To the last question, I can definitively answer yes. Not long after I arrived in college, a friend lent me a copy of the recently-deceased Howard Zinn’s People History of the United States. Zinn’s conclusions may not please everybody but his immense contribution to historical scholarship cannot be denied.

But think about it- for the average American, an enormous amount of our historical education is inculcated via textbooks. These books- written near-anonymously, in soothing words devoid of any polemical content. Teachers treat these textbooks as repositories of factual information rather than texts worth critically analyzing. As a result millions of children develop a shared sense of ‘what actually happened’ without the faculties to criticize it.

If this wasn’t frightening enough, check out this fascinating, 10-page article in the New York Times Magazine detailing how evangelical Christian activists have managed to hijack the Texas governing body responsible for approving content to the vast majority of American public schools.

At question is the notion of whether the United States is an explicitly Christian nation. Non-American readers may find this question baffling; why does it matter, after all? Yet to understand this divide is to understand the separate political forces that operate in the country.

American exceptionalism is best exemplified by universal health care reform. Any rational comparative analysis of health care systems around the world would lead one to conclude that the US system is easily the least effective and the most expensive of any OECD country.  The obvious solution would be to look at a model that works better- say, in France- and come up with ways to reform the American system so that it conforms to a higher international standard.

Yet opponents to universal health care in the US, represented neatly in the Republican Party, believe that because the US system is different it must therefore be better. As a result they devote their energy to devising mendacious explanations for why our broken system is in fact superior.

In foreign affairs right-wing Americans find no trouble distinguishing between acts of terror and violence by our political enemies between those of ourselves and allies such as Israel. If we do it, then it isn’t bad, because we did it, right?

China for its part is at least well aware that it is a developing country, yet Sinic exceptionalism does exist. One notion shared between both countries is its persistent refusal to accept that they are imperial in nature.

Rather than accept that China annexed and colonized Tibet for strategic reasons, most Chinese I know find it easier to believe that Tibet has ‘always been a part of China’. The same logic applies to Xinjiang. Beijing’s historical designs for Central Asia are no different than that of the Russians, British, and other participants in the Great Game. Yet for some reason China pretends that that part of the world is intrinsically Chinese regardless of what the indigineous inhabitants say.

Americans are fond of the same fiction. I remember the usually-astute Bill Maher claiming on a talk show that America has never engaged in empire- building. Oh, really? Historians familiar with the late 19th/early 20th century administrations of McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt would likely beg to differ. In contemporary America, there are currently US soldiers stationed on bases throughout the world. As much as we’d like to believe that the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan were strictly for liberalization purposes, imperial strategy dictates otherwise.  And from the Monroe Doctrine to Bush-era US skullduggery in Venezuela and Haiti the US has long claimed a certain dominion over the distribution of power in the Americas.

I’m not trying to be cynical for its own purpose but rather point out that nations the size of the US and China- and Russia- are imperial by nature.

Exceptionalism also shines through in politics. In China, the Communist Party is fond of saying that while democracy may be well and good for other countries it doesn’t suit China. Chinese and Western apologists for the CCP parrot this line oblivious of how self-serving it is.

Why doesn’t exceptionalism exist elsewhere? In Europe, there are so many countries crowded in a small area that insulation is simply untenable. Yet in China and the US our shared sense of exceptionalism can persist given our physical immensity.

I understand that geo-politics are much more complex than this, and that there are a great number of variables at play. But would elements in both China and America realize that both are merely members of the great big nation-state family rather than exceptional elements some progress could be made.

Instead I’d like to think ahead to the ‘teens, the 2010s, or whatever we might call the next decade. What sorts of things are likely to happen, both at home and abroad? I’ve laid out a few thoughts to get the ball rolling.

1. Within the US and the developed world there are three ideas that will gather momentum in the next ten years: acceptance of gay marriage, decriminalization of marijuana, and action on climate change. Part of this prediction is hopeful as I support all three wholeheartedly, but I do think that if the past ten years are any indication these three ideas have gone from being somewhat farfetched to at least plausible.

2. The reading of a daily newspaper will cease as we know it, and by 2020 or earlier all newspapers will be digital. In order to make this model work subscribers will pay for news content and likely other services such as social networking websites, search engines, and even some opinion journals. The next generation of web- web 3.0 if you will-will be figuring out how to pay for it all.

3. Environmental incentives will lead to an increase in high-density living in the US, following current trends in Europe and in East Asia. This will be coupled by increased support for high-speed rail and other initiatives. The golden age for the American automobile will recede even further into the past.

These are merely three- anyone care to add more, or comment on mine?

In 1997, the regime felt confident enough to sanction the surprise victory of President Muhammad Khatami, who won by the same landslide margin of 69% in a joyous election that no one disputed. Khatami, a cleric, had nonetheless far stronger liberal credentials than the technocrat Mousavi (who, during the Iran-Iraq war, was well to the right of Khamenei). Lovingly hailed as “Ayatollah Gorbachev”, Khatami was soon talking about the “thoughtful dialogue” he hoped to open with America. It seemed possible that international isolation, which so parches and de-oxygenates the Iranian air, was about to be eased.

Everyone understood that this process would take time. In June 2001, Khatami was re-elected with a majority of 78%. Seven months later came George W Bush’s “axis of evil” speech (one of the most destructive in American history), and the Tehran Spring was at an end.

Ah, the “Axis of Evil” speech. I remember watching it, live, from a television set in Italy, and realizing with a sudden jolt that Bush didn’t know what he was talking about.

Quite a few people might say, “Duh, Bush was clearly an idiot from the moment he took office,” which is undeniably true. Yet after the national trauma of September 11th, I allowed myself to believe that Bush would rise to the moment, unite the country, and help us defeat this frightening new adversary. I wasn’t alone- Bush’s approval ratings in late 2001 approached 90 percent.

Other people turned on Bush after the invasion of Iraq, or when the occupation of Iraq began to go badly. Some didn’t turn on him until his second term, when his breathtaking incompetence shone forth in high-definition relief. But me, the “Axis of Evil” speech was my “wait a sec” moment.

Think of the repercussions. First, the speech led to the subsequent sorry prelude to the Iraq War,  launched 14 months later. Secondly, labeling North Korea in the group managed to effortlessly roll back diplomatic progress with the hermit kingdom. And of course, as Amis mentions, the damage done to Western rapproachement with Iran was incalcuable.

Not only did the “evil” remark deflate the reformist movement’s momentum, it also slammed the door shut on possible Iranian cooperation in the war against al-Qaeda, the group we ostensibly wanted to eradicate. In the weeks after 9/11, Iran quietly approached the US with help against their common enemy. The US said thanks, but no thanks, preferring to keep all of our enemies lumped together in the same bunch.

In the halcyon days after 9/11, Bush’s ardent supporters publicly thanked God that he was president. His shellshocked opposition didn’t disagree. With historical hindsight,  we can conclude that having such a buffoonish idiot in office during a national crisis amounted to extraordinarily bad luck on our part.

Chinese president Hu Jintao noted the occasion with words of praise and calls for increased cooperation; I’m sure American leaders would share similar sentiments. After all, the policy has largely been successful, perhaps the most successful policy shift in post-war American history.

If anything, this year should be the 49th, rather than the 30th, anniversary of Sino-US ties. In 1960, Maoist China split from the USSR in a diplomatic row concerning many issues, one of which being Moscow’s refusal to help China construct a nuclear bomb. At the time, cementing ties with Beijing would have made eminent sense.

Alas, it would not happen until the next decade, when Nixon and Kissinger engineered a thaw with Mao and Zhou Enlai in 1972.

Two factors explain why. First, most experts on China (and Vietnam, notably) were purged from the US government during the 1950s McCarthy campaign due to suspected Communist ties. This meant that people making foreign policy decisions lacked expert advice, a fact that haunted both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in Vietnam.

A second factor had to do with the US policy of lumping all Communist states together despite regional and circumstantial differences. China’s brand of Communism differed mightily with Russia’s, even when the two states got along. Also, the Communist movement in China was largely nationalist, as the competing Nationalist Party was riven by corruption and impotence against the occupying Japanese before and during the Second World War.

So in effect, the 1960s were a wasted decade in Sino-American relations. One wonders; had the US and the West brought China into broad international recognition, would China’s travails in the 1960s been avoided? The period of time between the Sino-Soviet split in 1960 and 1979 was extremely tumultuous for China, with the Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, failed coup attempt by Lin Biao, death of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, power struggle, rise of Deng Xiaoping, and the launch of economic reforms. Of course, these were tumultuous times in the West too but the comparison isn’t apt.

Anyway, it’s impossible to tell what would have happened. Let’s hope this degree of stability will last another thirty years and beyond.

So how did relations between the two improve?

The biggest reason is Taiwanese politics. The island, unlike the mainland, is a democracy and has two main parties- the Kuomintang (国民党), and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). This year, the Kuomintang won Taiwan’s presidential election after several years of DNC rule. Generally, the Kuomintang is the pro-reunification* party while the DPP is the pro-independence party. Naturally, cross-Strait relations have improved since the March elections.

But wait. Didn’t the Kuomintang once fight a war against the Chinese Communist Party? How could the two have warm relations today?

In fact, the Kuomintang was the party of Chiang Kai-Shek, the former ruler of nationalist China and enemy of the Communist Mao Zedong. When Mao defeated Chiang in the Chinese civil war, the latter fled to Taiwan and established the “Republic of China” there with the stated intention of re-taking the mainland.

Obviously, that never happened.

What did happen in Taiwan, though, was eventual democratic reforms. Chiang governed as dictator until his death in 1976 (same year that Mao died, incidentally), at which point his son took over. Reforms started about a decade later, and the island held its first democratic elections in 1996, with the Kuomintang taking power. Talk of “taking over the mainland” slowly faded.

But that doesn’t answer the question of how the Kuomintang emerged as the pro-reunification party in Taiwan. Before Chiang ever arrived (carrying much of the Chinese treasury and cultural relics with him), there were already a lot of Chinese people living on the island. These people were, by and large, descendants of Chinese people who had immigrated to Taiwan over the previous three centuries. They weren’t altogether happy that the Chinese who had just arrived suddenly took power. In Taiwan’s sixty-year incarnation as the Republic of China, thus, there has existed a rivalry between the Johnny-come-lately and the we-were-here-first factions.

By and large, the Kuomintang represent the former group, and the opposition parties the latter. The Taiwanese whose ancestors had been on the island for centuries tend to favor reunification less than the Taiwanese whose parents and grandparents were born on the mainland.

So with the pro-reunification crowd in power, increased transport and trade links come as little surprise. Should the Democratic Nationalists win the next elections, though, expect some of these gains to be reversed. Which means that those of us who would like to visit Taiwan without much transit hassle should act quickly. Anyone have 11,000 RMB to spare for the return ticket?

UPDATE: An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as the Democratic National Party (DNC). Apologies for the error, and thanks to Pfeffer in the comments.

*By “pro-reunification”, I should probably clarify that the Kuomintang do not favor immediate reunification, but rather eventual reunification. At the moment the party is happy to preserve the status-quo.

(link via GoKunming)

I’ve always been fascinated with China’s Cultural Revolution, particularly its iconography. A Flickr commenter translated the Chinese on the left as: “conduct yourself like this!” and the bottom as “promote revolution to the end!”, and while I’m too lazy to double-check, a quick glance says this translation is about right.

(photo by Flickr user chinamatic)

Only tonight did I realize that the sirens actually did have a purpose. A friend who teaches in the coastal city of Wenzhou heard them too, and she actually went to the trouble of asking someone what they meant. She found out that the sirens commemorated the 76th anniversary of the first Japanese invasion of China, the annexation of Manchuria in 1931.

Google tells us that this commemoration is by no means unique, and in fact happens every year on the 18th of September.

I’ve always been struck by how differently the West and China perceive Japan. In the West, Japan is seen as a peaceful, prosperous nation and a staunch ally in the often unpredictable region of East Asia. In China, Japan is a long-time enemy still unrepentant about its role in the occupation of the country, all the while suspiciously harboring intentions of exerting hegemony over the region as a whole.