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Remind me again how the "first economic power" was humiliated for a century by mere white pigs?
I see multiple flaws in that single sentence:
Given the implied snark I will assume there is no reminding because you never learnt about it in the first place
The quote of course aims to reject the claim and even ridiculize it despite being true for most of history and shifting in great parts because of the century of humiliation
Here you can obvserve GDP over time: https://youtube.com/watch?v=xb5zYKYF3Xo
As you can see, china has been the #1 economic superpower consistently during the last centuries.
The century of humiliation is from 1839 to 1949 but even still apply to this days regarding territorial losses.
This is bad faith and low quality.
No need to attack white people as a group, after all sociopathic policies are mostly not derived by genetics.
So about the century of humiliation, China was militarily forced by western countries to sign treaties against its own will and interests and to secede territory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation
The British forced the government to let it massively drug its population via opium
Colonization of Hong kong and Macao
Sacking of palaces
Invasion of various large territories including outer Manchuria
And various treaties that ruined the economy
As a result, China lost its functional sovereignty and prosperity.
The mere white pigs as you say, have induced similar suffering in most parts of the world.
What parts of China are still not under a nominally Chinese government, after the return of Hong Kong and Macau in the 1990s? Are we waiting for the absorption of Outer Mongolia and Jiaozhou into Chinese rule?
Even leaving aside that many of these wouldn’t reflect a drop in sovereignty or prosperity (sacking of Yuanmingyuan, cession of Hong Kong - notwithstanding that the cession of Macau was under the Ming 500 years ago!!!, and that that arrangement was amenable to all parties involved), or occurred late (e.g. Boxer indemnity being much more damaging than others prior, invasion of outer Manchuria was a failure by the Russians and only occurred in the 1930s by the Japanese), or are controversial in professional discourse (e.g. effect of opium smuggling in the long term), or that you’re intentionally using inflammatory rhetoric and wildly exaggerating historical fact to an astonishing degree (e.g. “forced the government to let it massively drug its population via opium” lol)…
Pray tell, what effect did you think the Taiping and the other rebellions in the 19th century have on Chinese prosperity?
I already mentioned the salient one in my comment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Manchuria
What are you talking about?
The rest of your message is extremely flawed, to deny that the century of humiliation implied a loss of sovereignty and sovereign interest is beyond absurd and bad faith.
One can attempt to analyze and mitigate that some of the unequal treaties or actions were not that potent but that is overall an impossible goal.
See e.g: among many:
The Boxer Protocol of September 7, 1901, provided for the execution of government officials who had supported the Boxers, provisions for foreign troops to be stationed in Beijing, and 450 million taels of silver— more than the government's annual tax revenue—to be paid as indemnity over the course of the next 39 years to the eight nations involved.
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I can't help but notice that despite your line by line reply you never addressed the question. Please speak clearly and explain how the "first economic power" was subjugated by inferior powers.
I don't think there is any possible kind/good faith interpretation to your question.
It just doesn't make sense and yet it was upvoted by 5 readers..
It should be painfully obvious that economic power is mostly hortogonal to military power, while there is some correlation it is obviously contingent.
It should be universally known and was explicited by one of my comments that China like the rest of the non western world was late regarding the industrial revolution, the design of war/killing machines and the use of powder/guns (which is ironic since Europeans originally imported that tech from China)
I didn't think it was useful to explain those things and why the west was able to militarily dominate the rest of the world.
Also the wars on china were a worldwide coalition of coercive powers, including Russia, the British empire, the French, and the U.S
I think people are being a bit unfair to you, but you're also saying a lot of dumb stuff yourself.
China definitely was a great economic power, despite that by the ~1500s Europe started to surpass them technologically and by the 1800s significantly surpassed them militarily. I agree with you there.
But Mao definitely had a lot of very stupid policies that led to a lot of deaths, e.g. the killing of the sparrows, or trying to have farmers make steel instead of grow crops. I think his most deadly mistakes were made of ignorance not malice, but they still weren't the West's fault.
Please exemplify you have shown none.
Did I approve Mao policy choices?
No.
The state of this discussion on the motte is very worrying epistemologically.
You are thinking of me as an imaginary strawman with imaginary claims.
This is beyond absurd, this thread is fictional.
I bet the "lot of dumb stuff" is the imaginary strawman of approving Mao decisions.
I could analyze (not defend) the reasoning behind the killing of the four pests, which wanted to reduce the significant amount of wasted food. It backfired for sparrows unfortunately, it was a task done too fast and with too little risk aversion/metrology and was a factor in the great famine, among drought/natural causes and the reallocation of some farmers to working in the steel industry to increase the country GDP and attempt to put it out of extreme misery.
The human errors and the natural disaster cofactors of the great Chinese famine needs not to be analyzed.
You are completely missing the outstanding efficiency of my argumentation.
The Great Chinese famine was a temporary reduction of crop yields by 15%, up to a very short lived 30% reduction at its peak.
Do you understand this is a small effect?
My initial claim is: who bears the main (and sufficent) responsability for the great Chinese famine.
Non-malicious human errors + drought that led to a short-lived 15-30% reduction in crop yields or the West voluntary ban of technology and of fertilizers on China since decades and for decades?
Is it hard to understand that fertilizers have effects on crop yields much superior to 30% and probably above 100%?
Is it hard to understand modal logic and that the criminal, coercive fertilizer ban is a logically sufficient cause that would have totally prevented the Great Chinese Famine?
The exact same thing apply for the ban on machines to increase yields, and the ban on food exports.
No, basic modal logic is not hard to understand.
The motte community is here being very dysfunctional and that is very worrying regarding its epistemic quality.
Another thing to observe:
The great Chinese famine should not hide the potent fact that millions were dying of food hunger consistently in the years/decade preceding it. No need for the great leap forward for that.
The trade embargo was sufficient
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44288827
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Putting aside that this is obviously a snark against extreme sinophilic (honestly, PRC-philic) history rewriting, this is actually an interesting question that has spawned an entire discipline of historical study. Not really as simple as “lol we better than you”.
(The Great Divergence debate has since expanded to include other polities and regions of the world, but IIRC for decades the majority of ink was spilled on Euro-Chinese comparisons.)
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