This is certainly a subject that western people who live and work in Asian societies (and the converse group) continually think about and reflect on, from Korea to Japan to China to Southeast Asia. It completely influenced my thinking in the last paper that I wrote (albeit indirectly since the events took place 500 years ago), that took six months to write and just got published today:

Jon Fernquest (2006) Crucible of War: Burma and the Ming in the Tai Frontier Zone (1382-1454), SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, Vol. 3, No. 2, Winter 2006
http://web.soas.ac.uk/burma/4_2.htm

Now I have to master classical Chinese. I have a big pile of Ming Yunnan gazetteers sitting on my table.

Yes, yes. Some people have no sense of humor.

I think the description is only “good” in the sense that it captures public opinion which has been framed by two issues, hammered over and over gain by the media, “free trade” and “human rights”, until they become the gospel truth in peoples’ heads, with very little chance of being questioned, even in free-thinking academic environments. The truth of the matter is that Asian political reality is pretty autonomous from American public opinion.

American academic engagement with the issue of the Thai coup has truly been hilarious. I saw at a Stanford website, one political science professor, calling on President Bush to take immediate action, yet the seminar on the coup at Stanford attracted all of 15 people and Southeast Asia hardly figures at all in the Stanford curriculum or that of other American universities. It did in the immediate post-Vietnam era of course. Meanwhile, in Sonthi’s lecture at UCLA he was labelled a “journalist”. He actually owns a continually failing newspaper and is considered more of a political opportunist. He doesn’t even vote and only turned against his friend Thaksin after a falling out.

The story traditionally runs: the US will provide a country with free trading rights in the US until the country does something that it doesn’t like, such as crack down on protestors, invalidate democratic elections, invade a neighbor, at which time bank accounts in the US are frozen and sanctions are imposed, sometimes at great cost to the people of the country. Sanctions are a pretty blunt edged weapon that usually only further inflame and escalate the situation, rarely do they solve the problem. With over one trillion in US dollar reserves held by China, I guess that’s the thing to be worried about.

IMHO education in America should include more Asian languages and histories in their curriculum. Right now it is top-heavy with European languages and histories and tends to follow a pendulum of current political obsession.

The quick answer to the question in the Frog ‘Does learning Chinese bring about world peace?’ is ‘Yes’.

It is yes in the sense that learning of many other subjects, such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, engineering, medicine, hopefully history, and so on will contribute to world peace. It is said that the atom bomb brought peace to WW2. The atom bomb came about through learning of mathematics, physics, chemistry, engineering, several human languages and so on, so according to the question here, it can be said that these subjects brought about world peace.

Ask the same question in another way ‘Does learning Chinese not bring about world peace?’ The answer will also be in agreement with the question; in the same way that if the atom bomb brought us peace then it has brought us an uneasy peace.

Why is there an apparent contradiction in the answers depending on how the questions were phrased? There is really no contradiction because the way the said questions were phrased presupposed a Two-Value Logic argument: yes/no, true/false, zero/one, on/off, black/white, stop/go and so on; when in reality a Multi-Value Logic model is required to answer the said questions. That is to say there is no clear-cut yes/no, true/false, on/off etc to the question. Such models and how they operate and behave are well developed in mathematics and in subjects such as electrical engineering; students and teachers of history are well advised to seek the help of their colleagues in these subjects in order to further their understanding of how such questions should be addressed.

A better way to ask the question is ‘Would the learning of the Chinese language (by Americans as in the China Law blog question) help with world peace?’ The question could be extended to any language and not just Chinese. On the subject of bringing about world peace, language is a tool. Just as a hammer could be used to build or to destroy so can a language. If you want to listen to where the use of language could help to build world peace, then listen to the speeches of Kofi Annan. If you want an example where the use of language was to inflame and to defame, then no matter how many American knows how to say the below (from reply 1 to this blog) in Chinese it would not help build better relations between America and China:

1. a super-sized North Korea that happens to produce Happy Meal toys

That’s the best short description of our political and economic relationship I’ve ever seen.

Anyone who has such views, in relation to building peace between the US and China should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

The relationship between China and the USA has already been best summed up by former President Nixon. If history is a guide, then the USA has more to fear from Japan than China, as Japan is the only nation ever to have invaded US soil. The US should even fear a reprisal from the Vietnamese because of what they did to that country.

On a lighter note, if all else fails, America could once again export ‘Sex, drugs and Rock & Roll’ to try to bring about world peace, and see whether that would work.

“I agree that learning a language can be just part of imperialism, the whole Said thing, although I think even at that level it is A Good Thing. I’m not sure the Boxers are really the best example, though. The Boxer uprising took the form it did in part because foreigners (missionaries) did go to China and did learn (some) Chinese and did become part of Chinese society, and thus did get caught up in its problems. What I am worried about is a conflict more analogous to the First Opium War and related events, where neither side has a clue what the other is doing.”

Wasn’t the essence of the First Opium War about what sort of trade foreigners could and couldn’t do in China? Which would make it similar in a way to modern day trade conflict, i.e WTO, Foreign Direct Investment, exchange reserves, and relative competitiveness of currencies.

I couldn’t imagine actual military conflict like over Taiwan or the Ryukyu/South China Sea having any trade implications like the First Opium War except for ceasing it entirely.

IMHO Present-day trade conflicts are probably about as difficult for people to understand thoroughly, due to the complexity of the economic issues, as the Opium Wars were, due to transportation and communication barriers in the 19th century. Although no has good predictions of the future now, when something finally happens, surely everyone will say: “Of course, why didn’t I think of that?” Just like the recent Thai coup.

There’s also another conflict “where neither side has a clue what the other is doing” that is already happening right now, in a sense, along the China-Burma-Singapore Axis and the West, with western trade sanctions against Burma over the last 20 some odd years. It’s not an armed conflict, but a trade conflict that affects a state on China’s periphery whose trading rights with the US are held to much harsher standards than China probably because of China’s shear massive size and bargaining power. See article in London Review of Books:

“Some people still argue that trade and investment sanctions against the Burmese government are the only way to push the army leadership into talking with Aung San Suu Kyi. But the sanctions argument is deeply flawed…”

“…sanctions really only mean Western sanctions. In the years since 1988, ***Burmese trade with China*** and several other neighbouring countries has grown considerably, and tens of billions of dollars’ worth of natural gas have been discovered offshore. To believe that China would impose sanctions and cut off their access to Burma’s energy supplies in order to push the country towards democracy is naive. Sanctions going beyond those already in place would mean in effect increased influence for China; not something likely to lead to democratic change.”

“Third, imagine for a moment that somehow, miraculously, extremely tight sanctions were possible – involving China, India and Thailand – and that these brought the government to its knees, without a dollar or renminbi left to pay for vital imports. While there is a possibility that reasonable heads would prevail, there is also a very good chance that the army leadership would stay in their Führerbunker until the bitter end, as the country collapsed into anarchy around them…”
London Review of Books: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n03/than01_.html

China has not just trade but also Foreign Direct Investment and large scale real estate purchases. This has been happening for a long time. Burma often pops up in strange ways in Chinese contexts. There was a corruption scandal in Fujian. Where did they find the culprits? Holed up in a Yangon hotel room.

What I’d like to add, however, hopefully circles back toward the initial question of whether learning Chinese might contribute to world peace, or perhaps more appropriately either a passive acceptance or a knowledgeable understanding of China’s ‘rise’, from a younger angle…

Most comments above refer almost exclusively to adults, either during the Qing or today learning Chinese for a variety of reasons, including those currently at University. But, and particularly in Chicago, greater numbers of elementary school children are learning Chinese at an understandably simple level. Of course it’s not limited to Chicago Public Schools, but this is the realm with which I’m perhaps most familiary, but if these students continue their language (and culture) training aren’t they in a better position to promote the kind of peace between the U.S. and China suggested by the question? Notable, too, is that this primary school program, like the Confucius Institutes now spreading around the globe is heavily funded by — the Chinese government.