If any of you are curious about life in North Korea and the difficulty and danger in defecting, I'd highly recommend <em>Nothing to Envy</em>.
It contains the tales of a number of defectors, the reason they left, and how they escaped.
The one that always sticks in my head is the doctor who was starving to death in North Korea, but snuck across the border to China to steal food, and then planned to come back home. She was so brainwashed that even when starving to death, the thought of actually defecting was unimaginable to her. What ultimately broke her was when she found a bowl of rice and meat just sitting outside some Chinese home; she was completely dumbfounded because she hadn't had rice in years and couldn't understand why someone would literally leave such a bounty outside. She eventually realized what it was: table scraps for the family dog. Only once she realized that a dog in China ate better than a doctor in North Korea did she finally make the decision to defect.
Hell of a book, and some incredible stories.
I tried to read this book, The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang. I couldn't finish it.
Iris Chang later committed suicide. Whether it was due to her constant exposure to this subject, depression, or a combination of the two will never be known.
Let's not forgot this dude wrote a book called "The Coming Collapse of China" and predicted China would collapse in 2 years.
That book was published in 2001.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_China#Development
^^ Here you go, even the economists are saying all sorts of self contradictory things. Half think the book is cooked in one direction, others think they're cooked in the other direction.
But one thing is obvious, there are a large segment of reddit that wanted China to fail and puts that wish in their assessment of objective things. That's how you end up with books like Coming Collapse of China ^published ^2001
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Making of the Modern World
I amazingly flipped through the book right to the right page, I have no idea how I did it.
"In their new effort to be as un-chinese as possible, the mongols dropped the traditional evenhanded approach to diverse religion and granted ever more favor and power to Buddhism, particularly to its Tibetan variation, which contrasted most strongly with the Confucian ideals of the Chinese. Unable to criticize their mongol rulers directly, the Chinese people turned much of their hatred toward the foreigners who helped the mongol administer their empire. The Tibetan Buddhist monks in particular became the object of hatred, since local people along the newly opened Mongol route to Tibet carried the obligations not merely of feeding, housing, and transporting the monks, but of carrying their goods for them as well. The monks, often armed, acquired a terrible reputation for abusing people who served them. The Bureau of Buddhist and Tibetan Affairs strongly defended the monks at court and imposed a host of special rights for them. At one point the bureau tried to enforce laws that stipulated that anyone who hit a monk would have his hand cut off, or that anyone who insulted or defamed a monk, if convicted, could have his tongue cut out. The Mongol officials eventually overturned these laws as incompatible with Mongol rule, which forbade the use of body mutilation as a punishment."
Perhaps torture is a strong word, but not far off. The writing is a bit vague over if/how long the law was active, but it is the thought that counts lol
When you lay down the timeline of when massive amounts of pigs started to die out with the slowdown of soybean imports because Brazil could not produce enough soybeans to replace US productions, then it paints a disturbing picture that perhaps swine flu is not the primary cause for the pork shortage. It is pig famine.
Its Mao's Great Famine all over again only with Xi at the helm. (Swine flu was also used back then to hide widespread livestock famine) There's not enough livestock feed to go around so Pork farmers friendly to Xi gets the resources, and the rest are left to watch their pigs die of famine and deaths are to be recorded as Swine Flu leading to the pork shortage and skyrocketing prices. Not saying African Swine Flu doesn't exist, but CCP has been suspiciously quiet on its handling of such an outbreak because with all of CCP's experience with containing diseases throughout the decades, they show no evidence of evolution of handling it or show any international leadership..
After weak growing seasons, Brazil continues to burn down the amazon to clear land to plant more soybeans to meet Chinese demand. Perhaps Bolsonaro's lashing out at DiCaprio is just misplaced, it should be going to Xi Jin Ping instead. There must be external pressure that forces Brazilian farmers to burn down precious rain forest. CCP rather burn down the planet and destroy humanity than give into US trade demands.
The reports of the plague also point to possibility that widespread famine is occurring in rural china (thats not farmers, that's China's elderly and children) where rats are being eaten due to lack of food
Here's a great book about it. Compelling.
https://smile.amazon.com/Rape-Nanking-Forgotten-Holocaust-World/dp/0465068367/
>When there is not enough to eat people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.
I'm not so sure about that.
In 1979, the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone was formed and since then all 9 cities in the zone (which does not include Hong Kong or Macau) saw explosive growth and it really had little to do with Hong Kong itself.
Dongguan, for example, was booming with economic activity mostly thanks to the shoe and toy industries that set up shop there in the 80s and 90s. From 1983 to 2001, it grew from 168k to over 4M. There's actually a great book called Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China that describes the life of migrant factory workers during this time.
The other thing that happened was Foxconn setting up shop in Longhua in 1988. They started out making very basic electronics components but by the late 90s were making high-margin components for Intel and Sharp. Then there was as certain fruit company that started making a lot of very popular devices in Guangdong in the mid 2000s.
With these 1st tier OEMs and CMs in the region came a number of smaller suppliers that made the tools, equipment and lower-level materials used by these companies. The economic ecosystem there is incredible and it is spread throughout the Guangdong region. Pretty much every inch of land in the province that isn't a mountain is developed and the skyline of Guangzhou is actually as impressive as Shenzhen.
Highly recommend this book on the topic:
https://smile.amazon.com/Hundred-Year-Marathon-Strategy-Replace-Superpower/dp/1250081343
And this defense department report to the US Congress:
Tämä oli minusta myös aika hyvä: http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Envy-Ordinary-Lives-North/dp/0385523912
Tämä taasen oli pohjoiskorealaisen lapsen / nuoren näkökulmasta, ja myös aika mainio: http://www.amazon.com/This-Paradise-North-Korean-Childhood/dp/0349118655
The CCP believes China has been chosen by heaven to dominate the world and is
committed to this outcome. Their plan is long term to replace the US and
any others to achieve their rightful place. The Hundred Year Marathon
Citation needed: who has tried this? Under what circumstances? What did they do right and what can we learn from what they did wrong?
Mao's Great famine by Frank Dikotter
It goes over the role of the black market during The Great Leap Forward. It has been over a year since I read it and can't give you the exact page # or chapter, but it does dedicate a decent portion to how the black market proved to be a prominent fixture in Chinese life despite the Communist Party outlawing unregulated trade.
The second economy of the Soviet Union can be glossed over here.
I can’t recommend the book Nothing to Envy highly enough. Detailed, haunting, unforgettable, and real.
You might try the Zen record from China before 1300: https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Teaching-Huang-Po-Transmission/dp/0802150926
https://www.reddit.com//r/zen/wiki/getstarted
I don't recommend any modern stuff from the Zen tradition, incidentally; the Japanese transmission (which Western Zen has a basis on) seems corrupted (like corrupted data, not political corruption), in all honesty. Zen has extra bite; if you reach for any method, the Zen master has a smack for you.
I'd say the next step is to go deeper. I don't think your need to abandon your secular inclinations in order to distill some teachings from zen and other Asian traditions.
Here's a book that really got me, although it might be somewhat advanced for some -- https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Teaching-Huang-Po-Transmission/dp/0802150926
I read it a bunch of times. The Buddhist jargon and put down of other sects might be off-putting, but the basic teaching is very profound and inspiring. The "One Mind" that he espouses and identifies with the "void" or emptiness, doesn't need to be religious or even "spiritual." www.frogzen.com
>Now that they are a big dog, they are going to grow more slowly.
I have been hearing this for a while. But they continue to beat projections. "The coming collapse of China" was published in 2001.
https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Collapse-China-Gordon-Chang/dp/0812977564
Fuck off with your tankie propaganda. You're hurting a good cause by blatenly denying one of the biggest famines in history. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/08/03/giving-historys-greatest-mass-murderer-his-due/ or read the book https://www.amazon.com/Maos-Great-Famine-Devastating-Catastrophe/dp/0802779239
You mean “The Hundred Year Marathon”?
Yet another book written by a self proclaimed China expert?
>No military bases around the world.
This is important but they are attempting to quickly change this. They already opened a base in Djibouti and are attempting to do the same across the Indo-Pacific.
>Doesn’t even manufacture double what America does despite having over four times the population.
This is wrong. China is far ahead the US in manufacturing output. Do you mean GDP instead?
https://globalupside.com/top-10-manufacturing-countries-in-the-world/
Ultimately, In international relations is driven by economic incentives and military force to achieve their goals. China in the last two decades had a meteoric rise in both, whether China will become great power #1 and replace the US is to be seen.
The coming collapse of China was first published in 2001. But instead China just got stronger and beat western economic growth rates for several years.
https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Collapse-China-Gordon-Chang/dp/0812977564
L'histoire qui est enseignée en Chine doit faire la part belle aux progrès du PCC sans jamais évoquer les parts sombres de l'histoire chinoise contemporaine. Pour rappel, lorsque Mao Zedong décide de suivre la voie « léniniste » (les agriculteurs se voient confisqués leurs terres et sont obligés de travailler dans des fermes collectives où leurs récoltes sont confisquées par le Parti), cela a pour résultat la Grande famine : en 4 ans, 36 millions de personnes qui meurent de faim, et 40 millions de naissance en moins.
Pour ceux qui souhaitent en savoir plus, le livre Tombstone de l'historien chinois Yang Jisheng, qui a fait un très bon travail d'archive pour aboutir à ses conclusions.
The maps of balkanized China is copium and will never happen. The book "The Coming Collapse Of China" was first published in 2001.
https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Collapse-China-Gordon-Chang/dp/0812977564
But the decades ahead in the future is impossible to tell how the world will look like. This is pure speculation, but personally I believe the US will stay as the most powerful country as China will inevitably go through economic Japanification and looking at other social and environmental challenges makes me believe that the US is here to stay. But on the other hand claiming that China is collapsing and will lose it's status and power on the world stage is unfaithful. China is likely only to get more powerful relatively at least into the foreseeable future.
It's hard for both Americans and Chinese people to look at this from an objective neutral point of view.
Oh goodness, if she's into nonfiction might I recommend Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick? It's a wonderfully beautiful, tragic, romantic, sad, and heavily emotional collection of stories from North Korean defectors. Really really good stuff.
To je oficialni verze. Predstete si tu Gussackovu knihu, nabizi alternativni pohled. Deset let neni z pohledu komunisticke strategie dlouha doba (Doporucuji knihu [Hundred-Year Marathon](https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Year-Marathon-Strategy-Replace-Superpower/dp/1250081343)\).
Rumunsko melo vlastni ropu, tak si mohlo dovolit omezeni styku se SSSR a navazani styku se zapadem. Komunisticky blok jako celek, to nijak neoslabilo. Naopak.
If you wanted books more on his actions and their consequences rather than his personal life, I would recommend (both by Yang Jisheng) Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962 and The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Both of these topics are covered in the Frank Dikötter series, but these books are much more comprehensive looks if you were looking for that.
The benefit to Cheek's book is not only that it includes the sources, but it also includes the background information that is crucial to understanding the documents. You can find these documents anywhere, but it is valuable to have a reliable secondary source that can introduce the historical context and significance of the sources. You can, of course, find other secondary sources that give you the necessary historical context, but it is just nice to have it all in a contained package like Cheek's book.
This famous book about China incoming collapse is from 2001, 20 f*cking years ago, and China economy has only be getting stronger and stronger since that with no sign of slowing, not even the pandemic really affected them thanks to their efficent response.
Huang Po / Huangbo https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Teaching-Huang-Po-Transmission/dp/0802150926
Definitely a famous text and Zen master in the small pool of Hongzhou school Chan texts (the predominantly discussed type of Zen here)
He's credited as Linji's master in the lineage (Japanese name Rinzai, one of the two still existing schools of Zen, named after Linji/Rinzai)
加油,,,
People should take a couple of days and read or listen to this book. https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Year-Marathon-Strategy-Replace-Superpower/dp/1250081343
The game plan is to become the world superpower no matter how it takes them to get to that point which includes killing and mass death. For example how covid was kept a secret by the Chinese government is part of the plan. Notice how they didn't even provide us numbers after Jan of 2020. People yell out this is a conspiracy, but its not and the big picture has been woven into the culture.