Dazzled by Asia

When will China lead the world? Don’t hold your breath.

By Joshua Kurlantzick  |  February 7, 2010

During his trip to Asia in November, Barack Obama seemed strangely mute. Unlike Bill Clinton, who criticized China’s human rights record in front of then-president Jiang Zemin, Obama largely avoided the topic of rights. In Singapore, despite pressure from human rights activists, the president deferred to pressure to not release a statement calling for the freeing of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. In Japan, the president worked valiantly to massage local sentiments, bowing deeply to Emperor Akihito – and drawing flak back in the United States from conservative critics for appearing weak.

More than any recent American president, Obama displayed deep deference to his Asian counterparts. He did so, in part, because, like many Americans, he has become convinced that this will be Asia’s century, and that the United States must begin to accommodate itself to this stark new geopolitical fact. A recent report by the US National Intelligence Council concluded that the world is witnessing the rise of “major global players similar to the advent of a united Germany in the 19th century and a powerful United States in the early 20th century…[and they] will transform the geopolitical landscape.” Major media outlets covered the president as if he was some kind of Dickensian vagrant, appealing to his increasingly powerful creditors in China for leniency. “Obama’s trip reveals a relationship with a strangely lopsided quality to it,” wrote longtime China specialist Jonathan Fenby, in one typical example of the coverage.

Over the past two years, some of the most important foreign policy thinkers have chronicled America’s decline, and argued that Asia is rising to preeminence. Parag Khanna’s “The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order” landed on the cover of The New York Times Magazine, while Fareed Zakaria’s “The Post-American World” became a bestseller. Meanwhile, the influential former Singaporean ambassador Kishore Mahbubani, who helped spark the “Asian values” debate of the 1990s, released “The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East.” Martin Jacques, a prominent columnist for The Guardian, took the idea one step further. In his book “When China Rules the World,” he contends that China’s rise will have a greater impact on the globe than the emergence of the United States as an international power in the 20th century.

Yet predictions of America’s decline are vastly overstated. Asia is indeed increasing its economic footprint in the world, but it still lags far behind the United States in military might, political and diplomatic influence, and even most measures of economic stability. Asia’s growth, the source of its current strength, also has significant limits – rising inequality, disastrous demographics, and growing unrest that could scupper development. Nationalism in Asia will prevent the region from developing into a European Union-like unified area for the foreseeable future, allowing regional conflicts to continue, and preventing Asia from speaking, more powerfully, with a unified voice.

The future of American power is a vital question. America’s foreign policy choices will be directed by judgments about the United States’ staying power, and how the United States, like Britain before it, should adapt to new powers emerging on the scene. If, as Jacques argues, America’s influence will naturally fade while Asia’s grows, Washington should adopt policies similar to Britain’s in the mid-20th century – ceding influence over large portions of the world while working to ensure that it remains an important player on a few key issues. American leaders would have to radically shift their style, adopting a new humility while selling the US public on a diminished global role, a major comedown for a superpower.

Conversely, if it is not to be Asia’s century, Washington’s strategy would be radically different. No concessions of fading glory: Though the United States might not be the only superpower, it could assume that, for the near future, it would remain the preeminent power, allowing Washington to dictate the terms of everything from climate change negotiations to global talks on nuclear weapons.

The idea of American power giving way to a rising Asia has been building for two decades. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, many in the United States predicted that Japan, which then seemed to have a hyper-charged economy, would rule the world. But Japan’s economy, built on a real estate bubble, imploded, and Japanese leaders never truly matched their economic power with political might; limited by a pacifist constitution, Japan did not fight in the first Gulf War and wound up merely paying the check for much of the battle.

But now China has assumed the mantle. Next year, China will become the world’s second-largest economy, according to a study by the China Policy Institute of the University of Nottingham. The global financial crisis has badly dented the Western model of liberal capitalism, leaving Asia as the world’s growth engine, and main banker – China alone holds some $800 billion in American treasury securities. The chief economist of the Asian Development Bank, a regional organization, declared in September, “Developing Asia is poised to lead the recovery from the worldwide slowdown.” China and India likely will grow by more than 7 percent this year, compared to minimal growth in the West, and other leading Asian nations, like Indonesia and Vietnam, are also predicted to post high growth rates in 2010.

At the recent Copenhagen climate summit, two of Asia’s most powerful leaders, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, showed this newfound confidence. Meeting in a back room, they pointedly tried to exclude Obama from their negotiations. Obama ultimately had to burst into the closed-meeting like a kind of diplomatic party crasher.

Asia’s new swagger has caused a crisis of confidence in the West that makes the fear of Japan in the late 1980s look like a mild tremor. In the late 1980s it was only one Asian giant growing powerful, and at that time Europe, newly united after communism, looked boldly to the future. Today many of Asia’s nations are getting stronger, and not one major Western nation can be confident about its future growth.

The belief in Asia’s rise has sparked this mini-industry of books on the Eastern renaissance. In the most apocalyptic of the bunch, such as Jacques’, the authors focus on how Asia’s powers, from China to Malaysia to Singapore, are taking the final step from rising power to global hegemon – using state-directed economic policies to dominate industry after industry, while delivering what Mahbubani calls “modernity” – good governance, growth, and the rule of law, without the messiness of Western liberal democracy. In fact, Mahbubani suggests that this “modernity” ultimately may be more appealing than Western democracy, which has not helped produce growth in Africa, Latin America, or many other democratic regions. Other authors, like Zakaria, focus more on American decline.

Yet there are many good reasons to think that Asia’s rise may turn out to be an illusion. Asia’s growth has built-in stumbling blocks. Demographics, for one. Because of its One Child policy, China’s population is aging rapidly: According to one comprehensive study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, by 2040 China will have at least 400 million elderly, most of whom will have no retirement pensions. This aging poses a severe challenge, since China may not have enough working-age people to support its elderly. In other words, says CSIS, China will grow old before it grows rich, a disastrous combination. Other Asian powers also are aging rapidly – Japan’s population likely will fall from around 130 million today to 90 million in 2055 – or, due to traditional preferences for male children, have a dangerous sex imbalance in which there are far more men than women. This is a scenario likely to destabilize a country, since, at other periods in history when many men could not marry, the unmarried hordes turned to crime or political violence.

Looming political unrest also threatens Asia’s rise. China alone already faces some 90,000 annual “mass incidents,” the name given by Chinese security forces to protests, and this number is likely to grow as income inequality soars and environmental problems add more stresses to society. India, too, faces severe threats. The Naxalites, Maoists operating mostly in eastern India who attack large landowners, businesses, police, and other local officials, have caused the death of at least 800 people last year alone, and have destabilized large portions of eastern India. Other Asian states, too, face looming unrest, from the ongoing insurgency in southern Thailand to the rising racial and religious conflicts in Malaysia.

Also, despite predictions that Asia will eventually integrate, building a European Union-like organization, the region actually seems to be coming apart. Asia has not tamed the menace of nationalism, which Europe and North America largely have put in the past, albeit after two bloody world wars. Even as China and India have cooperated on climate change, on many other issues they are at each other’s throats. Over the past year, both countries have fortified their common border in the Himalayas, claiming overlapping pieces of territory. Meanwhile, Japan is constantly seeking ways to blunt Chinese military power. People in many Asian nations have extremely negative views of their neighbors – even though they maintain positive images of the United States.

More broadly, few Asian leaders have any idea what values, ideas, or histories should hold Asia together. “The argument of an Asian century is fundamentally flawed in that Asia is a Western concept, one that is not widely agreed upon [in Asia],” says Devin Stewart, a Japan specialist at the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs.

Even as Asia’s miracle seems, on closer inspection, less miraculous, America’s decline has been vastly overstated. To become a global superpower requires economic, political, and military might, and on the last two counts, the United States remains leagues ahead of any Asian rival. Despite boosting defense budgets by 20 percent annually, Asian powers like India, China, or Indonesia will not rival the US military for decades, if ever – only the Pentagon could launch a war in a place like Afghanistan, so far from its homeland. When a tsunami struck South and Southeast Asia five years ago, the region’s nations, including Indonesia, Thailand, and India, had to rely on the US Navy to coordinate relief efforts.

America also has other advantages that will be nearly impossible to remove. With Asian nations still squabbling amongst themselves, many look to the United States as a neutral power broker, a role America plays around the world. German writer and scholar Joseph Joffe calls the United States today the “default power”: No one in the world trusts anyone else to play the global hegemon, so it still falls to Washington.

Even in the economic realm, the United States remains strong. As Zakaria admits, the United States accounted for 32 percent of global output in 1913, 26 percent in 1960, and 26 percent in 2007, remarkably consistent figures. The United States remains atop nearly every ranking of economies according to openness and innovation. While Asia’s centrally planned economies can build infrastructure without worrying about public opposition – China has built impressive networks of airports and highways – they are less successful at nurturing world-beating companies, which thrive on risk-taking and hands-off government. Compared to Intel, Google, or Apple, China’s major companies still are state-linked behemoths that do little innovation of their own. The leading corporations in most other Asian nations (with the exception of Japan and South Korea) also are either giant state-linked firms or trading companies that invest little in innovation. And censorship or tight government controls alienate the most innovative firms – Google is now threatening to pull out of China entirely.

As Asia throws up barriers to immigration, in the United States immigration helps ensure long-term economic vitality. Chinese and Indian immigrants accounted for almost one-quarter of all companies in Silicon Valley, according to research by AnnaLee Saxenian at the University of California-Berkeley. According to the most comprehensive global ranking of universities, compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, American schools, powered by immigrants and flush with cash, dominate the top 100, with Harvard ranked first. Asia has no schools in the top 10.

Most important, the United States is a champion of an idea that has global appeal, and Asia is not. During the opposition protests in Iran, demonstrators look to the United States, not China or Indonesia or even India, to make a statement. In a reversal of the Iranian regime’s rhetoric, some protestors even chant “Death to China” because of Beijing’s support for the repressive government in Tehran. As long as protestors in places like Iran, or Burma or Ukraine, call out for the American president, and not China’s leader or India’s prime minister, the United States will remain the preeminent power.

To be the global hegemon requires military, economic, and political might, but it also means offering a vision for the world. As Mahbubani admits, during Britain’s imperial period, elites in places like Malaya, India, or the Caribbean wanted to study in England, or read British authors and philosophers, because they believed that the ideas Britain had imparted – the rule of law, the Westminster political system, an idea of fair play, a meritocratic civil service, evidence-based scientific exploration – had merit for the entire world. Even men and women who, ultimately, became some of the biggest thorns in Britain’s side, like Jawarhal Nehru, cherished their British studies and their links to British culture.

So, too, since World War II the United States has been, for many foreign publics, the nation looked up to in this way. Even at the worst moments, such as the period after 9/11 in which the Bush administration created the prison at Guantanamo Bay and allowed torture and other questionable tactics, I have rarely met anyone, in any country, who wanted to move to China, or India, or even Japan, rather than the United States. Foreigners may want to spend a few years in China or India or Indonesia, to see the dynamism of these places, but few, if any, have plans to become Chinese, Indian, or Indonesian citizens. Perhaps one day China or Indonesia or India will draw these migrants, who would come seeking the same dreams and openness as they do today in the United States. But it won’t be soon – and it might not even be this century.

Joshua Kurlantzick is a Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/02/07/dazzled_by_asia/

カテゴリー:China , asia, China, obama

NY Times cites Irrawaddy (with link)

January 9, 2010

Myanmar Is Reported to Sentence 2 to Death

By THOMAS FULLER

BANGKOK — A court in Myanmar has sentenced a retired military officer and a Foreign Ministry official to death for leaking details of a secret trip to North Korea by top government officials, according to news reports that cited lawyers in the country.

There has been no mention in the official media in military-run Myanmar of the court decision, which was said to have been handed down Thursday and was first reported on The Irrawaddy, an exile news Web site based in Thailand that covers Myanmar.

Another Foreign Ministry official received 15 years in prison for a related offense, according to The Irrawaddy and Reuters.

The case appeared to highlight the repressive government’s concern about a number of leaks and lapses in recent years, including the publication of minutes of high-level military meetings and photographs of extensive tunnel systems reportedly built by North Korean engineers in the country’s administrative capital, Naypyidaw.

“Clearly there are leaks,” said Win Min, an expert on Myanmar at Payap University in Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand. “It’s a sign that there are a lot of people even within the military who do not like the government, and they’re trying to protest in different ways.”

The three men sentenced Thursday were reported to have been arrested in July after photographs and documents of a visit to North Korea by Gen. Thura Shwe Mann, the third-highest-ranking officer in the junta, appeared on Web sites run by critics of the government living abroad.

The extensive collection of photographs showed General Shwe Mann visiting military facilities, including a factory for Scud missiles.

North Korea has a nuclear program, and experts believe that Myanmar, formerly called Burma, has been seeking to establish a nuclear program as well. They say, however, that the government lacks the technical ability to develop a sophisticated program.

“It is not clear if North Korea is involved in any nuclear activities in Burma,” said Bertil Lintner, who has written extensively on both Myanmar and North Korea. “What we know with certainty is that North Korea and Burma have established a secret alliance and that North Korea has delivered military-related equipment to Burma.”

Reuters identified the two men sentenced to death as Maj. Win Naing Kyaw, who is retired, and U Thura Kyaw, a Foreign Ministry clerk; they were charged under a broad law that covers threats to national security. The third person sentenced was identified by The Irrawaddy as U Pyan Sein, who was convicted of violating an act covering the use of illegal electronic devices.

The sentences reflect what many experts describe as the paranoia of Myanmar’s senior general, Than Shwe, who appears continually concerned about threats to his power. Five years ago he moved the seat of government from Yangon, formerly Rangoon, to Naypyidaw, a more remote location, in part to defend against potential outside attacks.

General Than Shwe recently confirmed that elections would take place this year — the first in two decades. The death sentences may be a warning to potential dissenters, analysts said.

“He doesn’t have a choice — he has to call elections because he already announced they would go ahead,” Mr. Win Min said. “But he is still worried about threats from within.”

Death sentences in Myanmar are often commuted to life in prison, but the court decision remains a potent reminder for those thinking of stepping out of line, Mr. Win Min said.

カテゴリー:Burma

NY Times Archive — Burmese Revolt Seen as Spontaneous

An interesting report on the situation in Burma from the week before the coup that installed the current regime in power. Note the prominence of Japan as the key international player, and the absence of Aung San Suu Kyi as the leader of the opposition.

Burmese Revolt See as Spontaneous

By ROBERT PEAR, Special to the New York Times

Published: Saturday, September 10, 1988

Experts on Burma portray the upheaval there as a spontaneous revolution by people craving democracy, and they say the only mystery is why it took the Burmese so long to rise up against an oppressive, authoritarian Government.

Prof. Josef Silverstein at Rutgers University, one of the few Burma scholars in the United States, said: ”This is one of the few examples of a pure popular revolution that we are seeing anywhere in the world. There are no leaders, there is no organization and there is no international movement outside the country pushing the people one way or the other.”

”What surprised me is that the Burmese Government has held on for so long, that this upheaval did not come at an earlier point,” said Mr. Silverstein, a political scientist. U.S. Evacuates Dependents American experts assessed the situation there as the United States today evacuated 46 relatives of American Embassy employees in the midst of growing instability. They flew from Rangoon, the capital, to Bangkok, Thailand, on a commercial airliner. State Department officials said that another group of about the same size would leave Burma on Saturday. Before the evacuation, there were about 150 American embassy personnel and dependents in Burma.

Charles E. Redman, the State Department spokesman, said, ”I’m not sure that there are any ministries functioning these days” in Rangoon. Nevertheless, he said, the American Embassy will continue to operate so it can send information to Washington.

Demonstrators in cities and towns across Burma, including many students, are demanding the immediate resignation of the president, U Maung Maung, and the establishment of an interim government to pave the way for multiparty democracy. Mr. Maung Maung is the leader of the country’s only political party, the Burma Socialist Program Party, which seized power in a military coup and has ruled for 26 years.

John H. Badgley, curator of the Southeast Asia collection at the Cornell University library, said Mr. Maung Maung would be lucky to retain power for another week. Government ‘Basically Defunct’

”The Government is basically defunct,” Mr. Badgley said. ”There is a genuine collapse of government as we know it.” In Mandalay, he said, a committee of students and monks under 30 years old is maintaining order and performing other functions of government.

Many people, including employees of Burmese embassies in Singapore, Japan and other countries, have resigned from the Socialist Program Party. Information reaching the State Department here indicates that scores of Burmese Government employees and at least several hundred members of the Burmese armed forces joined anti-Government demonstrations in Rangoon this week.

Mr. Badgley visited Burma last December and again in January and February of this year. ”I got a sense of a very short fuse on a stick of dynamite, and I was surprised that it had not exploded long ago,” Mr. Badgley said in an interview.

U Ne Win, who ruled Burma from 1962 until his resignation in July of this year, led the country into isolation and economic ruin by following what he described as ”the Burmese road to socialism.” Mr. Badgley said this was ”an autarkic ideology patterned after the economic systems of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland.” Stalin’s ‘Ideological Framework’

It became clear as early as 1963 that Mr. Ne Win did not want to bring Burma into the mainstream of the international economy through trade and development projects with other countries, Mr. Badgley said. For the last quarter-century, he said, ”Burma’s leaders have been anti-Communist, but they viewed the economy with the ideological framework of Stalin.”

American experts on Burma said they believed some type of provisional government would soon emerge, probably with political and financial backing from Japan.

”Key Japanese officials want to stabilize the situation in Burma, hope Burma will open its markets to foreign investment and have indicated a preference that U Tin Oo should emerge as the leader of Burma,” Mr. Badgley said. ”In foreign policy, this may be the most aggressive political maneuver Japan has engaged in since World War II.” Mr. Tin Oo was chief of staff of the Burmese Army when he was removed by Mr. Ne Win in 1976.

Several Burmese opposition leaders said today that they had established a provisional government under the leadership of U Nu, who was ousted in the military coup 26 years ago, but diplomats in Rangoon said it was not immediately clear whether the maneuver would succeed.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said today that President Reagan should take immediate action to withhold American aid from the Government of Mr. Maung Maung.

”At such time as a democratic government is established, we should release the monies and offer increased support as well,” said Mr. Moynihan, a New York Democrat.

The United States gave Burma almost $14.3 million in aid last year: $7 million for economic development, $7 million for anti-drug programs and $260,000 for military training. Moynihan Urges Aid Cutoff

Mr. Moynihan said the United States should not provide any more money to the Burmese Army because it had ”murdered peaceful demonstrators.” He also said the Burmese armed forces ”use our assistance” to spray carcinogenic herbicides on members of ethnic minority groups in opium-growing areas of northern Burma.

Diplomats at the Burmese Embassy here did not return telephone calls asking for comment on Mr. Moynihan’s charges.

Discontent has been spreading in Burma for years. But Mr. Silverstein said the situation became intolerable for the Burmese people last September, when the Government took currency measures that had the effect of reducing the value of assets that many people held in cash by 70 to 80 percent.

The Government said the step was designed to curb narcotics traffic and the black market in Burma. But it set off protests by students, who have been in the forefront of political activity since they fought for Burma’s independence from Britain in the late 1940’s.

カテゴリー:Burma

“If China remains culturally closed, the Chinese Century will never come to pass.”

China’s Race Problem
Reihan Salam, 11.09.09, 12:00 AM ET

Is racism universal? Since the end of the colonial era, the rising powers of the developing world have been quick to condemn Western racism. Ethnocentrism and color prejudice can be found in virtually all human societies, going back centuries if not thousands of years.

Yet racism as we know it first emerged in the late 17th century. While slavery is an ancient institution, the racial slavery that took hold in the Americas in that era was new and very unusual. In the English-speaking colonies of North America, the violent subjugation of enslaved Africans created a perverse solidarity among people of European descent, who were united by their place at the top of a racial hierarchy. Racial boundaries that had once been fairly fluid became increasingly rigid. Because the egalitarian ideals of the Declaration of Independence clearly contradicted the still profitable and pervasive practice of racial slavery, it was vitally important that the enslaved be regarded as subhuman, lest the whole corrupt edifice completely collapse.

Even now, Americans are dealing with the scarring effects of this monstrous ideological project. It is also true, however, that Americans have been fairly forthright in confronting this legacy. The same can’t be said of the new racism that is taking shape in Asia.

As the late political scientist Samuel Huntington argued, “modernization” and “westernization” aren’t the same thing. Economic progress in East Asia and South Asia and Latin America doesn’t mean that these regions will become carbon copies of Europe and America. But history has a tendency to rhyme. After decades of breakneck economic growth, South Korea has joined the ranks of the world’s richest and most powerful states. As such, a growth model built on cheap labor has been transformed by the emergence of a large and expensive welfare state, and also labor market rigidities that have led to high youth unemployment rates.

Like the rich nations of the West, South Korea also has a low birthrate and, as a direct result, a rapidly aging population. This begs the question of whether South Korea should embrace large-scale immigration. Faced with a similar dilemma, West Germany signed a series of labor agreements in the 1950s and 1960s that led a large influx of guest workers. The idea was that these guest workers would come for a time and then return home. That, of course, is not how things turned out. Over 50 years since the beginning of the guest worker initiative, Germany is still struggling to deal with its growing population of ethnic outsiders. South Korea might have an even harder time.

In a fascinating article published in The New York Times last week, Choe Sang-Hun described the intense discrimination faced by a small but growing number of migrant workers from impoverished Asian countries. A number of Koreans have expressed serious concerns about the end of the country’s ethnic homogeneity, arguing that a larger influx of migrant workers would lead to a rise in the level of crime and social tension.

These anxieties have the air of self-fulfilling prophecy. Given that many if not most Koreans prize ethnic homogeneity, migrant workers will remain on the margins of society. This, in turn, will fuel alienation and resentment among this class of permanent second-class citizens. And so South Korea’s major cities could very well see the rise of segregated ethnic slums. It’s worth noting that anti-foreigner sentiments are flourishing in a time when South Korea is experiencing rapid economic change, including a new social and economic inequality. Just as racism provided the basis for solidarity among whites in U.S. history, it could be playing a similar role in South Korea.

Next to China’s race problem, South Korea’s pales in significance. Earlier this year, the Center for Strategic and International Studies issued a report that found that the current ratio of 16 retirees to 100 workers is set to double in the next 15 years. In absolute terms, the number of over-65s will go from 166 million to 342 million. Someone will have to care for them, and though China has relaxed its profoundly wrongheaded one-child policy, the reform has come too late to arrest rapid aging.

Moreover, as the political scientists Valerie Hudson and Andrea van den Boer noted in their book Bare Branches, China also has tens of millions of so-called “surplus males” thanks to a strong cultural preference for male children. This means that large numbers of Chinese men will have a difficult time finding wives in the near future. One obvious way for the China of 2025 to address this dilemma would be to embrace mass immigration. Because China remains a poor and populous country, the idea that it will become a magnet for immigrants seems faintly ridiculous, not least because millions of Chinese are desperate to emigrate. Of course, the same was once true of Ireland, which is now one of Europe’s most diverse countries.

But like South Korea–and, for that matter, Japan–China is not terribly hospitable to ethnic outsiders, including members of non-Han minorities native to China. Observers tend to overstate the level of ethnic homogeneity in China, not least because the Han category masks tremendous cultural diversity. “Hanness” is as broad and contingent a category as “whiteness.”

But as Frank Dikötter of the University of Hong Kong argued in his brilliant 1992 book The Discourse of Race in Modern China, traditional notions about culturally inferior “barbarians” intermingled with Western forms of scientific racism to form a distinctively Chinese racial consciousness in the 20th century. The “yellows” were locked in a struggle with their equals, the “whites”–and both were superior to the “blacks,” “browns” and “reds.” The dislike and distrust of Europeans was always mixed with envy and admiration. The disdain for dark-skinned foreigners, in contrast, was and remains relatively uncomplicated. Maoist China railed against Western imperialism, and saw itself as a leader of the global proletariat of Africans and Asians.

Now, as China emerges as an economic and cultural superpower, those notions of Third World solidarity, always skin deep, seem to have vanished. It is thus hard to imagine China welcoming millions of hard-working Nigerians and Bangladeshis with open arms. This could change over the next couple of decades as China’s labor shortage grows acute. I wouldn’t bet on it.

If China remains culturally closed, the Chinese Century will never come to pass. Instead, the United States–a country that has struggled with race and racism for centuries, and in the process has become more culturally open and resilient–will dominate this century as it did the last.

カテゴリー:China

Han Shan, The Cold Mountain Poems

HAN SHAN, THE COLD MOUNTAIN POEMS, tr. Gary Snyder

Preface to the Poems of Han-shan

by Lu Ch’iu-yin, Governor of T’ai Prefecture

No one knows what sort of man Han-shan was. There are old people who knew him: they say he was a poor man, a crazy character. He lived alone seventy Li (23 miles) west of the T’ang-hsing district of T’ien-t’ai at a place called Cold Mountain. He often went down to the Kuo-ch’ing Temple. At the temple lived Shih’te, who ran the dining hall. He sometimes saved leftovers for Han-shan, hiding them in a bamboo tube. Han-shan would come and carry it away; walking the long veranda, calling and shouting happily, talking and laughing to himself. Once the monks followed him, caught him, and made fun of him. He stopped, clapped his hands, and laughed greatly – Ha Ha! – for a spell, then left.

He looked like a tramp. His body and face were old and beat. Yet in every word he breathed was a meaning in line with the subtle principles of things, if only you thought of it deeply. Everything he said had a feeling of Tao in it, profound and arcane secrets. His hat was made of birch bark, his clothes were ragged and worn out, and his shoes were wood. Thus men who have made it hide their tracks: unifying categories and interpenetrating things. On that long veranda calling and singing, in his words of reply Ha Ha! – the three worlds revolve. Sometimes at the villages and farms he laughed and sang with cowherds. Sometimes intractable, sometimes agreeable, his nature was happy of itself. But how could a person without wisdom recognize him?

I once received a position as a petty official at Tan-ch’iu. The day I was to depart, I had a bad headache. I called a doctor, but he couldn’t cure me and it turned worse. Then I met a Buddhist Master named Feng-kan, who said he came from the Kuo-ch’ing Temple of T’ien-t’ai especially to visit me. I asked him to rescue me from my illness. He smiled and said, “The four realms are within the body; sickness comes from illusion. If you want to do away with it, you need pure water.” Someone brought water to the Master, who spat it on me. In a moment the disease was rooted out. He then said, “There are miasmas in T’ai prefecture, when you get there take care of yourself.” I asked him, “Are there any wise men in your area I could look on as Master?” He replied, “When you see him you don’t recognize him, when you recognize him you don’t see him. If you want to see him, you can’t rely on appearances. Then you can see him. Han-shan is a Manjusri (one who has attained enlightenment and, in a future incarnation, will become Buddha) hiding at Kuo-sh’ing. Shih-te is a Samantabbhadra (Bodhisattva of love). They look like poor fellows and act like madmen. Sometimes they go and sometimes they come. They work in the kitchen of the Kuo-ch’ing dining hall, tending the fire.” When he was done talking he left.

I proceeded on my journey to my job at T’ai-chou, not forgetting this affair. I arrived three days later, immediately went to a temple, and questioned an old monk. It seemed the Master had been truthful, so I gave orders to see if T’ang-hsing really contained a Han-shan and Shih-te. The District Magistrate reported to me: “In this district, seventy li west, is a mountain. People used to see a poor man heading from the cliffs to stay awhile at Kuo-ch’ing. At the temple dining hall is a similar man named Shih-te.” I made a bow, and went to Kuo-ch’ing. I asked some people around the temple, “There used to be a Master named Feng-kan here, Where is his place? And where can Han-shan and Shih-te be seen?” A monk named T’ao-ch’iao spoke up: “Feng-kan the Master lived in back of the library. Nowadays nobody lives there; a tiger often comes and roars. Han-shan and Shih-te are in the kitchen.” The monk led me to Feng-kan’s yard. Then he opened the gate: all we saw was tiger tracks. I asked the monks Tao-ch’iao and Pao-te, “When Feng-kan was here, what was his job?” The monks said, :He pounded and hulled rice. At night he sang songs to amuse himself.” Then we went to the kitchen, before the stoves. Two men were facing the fire, laughing loudly. I made a bow. The two shouted Ho! at me. They struck their hands together -Ha Ha! – great laughter. They shouted. Then they said, “Feng-kan – loose-tounged, loose-tounged. You don’t recognize Amitabha, (the Bodhisattva of mercy) why be courteous to us?” The monks gathered round, surprise going through them. “”Why has a big official bowed to a pair of clowns?” The two men grabbed hands and ran out of the temple. I cried, “Catch them” – but they quickly ran away. Han-shan returned to Cold Mountain. I asked the monks, “Would those two men be willing to settle down at this temple?” I ordered them to find a house, and to ask Han-shan and Shih-te to return and live at the temple.

I returned to my district and had two sets of clean clothes made, got some incense and such, and sent it to the temple – but the two men didn’t return. So I had it carried up to Cold Mountain. The packer saw Han-shan, who called in a loud voice, “Thief! Thief!” and retreated into a mountain cave. He shouted, “I tell you man, strive hard” – entered the cave and was gone. The cave closed of itself and they weren’t able to follow. Shih-te’s tracks disappeared completely..

I ordered Tao-ch’iao and the other monks to find out how they had lived, to hunt up the poems written on bamboo, wood, stones, and cliffs – and also to collect those written on the walls of people’s houses. There were more than three hundred. On the wall of the Earth-shrine Shih-te had written some gatha (Buddhist verse or song). It was all brought together and made into a book.

I hold to the principle of the Buddha-mind. It is fortunate to meet with men of Tao, so I have made this eulogy.

THE COLD MOUNTAIN POEMS, tr. Gary Snyder

1

The path to Han-shan’s place is laughable,

A path, but no sign of cart or horse.

Converging gorges – hard to trace their twists

Jumbled cliffs – unbelievably rugged.

A thousand grasses bend with dew,

A hill of pines hums in the wind.

And now I’ve lost the shortcut home,

Body asking shadow, how do you keep up?

2

In a tangle of cliffs, I chose a place -

Bird paths, but no trails for me.

What’s beyond the yard?

White clouds clinging to vague rocks.

Now I’ve lived here – how many years -

Again and again, spring and winter pass.

Go tell families with silverware and cars

“What’s the use of all that noise and money?”

3

In the mountains it’s cold.

Always been cold, not just this year.

Jagged scarps forever snowed in

Woods in the dark ravines spitting mist.

Grass is still sprouting at the end of June,

Leaves begin to fall in early August.

And here I am, high on mountains,

Peering and peering, but I can’t even see the sky.

4

I spur my horse through the wrecked town,

The wrecked town sinks my spirit.

High, low, old parapet walls

Big, small, the aging tombs.

I waggle my shadow, all alone;

Not even the crack of a shrinking coffin is heard.

I pity all those ordinary bones,

In the books of the Immortals they are nameless.

5

I wanted a good place to settle:

Cold Mountain would be safe.

Light wind in a hidden pine -

Listen close – the sound gets better.

Under it a gray haired man

Mumbles along reading Huang and Lao.

For ten years I havn’t gone back home

I’ve even forgotten the way by which I came.

6

Men ask the way to Cold Mountain

Cold Mountain: there’s no through trail.

In summer, ice doesn’t melt

The rising sun blurs in swirling fog.

How did I make it?

My heart’s not the same as yours.

If your heart was like mine

You’d get it and be right here.

7

I settled at Cold Mountain long ago,

Already it seems like years and years.

Freely drifting, I prowl the woods and streams

And linger watching things themselves.

Men don’t get this far into the mountains,

White clouds gather and billow.

Thin grass does for a mattress,

The blue sky makes a good quilt.

Happy with a stone under head

Let heaven and earth go about their changes.

8

Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,

The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:

The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,

The wide creek, the mist blurred grass.

The moss is slippery, though there’s been no rain

The pine sings, but there’s no wind.

Who can leap the word’s ties

And sit with me among the white clouds?

9

Rough and dark – the Cold Mountain trail,

Sharp cobbles – the icy creek bank.

Yammering, chirping – always birds

Bleak, alone, not even a lone hiker.

Whip, whip – the wind slaps my face

Whirled and tumbled – snow piles on my back.

Morning after morning I don’t see the sun

Year after year, not a sign of spring.

10

I have lived at Cold Mountain

These thirty long years.

Yesterday I called on friends and family:

More than half had gone to the Yellow Springs.

Slowly consumed, like fire down a candle;

Forever flowing, like a passing river.

Now, morning, I face my lone shadow:

Suddenly my eyes are bleared with tears.

11

Spring water in the green creek is clear

Moonlight on Cold Mountain is white

Silent knowledge – the spirit is enlightened of itself

Contemplate the void: this world exceeds stillness.

12

In my first thirty years of life

I roamed hundreds and thousands of miles.

Walked by rivers through deep green grass

Entered cities of boiling red dust.

Tried drugs, but couldn’t make Immortal;

Read books and wrote poems on history.

Today I’m back at Cold Mountain:

I’ll sleep by the creek and purify my ears.

13

I can’t stand these bird songs

Now I’ll go rest in my straw shack.

The cherry flowers are scarlet

The willow shoots up feathery.

Morning sun drives over blue peaks

Bright clouds wash green ponds.

Who knows that I’m out of the dusty world

Climbing the southern slope of Cold Mountain?

14

Cold Mountain has many hidden wonders,

People who climb here are always getting scared.

When the moon shines, water sparkles clear

When the wind blows, grass swishes and rattles.

On the bare plum, flowers of snow

On the dead stump, leaves of mist.

At the touch of rain it all turns fresh and live

At the wrong season you can’t ford the creeks.

15

There’s a naked bug at Cold Mountain

With a white body and a black head.

His hand holds two book scrolls,

One the Way and one its Power.

His shack’s got no pots or oven,

He goes for a long walk with his shirt and pants askew.

But he always carries the sword of wisdom:

He means to cut down sensless craving.

16

Cold Mountain is a house

Without beans or walls.

The six doors left and right are open

The hall is sky blue.

The rooms all vacant and vague

The east wall beats on the west wall

At the center nothing.

Borrowers don’t bother me

In the cold I build a little fire

When I’m hungry I boil up some greens.

I’ve got no use for the kulak

With hs big barn and pasture -

He just sets uo a prison for himself.

Once in he can’t get out.

Think it over -

You know it might happen to you.

17

If I hide out at Cold Mountain

Living off mountain plants and berries -

All my lifetime, why worry?

One follows his karma through.

Days and months slip by like water,

Time is like sparks knocked off flint.

Go ahead and let the world change -

I’m happy to sit among these cliffs.

18

Most T’ien-t’ai men

Don’t know Han-shan

Don’t know his real thought

And call it silly talk.

19

Once at Cold Mountain, troubles cease -

No more tangled, hung up mind.

I idly scribble poems on the rock cliff,

Taking whatever comes, like a drifting boat.

20

Some critic tried to put me down -

“Your poems lack the Basic Truth of Tao.”

And I recall the old timers

Who were poor and didn’t care.

I have to laugh at him,

He misses the point entirely,

Men like that

Ought to stick to making money.

21

I’ve lived at Cold Mountain – how many autumns.

Alone, I hum a song – utterly without regret.

Hungry, I eat one grain of Immortal medicine

Mind solid and sharp; leaning on a stone.

22

On top of Cold Mountain the lone round moon

Lights the whole clear cloudless sky.

Honor this priceless natural treasure

Concealed in five shadows, sunk deep in the flesh.

23

My home was at Cold Mountain from the start,

Rambling among the hills, far from trouble.

Gone, and a million things leave no trace

Loosed, and it flows through galaxies

A fountain of light, into the very mind -

Not a thing, and yet it appears before me:

Now I know the pearl of the Buddha nature

Know its use: a boundless perfect sphere.

24

When men see Han-shan

They all say he’s crazy

And not much to look at -

Dressed in rags and hides.

They don’t get what I say

And I don’t talk their language.

All I can say to those I meet:

“Try and make it to Cold Mountain.”

Han Shan, The Cold Mountain Poems

カテゴリー:Uncategorized

Mountain Songs

Bone-chilling Snow

Hānshān Déqīng 1564-1623 bone-chilling snow on a thousand peaks wildraging wind from ten thousand hollows when I first awake deep beneath my blanket I forget my body is in a silent world

Hánwēi Rùgǔ

Hánwēi rùgù qiān fēng xuě Nùqì chòng rén wàn qiào fēng Nàbèi méngtóu chū tóng xǐng Bùzhī shēn zài jìliáo zhōng

Translated by Red Pine

カテゴリー:Buddhism, China

Cold War in the Arctic

Interesting article about the future of the Far North: “Cold War in the Arctic“.

カテゴリー:Canada

Latest from Librivox

Nature, by Ralph Walso Emerson

Short Mystery Story Collection 6

Two Poe Tales

Short Mystery Story Collection 006

カテゴリー:Online Findings

The “Japanization” of Colonial Hokkaidō

An interesting essay from Japan Focus on how Hokkaido became, in the late 19th century, part of modern Japan:

Though Hokkaidō may seem a natural part of Japan, manacled to Tokyo as it is by law, by language, by economics, and by the 54 kilometer undersea Seikan Tunnel, Hokkaidō was not always Japan. Hokkaidō was not always Hokkaidō. Hokkaidō was modern Japan’s first foreign conquest; its first colony in a deliberate imperial trajectory begun in 1869, concluded in 1945 and eventually encompassing vast tracts of East and Southeast Asia.

カテゴリー:Japan

Behind Closed Doors at “Chilston II”

This is an analysis I wrote about the Burmese sanctions vs. engagement debate nearly a decade ago. It’s disturbing how little progress has been made since then. In fact, there has been none at all. I looked it up on The Irrawaddy website this morning because I vaguely recalled writing something about former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid’s desire to meet Aung San Suu Kyi. I thought about it because I remembered slyly slipping in an anti-sanctions message, suggesting that Wahid, who was regarded as pretty unpredictable, might advise Suu Kyi to drop her calls for sanctions as way to throw the junta off balance. This is the part I was looking for:

It is intriguing to imagine what advice Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid, who during a recent state visit to Burma expressed a desire to meet with NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi, might have offered to his sister in the struggle for Asian democracy if they had had a chance to speak. No doubt Wahid, who has plenty of experience dealing with overweening generals, and whose presidency to date has been characterized by a decidedly unpredictable style of leadership, would have offered some highly original counsel. With support for sanctions in doubt, Wahid might have recommended that the NLD make a preemptive strike: withdraw the call for sanctions, and watch the regime scramble to think up excuses for refusing to speak with the opposition. If the SPDC failed to make a comparable concession, the result, ironically, could be a broader consensus in favor of tough action against the regime, as it becomes glaringly apparent that the generals are solely responsible for the country’s political impasse. Far from being tantamount to throwing in the towel, Wahid might argue, such a move could be seen as throwing down a gauntlet that the regime could not refuse to pick up.

Of course, none of this has come to pass, and Burma remains as desperate as ever for change.

カテゴリー:Burma