Chinese Memory

For the last twenty odd years West has been waiting with a collective bated breath for the inevitable rise of China. Since the collapse of the USSR, it was only a matter of time that the hunt for new challenges to the world order resumed. Ultimately, the old enigmatic orient fit the bill, as it has in the past.

Western audiences specifically, and in general, audiences around the world, have been far too eager to purchase the narrative of a rising dragon across the China seas with the intent of doing what her adversaries did to her for centuries during colonial and perhaps even pre-colonial era.

What gets overlooked is the powerful dragon’s concentrated inward gaze at its own backyard and the “threats” from within to a very modern post colonial set up comprised of the CCCP and the all powerful bureaucracy.

It is interesting to draw a parallel between President Xi’s handling of the climate change negotiation and that of the Chinese Emperor’s stewardship of the negotiations between the Chinese appointed bureaucrats and the British Generals leading the Opium war. Both of them chose to deal with these remotely and with emissaries going back and forth between China and the rest of the nations of the world. What drove the emperor to take a hard stance then, is what continues to drive President Xi’s hard line, which according to some, was the ultimate reason for the failure of the climate change conference as well.

There are lessons to be learnt from the history of the region. While news today focuses on…