Chapter 9, China and the World

Napoleon Bonaparte, has been quoted saying, as he pointed to China on a world map, "There is a sleeping giant. Let him sleep. If he awakes, he will shake the world."

Anyone who has seen the Summer Olympics in 2008, held in Beijing, China, and witnessed, in particular the opening and closing ceremonies, has no doubt been watching the sleeping giant awakened. Or perhaps, as Strayer says in the book, " ....with the rise of China...as a major player in the world economy of the twenty-first century, are we perhaps returning to an earlier pattern?

Chapter 9 deals with the massive and influential "third wave"  civilization of China. It's gravitational pull has affected Tibet, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam on a social, economical and political level.  China's "golden age" of achievement occurred during the post-classical era between 589-618 C.E., under the Sui dynasty which unified the country's canal system. This allowed the north and southern provinces to trade and prosper, thus enabling the subsequent dynasties of the Tang (618-907), and the Song (960-1269) to establish patterns of life still alive in the 21 ST. century.

It's similar to the Eurasian expansion facilitated by the Roman Empire's legacy of superb roads, or the sea routes established by the Maya civilization's canoes, which allowed, arguably, the single most important catalyst for progress and change on the planet: "people coming into contact with strangers".

China, for the first time in history, invented the ability to print books and invented paper, thus enabling them to mass produce literacy and educate vast numbers of people, both commoners and elite

It's upper class created well ordered societies that saw technological and industrial advancement, like printing and iron works. The great Italian navigator and explorer, Marco Polo,  said in the late 1270's, as he gazed upon China's great cities, with it's sophisticated, intellectual and artistic achievements, it's organized bureaucracies, its thriving economy and its literate elite, commented, that China was the greatest state in the world. 

Notwithstanding a Euro-centric, self-identity, born from the empires' of Rome and Greece, China was the center of it's world, and viewed all foreigners as barbarians and inferior.

China's contribution to the world in terms of paper making and printing is revolutionary, and pivotal with global implications. It's invention of gunpowder too, has morphed from its birth around 1000 C.E. , and triggered the first arms race, as Europeans copied and developed firearms and cannons; now, they could propel "metal" , which, like all technology becomes more efficient and effective with each new innovation, thus enabling more efficient killing.

India's influence with religion and Buddhism took hold in China giving a cultural bond with peripheral societies like Korea, Japan,  and Vietnam, who embraced the teaching's of Buddha.

It's emphasis on morality, rituals and contemplation had a big appeal to the commoners without threatening the ruling party of the State.  So, in some ways they tolerated religious traditions.

However, just as the Templar Knights of the Round Table, once revered as the protectors of the Holy Roman Empire in Medieval Europe, met a guillotines fate, with their wealth and property confiscated by an insecure and financially strapped "state"; so too the Buddhist monks had a similar fate called the "An Luchan" revolt. It lasted 8 years from 755-763 C.E., where similarly,  the "state" felt threatened and closed monasteries, temples and shrines, scattering its nuns and monks, confiscating its wealth and property and forcing the clergy to become regular "tax paying" citizens.

In 2008, at the summer Olympics in Beijing China, the world had an opportunity to see China in all it's spender and glory, marvel at it's artistry and  precision; it's cultural sophistication and reverence to elders; as well as a reverence for nature with her simplicity, elegance and beauty.

China, on the world stage in 2011, as in the post-classical era,   is asserting her economic strength, and shedding her self-imposed isolation and opening her closed society revealing today, what both Napoleon and Marco Polo had discovered centuries ago.........