{"id":278,"date":"2015-01-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yule-tide.generalsemiotics.net\/index.php\/2015\/01\/14\/post-271-chinas-dream\/"},"modified":"2015-01-14T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T00:00:00","slug":"post-271-chinas-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/2015\/01\/14\/post-271-chinas-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-271: China’s Dream"},"content":{"rendered":"
Is China going to take over as world superpower?\u00a0<\/em> The question came up as we sat eating chicken one late December 2014 evening in Sinchon, Seoul. I sat with three South Koreans (by birth), male,<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>born between the late 1970s and 1990<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>, all of whom had lived extensively abroad.<\/p>\n

One had lived half his life in England and had the air of a British intellectual about him. (He reminded me of my former coworker M.G. from England,<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>despite the racial difference.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>) He said the “key question” was whether China would make moves towards being the “world police,” as the USA has been for something around about seventy years now.<\/p>\n

I said I didn’t think China was interested in being world police. (This is not the same as saying China won’t<\/em> be. I don’t think the USA was interested either in becoming a “world superpower” at all in, say,<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> 1900 or 1910!<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>)
<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> <\/div>\n

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Read More<\/font><\/strong><\/font><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span> <\/div>\n
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Another of the Koreans, who’d lived in China most of his life, did not address the issue directly but chose instead to tell us about a certain billboard campaign active in China right now. He said all over China you can see billboards on which are printed two large words. Those words are: “China’s Dream”<\/strong>. What’s that<\/em> mean? It’s left unexplained. The two words stand alone. One interpretation, he said with a grin and a shrug of the shoulders, is that it means true world power, means China taking its proper place at the head of the world. My friend H.J. and I listened with interest.<\/p>\n

I have gotten to know many young (almost all born after 1990) educated “PRC Chinese” in the past year.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> I don’t necessarily see in them a world-imperial ambition. On the other hand, it’s not so hard to imagine a global version of the Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia (i.e., economic colonization).
<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is China going to take over as world superpower?\u00a0 The question came up as we sat eating chicken one late December 2014 evening in Sinchon, Seoul. I sat with three South Koreans (by birth), male, born between the late 1970s and 1990, all of whom had lived extensively abroad. One had lived half his life […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}