of a developed nation within a generation (certain urban areas are already basically developed, albeit not particularly wealthy in comparison to Hong Kong or Singapore). Often when I see interviews […]
China’s wealthiest come from only a few regions
In Kenneth Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy he argues that the difference in per capita economic wealth between Europe and China is a relatively recent phenomenon. One of the major arguments he makes is that one has to make an apples-to-apples comparison. Comparing Northwest Europe to […]
Chinese metropolitan areas blanketing the earth
One of the fascinating insights from When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order is that since economic development occurred so rapidly in East Asia its cities lack the historic charm of European urban areas. The reason being that the organic accrual of construction […]
Manufacturing Chinese history cheaply
In Ross Terrill’s The New Chinese Empire he makes the assertion that Mao Zedong was the heir of the moralist Confucian tradition, while Deng Xiaoping’s stances looked more toward pragmatic Legalism. I don’t want to rehash why Terrill presented this strange framework as a central thesis in his book. Rather, there was an instance that […]
On the precipice of the Kali Yuga
priests are boring & teens aren’t invested in their faith, said no one who has ever been to a Saturday night at @go2steubenville #SteubieOTL pic.twitter.com/9wq03CYuGZ — KatiePrejean McGrady (@KatiePrejean) July 23, 2017 The idea of decline is an old one. See The Idea of Decline in Western History for a culturally delimited view. But whether […]
Across the chasm of Incommensurability
The Washington Post has a piece typical of its genre, A Chinese student praised the ‘fresh air of free speech’ at a U.S. college. Then came the backlash. It’s the standard story; a student from China with somewhat heterodox thoughts and sympathies with some Western ideologies and mores expresses those views freely in the West, […]
Tales of the Chinese future past
In the first half of the 1990s I was an avid reader of David Wingrove’s Chung Kuo series. This is before I knew much about Chinese history, or much about life to be honest. This vast epic future history is set in a world where a resurgent China dominates the world. Wars of genocidal extermination against […]