Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

different meaning that China would have attacked at Pearl Harbor?

different meaning that China would have attacked at Pearl Harbor?

A rich question and worthy of study (not rod's comment but Brad's post). Along the way we'll find topics like the Britsh control of the Chinese customs in the 19th century and Tokyo as the largest city in the world (and the most artistic) at the time of our own Revolution.

One thing for certain- if you pay attention, you'll find histories of these nations to be way more interesting than science fiction.

Wikipedia has a reasonable article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Days_Reform

Rod --

On the contrary. The move from Meiji to Showa is a complex one, and while Kang Youwei and the other backers of the Hundred Days did look to Japan as a model for reform, I doubt it would have ended up in a "Pearl Harbor" scenario. Interestingly, reformers in both Japan and China were looking for something to play the role of Christianity, which they saw as an aspect of western development they lacked. In Japan, the move was to State Shinto, which because it was wrapped in the religious authority of the Sun Goddess, fit easily with the claim of Japanese exceptionality that fuelled the expansion of their empire. Kang's thesis, if it was adopted, would have elevated a religious version of Confucianism into that position, something much less toxic in terms of its views on expansion than State Shinto (although it was objectionable on many other levels). But the conservatives who defeated Kang and Liang resisted the professionalization of the army and other aspects of "westernization" that the reformers urged. If the Qing had managed to reform, modernize, and contain European and American imperialism, then China would have been a more formidable foe for the Japanese army, and Pearl Harbor would never have happened.

I'm not myself an expert on recent-to-modern Chinese history, but I've known some people who are and they tend to dismiss the 100 days Reform movement as a non-starter. People like Kang Yuwei and Liang Chichao were intellectuals without real support. All they could do, even when they got the ear of the Kuanghsu emperor, was to produce edicts without any means of enforcing them. In the Meiji Restoration, on the other hand, the samurai of Satsuma, Choshu, and Tosa had real authority in their hands--they defeated the Shogun's army and took over the machinery of government.

It is rather interesting, though, to see what Kang and Liang did after the reforms. Kang, as far as I know, disappeared from politics. Liang, on the other hand, became a sort of militant royalist--one of the key founders of the Huangpohui (emperor-protection society--a key "reactionary" organization against Revolutionaries in early 1900's). Seems that there might be something true about Rod's comment above. Had Liang and Kang succeeded in taking over China in the long run and developing Chinese power, it could very well have gone in the militarist direction a la Japan.

HK,

Actually it was Kang who founded the Protect the Emperor Society and continued to agitate for a Qing restoration even after 1911, thus making himself into a Pat Buchanon/ Robert Bork sort of crank. Liang went on to become a newspaper publisher/journalist/public intellectual and probably one of the most influential minds of the period.

As for the reforms being a non-starter, I'm not so sure. It is true that provincial officials mostly ignored the initial decrees while waiting to see what would happen, but when similar reforms began to come down after 1900 they were enthusiastically supported by the local elite and the Chinese state aparatus was largely modernized -before- the revolution following basically the same pattern advocated in 1898. This is in part I suspect due to the shock of the Boxer disaster, but it is not that hard to imagine a counterfactual where 1898 was a success.

Never forget: 1,3 bn/0.280 = ?(labour supply?)

There have been more than one missed opportunity for reform over the decades. Under Wang An-shi (ca. 1100?) they changed the examination system to include scientific and engineering questions. Chinese science was good, but the political leadership rarely knew anything about it. During this period government policy was also oriented toward defense and agricultural development, both discouraged by Confucius.

My understanding is that reform movements only lasted as long as the Emperor who supported them; his successor never followed up. And often a reforming minister would be booted while his sponsoring emperor was still alive. Thuds in the Topkapi palace type stuff, in the Delong vernacular.

The Williams story is based on Sterling Seagrave's "Dragon Lady - The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China", a revisionist biography of Tzu Hsi.

Is the host in Beijing these days? An awful lot of posts about it...

I went last summer. Fascinated, I was.

What if the leader of the taiping hadn't been completly insane? Then he probably woul dhave gained the backing of the western powers and installed himself as a (pseudo)christian emporer. That would have been interesting.

Don't go to the great wall at badaling, Simatai and mutianyu are much more impressive.

Also, don't accept any "white wine" at supper, it's chinese liqour and it will kill you.

Brad, you've read more than one source about the Dowager Empress. FLASHMAN AND THE DRAGON, remember?

Alan B.

Thanks for the correction. Like I said, I'm not a real expert myself, so I was clearly getting some facts mixed up.

There was no way I'm aware of that China could have had a restoration that even remotely resembled the Meiji Restoration. The only comparability between recent Chinese history and Japanese history is that both occured in East Asia. Certainly, the political conditions in Japan that led to the downfall of the Tokugawa shogunate and the restoration of the Meiji emperor did not exist in China at the turn of the century. The comments section of a blog is too constraining to explain the differences.

Mushinronsha, yes, of course China is not Japan, and an alternate history China is still not Japan. However, consider the profound radicalism of the movements that actually did sweep China in the aftermath of the fall of the Qing dynasty. The Republic was very nearly as radical as the Communists - more radical in some ways and far more radical than the current, post-Cultural Revolution government. They were on the brink of abolishing Chinese morphosyllabic writing - and with it rendering the entire Confucian tradition inaccessible - something which even now is considered radical beyond contemplation outside of a few genuinely revolutionary groups.

I don't see what factors existed in Japan in the 1860s that fostered industrialisation that were not present in China at the end of the 19th century, except the existence of a pro-industrial movement in actual possession of power. The only real spoiler is that by 1898 the industrialised nations were 30 years more advanced, and thus they were that much harder to catch up to.

I know less Japanese or Chinese history than the rest of you, but my impression was that in Japan the effective power of the central government was much greater, making easier to impose a reform. Wasn't the state apparatus relatively weak in China, with less effective control over the provinces? If that was the case, then Japan had a big advantage. A strong central government, with effective control and enforcement, makes an important difference.

http://pep.typepad.com/

http://pep.typepad.com/public_enquiry_project/2004/05/prof_delong_sho_1.html

Scott: I think what my post and Mushinronsha's are reacting to in the post about Pearl Harbor was the implicit assumption that if China had developed itself technologically and militarily at the start of the twentieth century it would necessarily have ended up like Japan. What is behind that assumption? There are indeed important cultural links between China and Japan, but there are also such links between England and Germany. Radical changes happened in both those countries as they industrialized, but they ended up rather differently.

Adrian strikes again. To spare everybody the time of clicking through, Adrian's URL is to a post which makes the 180 degrees contradictory claims that the economy is governed by its momentum and the economy is governed by shocks which throw it all about.

Krugman and DeLong are claimed to be ignorant of these dominant phenomena.

One possibility is just that Japanese history ~1850--~1950 is one of the most amazing, unexpected, never-to-be-repeated historical developments ever.

Russia under Peter the Great and Turkey under Ataturk are the only comparable transformations I can think of. Even now, when the world is geared to encourage such transformations (sometimes) it's only happened in a few countries. But Japan did it in a vacuum.

"I don't see what factors existed in Japan in the 1860s that fostered industrialisation that were not present in China at the end of the 19th century, except the existence of a pro-industrial movement in actual possession of power."

Scott, I hesitate to get into this subject because, in being brief to fit the format, I run the risk of glossing over significant information. But I will say that, to me, there were two critical advantages Japan had in making a rapid transition from a feudal to a modern society: the size of its country and the organization of its society.

The small size of the country allowed the Tokugawa shogunate to establish total control over every aspect of Japanese society. A large country with a large population as in China's case would have been almost impossible to administer as the shogunate did in Japan.

The shogunate administration, with its strict definition of roles in society, laid the foundation for the modern Japanese state. Although to the uninformed, the transformation looked miraculous, it took no miracle to combine a largely literate society with a village mentality into a modern country almost overnight.

Samurai, such as Yoshida Shoin, traded their hakama for suits (becoming government officials) and imported western techonolgy without changing any of the underlying strenghs of Japanese society. In essence, it retained the village mentality as a framework while donning a coat of modernity. Even in modern times, the concept of the village remains the foundation of Japanese society.

I may be wrong but I don't see China society in the 1890s being anything similar to Japanese society in the 1860s. But I'm willing to listen any evidence you put forward to support a contrary view.

My Japanese history is rather shaky (and my Chinese almost non-exsistent), but I think its a stretch to say that the Tokugawa had total control. The Satsuma lords managed to conquer Okinawa independently, and sent their own missions to Britain in the run-up to the Meiji restoration. They were probably the most independent of the daimyo, given their distance from Edo, but my impression is that the others also had considerable independence within their realms.

"I think its a stretch to say that the Tokugawa had total control...The Satsuma lords managed to conquer Okinawa independently, and sent their own missions to Britain in the run-up to the Meiji restoration."

Lilmark, your Japanese history is a bit different than the history I studied. Satsuma did conquer the Ryukyus but did so in 1609, before the Edo bakafu was established; so it wasn't as though Satsuma defied the bakafu to do it. But, yes, there was breakdown of bakafu control in the years just before the Meiji restoration because the bakafu was unsuccessful in repelling foreigners like Perry from barging their way into Japan. But the bakafu control over Japanese society over most of its 200-year run was pretty complete.

I dunno but I suppose total control is subject to interpretation. The bakafu was successful in limiting foreign access to Japan for over 200 years, except for the Dutch outpost on Dejima near Nagasaki. The bakafu was successful in requiring daimyo to travel in alternate years to Edo to live, while keeping their families hostage in Edo. The bakafu was successful in controlling travel between eastern and western japan through its checkpoint at Hakone. The bakafu was successful in forcing daimyo to tear down castles it felt were threatening.

The bakafu was also successful in specifying each level of Japanese society, down to what type of clothes each level could wear. Maybe the bakafu wasn't entirely successful because, despite its best efforts, the merchant class became gradually wealthy while the bushi gradually became impoverished. Even the bakafu didn't have complete control over economics.

Phil and Altoid, remember that we're talking from Iran's point of view a year before the invasion of Iraq. The U.S. is much more sober now, but it wasn't in 2001 and 2002. Do you remember how arrogant and overbearing the Bushies were back then? How was Iran to know that Rumsfeld would make such a hash of the coming war? The answer is that the Iranians had to make a worst-case assumption, that the U.S. would succeed in establishing an iron vise around their country. As I said before, the Ayatollahs would have been insane to risk it.

Remember, Iran's rugged terrain didn't stop Saddam from invading in the 1980's. The U.S. is vastly stronger than Saddam was, and could easily devastate Iran even if the war were ultimately unsuccessful. With the ability to invade from two directions simultaneously, and with glorious victories over Iraq and Afghanistan under his belt, who could have prevented Bush from trying?

Remember what General Wesley Clark said, that there was serious planning in the Pentagon for invading no fewer than seven countries in the MIddle East? I'm sure Iran was painfully aware of that possibility.

So my question remains, why would the Ayatollahs have wanted to risk doomsday by luring the U.S. into Iraq?

Oops, sorry, wrong thread.

Back to the topic...and back to basics. Japan: small island nation lacking natural resources for major industrialization, and lacking internal markets for the products of major industrialization. China: very large nation with abundant resources and markets for internal development.

Japan in 1850, I think, was very much similar to the UK around 1700; there was an emergent bourgeoisie, a reactionary noble ("samurai") class, and so forth. Japan *wanted* to change, very badly so. China of 1850, I think, was like continental Germany of 1850 only moreso--long-standing feudal system with vast power. I don't think China could have industrialized much sooner than in our times and if there had not been the terrible dislocations of the 20th century, industrialization might even have waited another 50 years or so.

Another point: Japanese culture is more accepting of change than most other cultures. Modern Western civ's philosophies tended towards eternal verities and, until the late 19th century, built in apparently-permanent stone; Japan, with philosophical roots in Buddhism and Shinto (Japanese paganism), tended towards theories of change and earthquake-prone Japan built in wood; the Japanese symbol of persistence is the pine tree. From the Heian to the Edo periods--about 1000 years--Japan changed far more gracefully than any Western culture I am aware of.

Delong and the World Bank?

"Japanese culture is more accepting of change than most other cultures."

Randolph, that statement is a bit too broad for me to let pass without comment. It is true in some respects but not in others. The Japanese are a very pragmatic people and will eagerly adopt new technology which is better than theirs. They will also change national policies when conditions dictate it. For example, the Japanese responded much faster and more effectively to the 1973 "oil shock" than the US did.

In other respects, however, Japanese society does not change (or changes very slowly). As I said upthread, Japanese society is still solidly founded on the "village" mentality which evolved over the centuries. I see that mentality very clearly in modern Japan and even in major metropolitan areas such as Tokyo. The idea of "furusato" has a strong emotional pull for the Japanese. As another example, "giri-ninjo" is still deeply embedded in the Japanese mind.

I'm not disputing your statement - only saying that one has to be specific when pointing that Japan is quick to change (or slow to change).

Mushinronsha--yes, I agree with you. But the character of the Japanese response to change--there, I think, is the remarkable thing. The history of Modern Western Civ. is marked by a series of vast upheavals; dramatic transformations, revolutions if you like, are so much characteristic of Western history that major theories of history have been erected on the idea that those are how history is made. And then there's Japan, where, for 1,000 years, history was made in another way. For that period Japan seems to me much less prone to fits of cultural amnesia than the West has been; this may still be so, despite all technical and economic change. It is, I think, one of the great sources of confusion in contact between the two cultures--to take an example I know well, most Japanese architects take seriously Western Renaissance claims that Western Europe was the direct inheritor of ancient Greece and Rome. Any why not? In Japan such claims are reasonable. (But they were Renaissance bragadoccio.) Conversely, Westerners completely fail to grasp the integrated continuity of historical Japan. And I believe this bears directly on the Japanese response to the vast technical and cultural changes of the last five centuries.

Yes, Randolph, the continuity of Japanese society is one of its most remarkable assets. 60 years ago they suffered the most traumatic event in its history - defeat in war and occupation by a foreign nation. Yet, Japanese society bounced back from that event intact and maintaining its enuring continuity. It is a thoroughly impressive nation.

But, for all their incredible problem-solving skills, they are facing a conundrum today which defies easy solution. Because its birthrate has fallen far below the replacement rate, it is a rapidly aging country. The national government is not able to incentivize young people to have more children and worries about its future.

There is a temptation to allow more foreign workers into Japan to fill in for growing labor shortages but the government realizes that doing that will irreversibly alterJapanese society. It fears losing the very qualities that maintained through the centuries. I believe the government will opt against foreign workers and I hope that time eventually will provide a suitable solution to their birthrate problem.

Mushinronsha, Japan has, I think, the densest cities of any developed nation; it does not have a population shortage. Nor can the world afford more people; we are already past sustainability for current per capita resource utilization. A high birthrate is *not* the answer.

Randolph, it is true enough that the human population is straining world resources and no more growth is really needed. However, paradoxically, the birthrate is highest in underdeveloped countries, which use relatively less resources, and lowest in the developed countries, which use relatively more of earth's resources. As a citizen of the world, I support both lower birthrates and a wiser use of earth's resources.

Many Japanese would agree with you that there are too many people in their cities and, certainly, young Japanese women are not eager to add to the population growth. It's the Japanese government that's worried about the low birthrate because officials believe it will lead to undesirable changes in Japanese society. The concern is that the birthrate has fallen below the replacement level, which will cause the population to drop.

Since your response suggests that you're not following the discussion of the issue in Japan, I recommend that you go to this link and learn more about the Japanese government's concern:

http://www.asiabusinesstoday.org/briefings/index.cfm?id=102451

Damn, html tags don't seem to work in Brad's comments. Oh well, you'll have to do cut and paste.

I think the "culture" argument between the Japanese atheist person and Randolph Fritz is getting a bit too far afield. The implication is that the Japanese were somehow "culturally" different from the Chinese...and I don't see it. The overseas Chinese (clearly of "Chinese Culture," whatever that means) have been among the most dynamic and adaptable people in Southeast Asia and beyond. There's nothing from Japan that's even remotely close to this phenomenon. Invoking culture, even implicitly, as an explanation for China's non-industrialization in 19th Century. The answer, seems to me, still belongs to the politics of who could exert what change when--did the handful of radicals and Kuanghsu emperor holed up in the Forbidden City, regardless of culture, effect any change in 1898, without actual control over the mechanisms of government (particularly considering that, especially after the Taip'ing Rebellion, Chinese state power became largely, if not completely, decentralized)? The samurai of Satsuma, Tosa, and Choshu, on the other hand, did have real machinery of the state in their hands, and a clear military and other threat posed by foreign powers facing the other Japanese--who, therefore, would have been more or less willing to go with the revolutionaries.

I always found it interesting that, in truth, China in 19th century actually was modernizing, but usually at the initiative of provincial officials, without guidance or leadership exerted from the top. If those who held Beijing actually held some real authority and could meaningfully lead the provinces a la the Meiji leaders, perhaps history could have been different--but maybe the sheer size of China would have made such an endeavor difficult. Late 19th C./early 20th century Chinese intellectual history still isn't one of my fortes--although I picked up a few books to read in the last couple of weeks. But the problem perhaps is that people like Kang Yuwei and Liang Chichao are part of intellectual rather than political or economic history.

Yes, hk, I agree that the Japanese culture discussion got pretty far off-topic. I started out by trying to make the point that one cannot assume that China could have followed the Japanese model for modernization because the conditions in the two countries were much different. China is getting there on its own schedule and in its own way. The question of whether they could have done it in 1890 is academic at this point.

I tried to avoid discussions about Japanese culture but it seemed that several people wanted to quibble with minor points I had made. I'm always ready to elaborate on and support points I make when commenting on blogs.

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I'm more of an enlightened amateur than an expert on Chinese and Japanese histories, but I have put together an alternate history in which China has a smoother and more orderly ride to world powerdom than it has had in our timeline. I place the defining moment at the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1911. In our timeline, the "revolution" happened almost by accident and took everyone by surprise, including Sun Yat-sen. Once in charge of the country, he realized that his lack of leverage with the former elite in general and the army brass in particular made him an unsuitable ruler, so he looked for someone with more influence and chose Yuan Shikai. Unfortunately Yuan Shikai was both power-hungry, incompetent and corrupt, and within a few months had let the country tumble into a period of anarchy that would only end in 1949 (or, as far as I'm concerned, 1978).
Well, in my alternate timeline, Sun instead picks someone who also has decent leverage and legitimacy: Kang Youwei, who had spearheaded the "100 days" reform movement of 1898 only to be undercut by Dowager Empress Cixi and forced into exile. Either this is a deliberate choice, or one simply has to shorten Yuan's life expectancy by a mere 4 years, as he died in 1916 anyway, and Kang gets chosen by default. It works either way. Kang is a classically trained scholar-official but he was progressive enough to understand that China had lost its technological and geopolitical edge to the Western world; he had read the works of Western thinkers and social scientists, and, during his years in exile, had elaborated on his reform program of 1898. His conclusions were fairly close to those of the architects of Meiji: basically, modernization simultaneously supported and limited by a native ideological framework, in China's case an updated Confucianism.
So, in 1912 Kang has power handed to him by Sun. Where does it go from here? Considering that China's history in the first three-quarters of the 20th century is one of successive worst-case scenarii, its alternate fate can only be better.
This is how I see it. Kang, once in power, declares himself first emperor of, say, the Zhong dynasty (or some other suitably uplifting name). Indeed, it makes perfect sense for a scholar like him to use the time-honored way of symbolically ushering a new political era (progressive as he is, he nonetheless distrusts the foreign concept of "republic"; and, let's face it, at the time only the USA, France and Switzerland were republics anyway). He rallies both the disgruntled element of the old regime and Sun's followers and begins the lengthy process of structural reform. Within 2 years, WW1 breaks out in Europe. This is a golden opportunity for him to increase his legitimacy among the Chinese society at large by undoing one of the many humiliations forced upon China by western powers: with Germany at war against France, Britain and Russia, little force remains available for the Second Reich to defend its holding on the Shandong peninsula, and no reinforcements can be expected. So China reclaims the territory (that includes the city of Qingdao) with comparatively little trouble, and uses the opportunity to conveniently ally itself, verbally at least, with France and Britain--much like Japan does. This victory, however small, is the confidence-booster the country had been longing for at least since 1840, and is milked for all its worth by the regime's propaganda. China may also take advantage of the situation to have French and British advisers help it modernize its army, and import modern military equipment.
Then it's 1917 and the Bolsheviks take over in Russia. The eastern part of the country is in chaos, and Kang seizes the chance to re-conquer those territories in Eastern Siberia and Central Asia that Russia had confiscated from China in the mid-19th century, thereby restoring the sino-russian border as it had been defined by the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689. And just as, in Europe, the Baltic states were created as a buffer zone between the new USSR and its neighbors, China turns the whole eastern half of Siberia between the Ienisei river and the Bering Strait into a new country, Yakutia, which it treats essentially as a vassal state.
Modernization goes on during the 1920s; then the war with Japan takes place, but turns out in a rather similar way as in our timeline, with the efficient and well-equipped Japanese army occupying much of Eastern China. But the Chinese government, relocated in Chongqing, reacts to the occupation with a complete mobilization of social and economic forces, much like the USSR between 1941 and 1945, and thus reinforces its legitimacy further by the time the war ends. I think Japan would still attack Pearl Harbor, for identical reasons as in our timeline: because they were bogged down on the Chinese front and wanted to scare the USA away from involvement; because they wanted to put an end to the USA-enforced oil embargo; and because, let's face it, the Japanese chiefs of staff had a severe case of hubris.
The really interesting things, however, happen after 1945. The war in the Pacific probably ends a few months sooner, given the extra drain on Japanese energies caused by organized resistance in China. But then, there is no civil war between Nationalists and Communists (in fact, there is hardly a Communist presence in China at all), and no takeover by Mao Zedong. The Soviet influence in Asia stops on the banks of the Ienisei. Therefore, no partition of Korea, so no Korean war; no Communist guerilla in Vietnam, so none of the wars in Indochina; no Great Leap Forward and its 30 million victims; no Cultural Revolution; oh, and no Tiananmen massacre either, though that is almost incidental. Not that this alternate China would be a democracy; by 2004, the regime would probably have evolved into Singapore-style paternalist technocracy. But what's important is that a China that would be spared the madness of the Mao era would instead have been able to focus its strength on development at home and influence-building abroad. By now, much of East Asia would be under a latter-day version of the Ming- and Qing-era system of tutelage. Japan would still be part of the American sphere of influence, but those lands from Yakutia to Vietnam would once again take their political--and probably cultural--cues from a neo-imperial China.
A more detailed version is available in French, if anyone's interested.