Reflections on Session #5 (10/16)

[Anonymous]

Brief yet rich history of ancient China was very helpful. I am familiar with Western Civilization but not in Chinese Civilization. As far as teaching Modern World History is concerned , I will try to introduce Chinese history along with Modern World later.

[Anonymous]

We seemed to have a full house on Tuesday but just in case, there are my notes for anyone who may find them useful. My own comments or my notes to myself are bracketed with *****

Clayton Dube October 16th

Death by China by Peter Navarro
A movie screened at Aug 19th by polisci prof at UCI.
China is a totalitarian country trying to destroy the U.S.
China and Walmart are condemned. Very compelling but has many flaws. A terrible distortion.
Suggests that all jobs lost in America have gone to China. However homebuilding jobs have NOT gone to China. Finance jobs have NOT gone to China. Targets the Democrats by showing Clinton and Obama but NOT George W. Bush.

About 25% of particulate matter in L.A. is from China but it is much worse in China.

Anti-Japanese attitudes in 1980's.

630,000 Americans working in Japanese companies.

Does Peter Navarro realize how slanted his arguments are? Is his book as much of a polemic and therefore does he have any academic respect? Film was paid for by NuCore Steel company. Opportunist, nice and smart.

Hunan Supergirl competition - American Idol like show. Allowed people to vote and it became very popular. The woman who won was not the ideal woman according to certain standards show was androgynous and in your face.

The Chinese Voice which you can watch on YouTube.

Demographic transition: Trends toward lower birth rate are high education for women and urbanization. This produces a lower birth rate. The city means less space. A farmer can have a lot of things that a little kid can do from a young age however there are fewer opportunities in the city. Women are working and therefore have less time to have kids. This reduces total marital fertility.

1979: One child family policy. As a member of a minority you are not subjected to one child policy. In Chinese it was the family planning policy. This was overlaid on a declining fertility rate.

Dube: Applied for permission to marry and had to wait for 11 months for approval.

Shanghai does not have a replacement birth rate and would like it to loosen up.

China 1.6
Japan 1.4
S. Korea 1.2
N. Korea 2.0
Vietnam 1.8
USA 2.1

Abortion: The family might make a decision for the individual.

Japan
1600 16 million
1717 26.1 million
1846 26.9 million

Tokugawa unite Japan around 1600. Japan is at peace and growth occurs at less than 1% per year. Then for the next 120 years, almost no growth. Why? Japanese families chose not to have many children and controlled to have fewer children - miscariage, infanticide, many families making decisions to regulate their size.

Japanese did more with less and Americans did not initially appreciate the richness of Japan. The increased production without increasing population thus increased productivity. Education levels for men in Japan were as high as the U.S. and Britain base upon literacy rates. This meant that Japan had a place to take off from and had an economic surplus that could be redeployed into it's rapid industrialization.

Japan the Nakahara case 1717-1830

Low mortality 26-31/1000
Lower fertility 6.5 total marital fertility

Controlled gender, spacing and number via infanticide. The families are making decisions that affect the success of their family.

The ballad of Narayama might show a callousness. It is about a custom where on 70th b-day you are left on the the mountain of Narayama.

World changes for Japanese in 1850's due to the rise in industry. The economic future was no longer tied to the land. In China the families were dividing up the household and Chinese remained poor.

Tokugawa government creates the alternate attendance system. The warlord most go to Tokyo to live there with a certain number of samurai with you and when not in Tokyo you must leave your wife and son behind. This stimulates business along the roadway.

**Also environmental management***

When Japan starts to modernize, population rises steadily. Japan has peaked and is in decline.

Women can always marry up.

Japanese farmers are finding wives among Philipinas and Taiwanese farmers are finding Vietnamese women.

U.S. 80% Urban and 2% Farm

The missing girls sex selective abortion and in India sex selective neglect.

Why is Singapore normal but S. Korea and China more.

Singapore has two government dating agencies - one for University Graduates and one for non University Graduates.

Adoption of Chinese girls. 35,000 adopted in 1985-2002 about 95% were girls. To adopt in China you had to be over 35 and childless.

117 men to 100 women

Film "Blind Mountain" about capture of girls. Hong Kong version vs. Mainland version.

**Are Chinese men looking out to Vietnam or such?**

Birth control is common. Deformed fetus to show what happens if you marry within family. Premarital sex is not appropriate yet happens. Birth control is free and widely available.

How did government pull of birth control policy. It was highly intrusive. The cost to government in terms of time energy and prestige was immense.

China says, we regulates marriage. Previous to that it was the parents. Government monitored womens cycles and if they missed that moment there would be a discussion. If within the quota, all good. If not then people begin to talk to you about how you are doing terrible things. Often people run away and give birth in secret. Rarely there have been late term forces abortions. Stanford Steven Mosher wrote about forced abortions.

Forced sterilization has also happened. Not widespread.

In India girls die at a rate 1.5 times that of boys.

"Legalist" levers
Sticks- social political pressure, fines, loss of opportunities
carrots- grants to start business, free school, retirement subsidies.

One child family is glorious.

Chen Guangcheng: blind attorney who defended women who were forced into abortion. He was self taught. He sued local officials for having violated the law. This irritated the village officials. He blocked a road with a demonstration and was convicted to 4 years in prison for disrupting social order. Then placed in house arrest in Shantung county. Wife, child and mother were all harrassed. He does a video statement that is sent on YouTube which gets out. In April, he escapes to Beijing. He was allowed to leave China and now studying in NYU. Nephew is on trial.
Last December Christian Bale goes to visit Chen Guangcheng.

Polyandry?

Early Empires

The Qin and Han Dynasties:
Qin lasts 14 years. Han lasts 400 years. Most people in China consider themselves ethnically Han Chinese. However this is misleading because it suggests greater conformity than exits. Communists started determining the ethnicities and at first 400 different ethnicities were created but the Cantonese were not recognized nor were the Hakka were not recongnized. Only 56 have been recognized. Vietnam also decided to have 56 ethnicities.

One of words that can be used to ID Chinese language is Hanyu language of the Han. Important to the self conception of the Chinese.

Qin Shihuandi 221-210 bce King Zheng of Qin. Bring all of the states under a single ruler. Largest Qin army had 60,000 soldiers. The Tiger of Qin. Horsemen, crossbows and bows. Han Feizi imortance of controlling those who rule on your behalf. The uselessness of history. Han Feizi was a student of Xunze the Confucian.

Great wall

*** Other walls between the states ****

His capital in Xianyang on Wei near Xian.

Li Si first prime minister was classmate of Xunze and had Xunze killed. Importance of standarization. Uniform standards - weights and measures.

** What were Chinese measures? ***
Li measure distance

Standardized width of roads and carts. Also writing.

Qin Road network

Premodern governments relied on security and revenue collection

Swords to statues. Swords of defeated armies.

Japanese- Hideyoshi

Crush alternate views.

Daoists say exterminate the sages. Qin Shirwang killed sages so they would stop polluting minds.

Han Dynasty blamed Daoists for killing of sages.

Tossing scholars into a pit.

Ban on non-authorized books. Agriculture and war is OK, but Confucian classics were burned .

Threats against the Emperor.
"The Emperor and the Assassin"

Suma Tien and tomb bricks tell the story of a doctor who saves the first emperor with his medical bag. He did not want to die. Obsessed with immortality.

Arthur Waldren talks about the wall in reality and myth.

How do you get all of these people to build this?

According to legend, general Mung Tien draws it in the sand. Smoke signals in the great wall.

The wall in the desert without anyone maintaining it is worn down.

First emperor wanted immortality and may have turned to Daoist alchemists.
*** mercury poisoning -- cinnabar ***

When he dies they load up dead fish behind him.

Son takes power and then the whole regime falls.

Qin made many enemies in unification. That discontent was mobilized.

(Sui dynasty reunited China and built grand canal)

Qin devoted time and treasure to make his tomb. During Shang and Zhou dynasties you took humans with you. But by the Qin the custom evolved so that you did not use living people.

More than 7,000 lifesize figures since 1974.

Founder of the Han Dynasty Han Gaozu Liu Bang
200 BCE to 200 CE

Han is a bit bigger than the Qin Dynasty. Hsiungnu are nomads in the north. The buy them off and trade for horses.

Capital of Han is Xian or Chang'an

Sea Routes and Chinese traders and missionaries. Port near Hong Kong or Macau.

Han Wudi rules for 60 years. Zhang Qian 138-126.

Sima Qian - court historian for the Han Dynasty. He had a fidelity to the truth even when it upset the Emperor. Han Wudi was a legalist and had Sima Qian castrated. Sima Qian showed up for work the next day.

Ban Chao - a woman historian wrote admonission girls importance of teaching girls.

Sanxingdui excavation.

Western Han. Eastern Han.

**Do we have epic histories like Rome. Julius Caesar etc. Punic Wars. Tuetorburg forest.**

Jade burial suit for the mega rich woman.

Dragon chariot.

Shang Dynasty has chivalry in Shang Dynasty. By the Qin dynasty no more rules of chivalry.

Han Wudi is not a flexible guy.
Debate of Salt and Iron.

The dynasty monopolized Salt and Iron. Some who criticize the control based upon Confucian ideas. Confucian bias against greedy merchants. At court you have two positions.

One the government and government alone should control these.
The other argument is that this is commerce which is low status. Merchants are low status. This social norming of merchants being low status becomes the norm and is transferred to Japan.

Arguments that farmer grows food and craftsmen make things. Merchants are predatory and parasites.

Bias against letting merchants taking the exams to become officials.

By taking the state into commerce we are de valuing the state.

*** Book "Salt" ****

Liu Bang is a master manipulator who used peasants to his own end. The stories of the early Han have a Daosist ruling ethic and then Daoism is replaced by Confucianism and replaced by state doctrine.

Qin don't go down without a fight.

*** Where do I find more about the Han. If the Han are as cool as Rome. How do we make it as cool? ***

Next meeting October 30th.

[Anonymous]

The Iron and Salt debate reminded me of a good book:
Kurlansky, Mark. _Salt: A World History_, Penguin Books, NY, NY, 2002.
http://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350505237&sr=8-1&keywords=salt+kurlansky%5C

This book looks at the history of the world from the perspective of salt and really helps strike home how important salt production was and is and how the pursuit of salt has motivated people and politics.

The appreciation of salt came up in one of my classes when a student brought boiled millet to class. The earliest Chinese noodles indeed were made from millet (http://www.kaogu.cn/en/detail.asp?ProductID=986) and it grows well in Northern China. The most memorable comment from the students on eating millet was: "I would invent soy sauce." The book, _Salt_ has a paragraph on soy sauce which was originally a fermented fish sauce as found in Thai cooking and found in ancient Roman cooking as well. Soy beans were added to the fish sauce and eventually the fish was left out giving us soy sauce.

Connecting to students through food works pretty well.

[Anonymous]

After we talked about the Iron and Salt debate in class, I began think of another big debate in Chinese history. When the Han Chinese overthrew the Mongols and founded the Ming dynasty in the later 14th century, they not only took over an extensive trading network, but also a fleet of ships as well. When prince Zhu Di usurped the throne in 1402, under the advice of his Muslim eunuchs, who believed strongly in foreign commerce and as a result he decided to send his trusted advisor Zheng He on a series of voyages. These voyages were meant to extend Chinese influence and win tribute from other countries. Unfortunately, this spirit of discovery was short-lived once the conservative Confucian faction had the upper hand they ended these voyages. In their worldview, "Barbarian" nations were seen as offering little of value to add to the prosperity already present in the Middle Kingdom. In fact, imperial subjects were forbidden from either building seagoing ships or leaving the country. In addition, the renovation of the Grand Canal in 1411 offered a quicker and safer route for transporting grain, so the demand for seagoing vessels went down. In addition, the threat of a new Mongol invasion drew military investment away from the expensive maintenance of the treasure fleets. By 1503 the navy had shrunk to one-tenth of its size in the early Ming. The final blow came in 1525 with the order to destroy all the larger classes of ships. China was now set on its centuries-long course of xenophobic isolation.

[Anonymous]

Dr. Dube reminded how demographic charts can be useful in the classroom. All those of us who teach Social Studies or know about the contents of the CAHSEE and the CST are aware that graphs and charts are used in those exams, so why not have more than one lesson on how to analyze them? Since I teach 10th grade World History, I think I will do a lesson in which I have my students compare population tables for Britain and China 500 years prior to the Industrial Revolution and have them make inferences and predictions just using population and grain production charts. The operating question can be: Which country is more likely to have an Industrial Revolution base on the data?

[Anonymous]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/world/asia/in-shift-china-stifles-debate-on-economic-change.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Interesting article on the Chinese economy and how too many Communist party members have gotten rich off its success, and are thus, hesitant to let it become more open and free. They enjoy having control of it, and profiting from it, and people are starting to complain about the restrictiveness and unfairness. Good article.

[Anonymous]

Session 5 was very interesting indeed, the idea of one family child only was very interesting because it was done as a measure to control population, but it seems like it is not working well. It seems to me that choosing to have boys over girls and doing selective abortions goes against nature and eventually the country is going to see the results of a society without enough female population. Also the debate about Salt and steel was very interesting. Cheers.

[Anonymous]

Professor, Thanks for posting the notes.
edited by chernandez on 10/18/2012

[Anonymous]

I had an impression after professor Debe's lecture using demographic chart, Demography and enlightening common people in East Asia had been a major factor for social and political changes. According to "Europe and people without history", professor Wolf from Chicago univerty wrote economy has been the driving force to change the cultures in human history. And it was quite obvious for me to make same relationship here in Ancient East Asia hisory with Dr. Wolf's argument. As far as my students are concerned, I can make a parallel historical events from europe and Asia for my World History Class.

[Anonymous]

One of the topics that really got to me was the limits to childbirth. I understand the reality behind limiting an already large population due to limits in resources and land but, as a father, it is hard to comprehend that "parents" could selectively abort fetuses because of their gender or, in some cases, neglect their daughters as they save resources for their boys. The indifference to one's own children is shocking. The populations in many of those countries are at critical levels but some of the methods used are horrifying. I can understand a one child policy but it shouldn't really matter what the child's gender is. If both genders would be looked on equally, with all of the same rights, then it would be a much more "acceptable" practice. The irony to the situation is the lack of available females in one's own country. The fact that many males have to either be alone or look to other countries to find a mate is an interesting byproduct of their selective childrearing.

[Anonymous]

Yes, to selectively abort your child because of the gender is just on comprehensible. It seems as though China just threw the babies away like they throw trash away. Babies are a gift of life and they are all precious. China threw away babies because they were girls and now they have a shortage of girls. China has created a crisis that didn't have to happened and it's all because they were misinformed about there future ability to feed it's people. They should have let things happen naturally. Dr. Dube stated that they have two choices for adjusting to this crisis and that is for the men to start sharing the women or for the men to consider homosexuality. It makes me wonder what are the Chinese people saying in response to these choices.

[Anonymous]

China’s one child per couple policy may have “engendered” some unfortunate consequences, but the rationale leading to that decision was well-intentioned. The human race is the only species that no longer has a symbiotic relationship with the environment. Not only are we content to accept a culture of self-elimination and abasement tolerating war and violence towards one another, but we insist on exploiting natural resources in a manner that will cause irremediable damage to the Earth. I admire the logic behind a culture that promotes family planning, preferably through education as opposed to intimidation. I can also respect the Japanese family unit of centuries past making difficult decisions not based on sentimentality, but only with practicality. With the exception to the inherent sexism of those societies that still believe boys to be a more valuable an asset than girls, and here this would really seem to be an evolutionary development where some ethnic groups, some of which are still clutching to antiquated religious baggage or a misplaced notion that brawn trumps brain in the modern era, lag behind others. I would not criticize too hastily how other cultures opt to handle family planning. We might benefit more by making observations on how well parents raise their children and by how strong family ties are in other cultures.

[Anonymous]

I found the session extremely helpful – I was just finishing up a lesson on the Han dynasty in my AP World History class, so I was able to use information on early empires from Professor Dube to supplement my lecture. I found the demographic trends in East Asia interesting. My students always ask about exceptions and penalties regarding the One Child Family Policy, so hearing more about that was useful.

[Anonymous]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/23/world/asia/pressure-to-repeal-chinas-one-child-law-is-growing.html?pagewanted=all

This article talks about the controversy over the One Child policy in China, and the push to repeal this law. Chinese women who accidentally get pregnant a second time are coerced by the government to end their pregnancies, including forcing women into late abortions and enduring physical abuse. A more pragmatic reason to end this policy is a concern over China's growing older population with a smaller, younger population to care for the economy.

[Anonymous]

This lecture really made me interested in traveling to China. I enjoyed seeing the photos of the Great Wall and the Terra Cotta soldiers. I wish that I had seen the Terra Cotta soldiers when they were at the Bowers museum earlier this year. Another part of the lecture that I found interesting was the story behind Chen Guangcheng's arrest and subsequent visit of Cristian Bale. I was aware of the incident, but not the story behind it.

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