{"id":2931,"date":"2011-09-06T23:34:35","date_gmt":"2011-09-06T18:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/calamur.org\/gargi\/2011\/09\/06\/reading-in-progress-kissinger-on-cchina\/"},"modified":"2011-09-06T23:34:35","modified_gmt":"2011-09-06T18:04:35","slug":"reading-in-progress-kissinger-on-cchina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calamur.org\/gargi\/2011\/09\/06\/reading-in-progress-kissinger-on-cchina\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading in Progress – Kissinger On China"},"content":{"rendered":"

IN OCTOBER 1962, China\u2019s revolutionary leader Mao Zedong summoned his top military and political commanders to meet with him in Beijing. Two thousand miles to the west, in the forbidding and sparsely populated terrain of the Himalayas, Chinese and Indian troops were locked in a standoff over the two countries\u2019 disputed border. The dispute arose over different versions of history: India claimed the frontier demarcated during British rule, China the limits of imperial China. India had deployed its outposts to the edge of its conception of the border; China had surrounded the Indian positions. Attempts to negotiate a territorial settlement had foundered.<\/p>\n

Mao had decided to break the stalemate. He reached far back into the classical Chinese tradition that he was otherwise in the process of dismantling. China and India, Mao told his commanders, had previously fought \u201cone and a half\u201d wars. Beijing could draw operational lessons from each. The first war had occurred over 1,300 years earlier, during the Tang Dynasty (618\u2013907), when China dispatched troops to support an Indian kingdom against an illegitimate and aggressive rival. After China\u2019s intervention, the two countries had enjoyed centuries of flourishing religious and economic exchange. The lesson learned from the ancient campaign, as Mao described it, was that China and India were not doomed to perpetual enmity. They could enjoy a long period of peace again, but to do so, China had to use force to \u201cknock\u201d India back \u201cto the negotiating table.\u201d The \u201chalf war,\u201d in Mao\u2019s mind, had taken place seven hundred years later, when the Mongol ruler Timurlane sacked Delhi. (Mao reasoned that since Mongolia and China were then part of the same political entity, this was a \u201chalf\u201d Sino-Indian war.) Timurlane had won a significant victory, but once in India his army had killed over 100,000 prisoners. This time, Mao enjoined his Chinese forces to be \u201crestrained and principled.\u201d1<\/p>\n

No one in Mao\u2019s audience\u2014the Communist Party leadership of a revolutionary \u201cNew China\u201d proclaiming its intent to remake the international order and abolish China\u2019s own feudal past\u2014seems to have questioned the relevance of these ancient precedents to China\u2019s current strategic imperatives. Planning for an attack continued on the basis of the principles Mao had outlined. Weeks later the offensive proceeded much as he described: China executed a sudden, devastating blow on the Indian positions and then retreated to the previous line of control, even going so far as to return the captured Indian heavy weaponry.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Begun reading<\/del> hearing the audio book Kissinger on China. An hour a chapter, once every couple of days. sometimes hearing the same chapter twice to understand it better. I usually hear the book when i am driving, and it makes for great listening.<\/p>\n

There is this part in the first chapter I heard twice, just to enjoy this paragraph. It is such a simple and yet, such an elegant concept.<\/p>\n

The famous opening of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a fourteenth-century epic novel treasured by centuries of Chinese (including Mao, who is said to have pored over it almost obsessively in his youth), evokes this continuous rhythm: \u201cThe empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.\u201d3 Each period of disunity was viewed as an aberration. Each new dynasty reached back to the previous dynasty\u2019s principles of governance in order to reestablish continuity. The fundamental precepts of Chinese culture endured, tested by the strain of periodic calamity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The first chapter looks at how this continuity allowed the Chinese to remain in a state of pre-eminence throughout a vast chunk of history<\/p>\n

As late as 1820, it produced over 30 percent of world GDP\u2014an amount exceeding the GDP of Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and the United States combined<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I will be posting excerpts from the book. it is available<\/strong><\/a> on Flipkart, and hopefully, a review once I am done.<\/p>\n

\"art-353-on-china-200x0\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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