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Seven Things You Can’t Say About China

Eugene Kriegsmann
@EugeneKriegsmann
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I just finished this book by Tom Cotton this morning. It is short but leaves very little unsaid. "If brevity be the soul of wit...." Cotton does a terrific job of pointing out exactly how dangerous our most formidable enemy really is. The obvious fact to anyone who has any awareness of the differences between Western and Eastern thought processes is that in the East, they tend to think long term, really long term. The West is far more obsessed with the present and short-term goals.

One need only remember that for Muslims, the Crusades are still a very active issue. Cotton points out in his discussion on fentanyl that for the Chinese, what they are doing in distributing this potent poison to the West is payback for the opium trade and its consequent war. This is only one example of how their long-term thinking differs from how we perceive the competition for hegemony. There are many, and the more you read, the scarier it gets.

I think this book should be read, and possibly reread, by every American. It isn't racist to be unnerved by the influence of Chinese money, which is being scattered throughout our governments at all levels, and its effect on our school systems, universities, and major corporations. Nor is it so when it is pointed out that China exercises veto power over the offerings of our entertainment and sports industries.

Before reading this book I was aware of all of these things, but in a more diffused way. Seeing them all put together in a single narrative makes the entire issue far more immediate. If you have not read the book—no matter how informed you think that you are—I strongly suggest that you get a copy, read it, and then make it available to all around you. This is truly an existential issue.

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Discussion (4)

  • EODmom@EODmom

    I think the biggest lesson to take is that the West does not have any metric for how different the East views the universe than does the West and how little the West knows what it does not know about the East. I believe for the Powers in the East, the “advances” in the West might not even have happened. In some respects it seems the East does not even acknowledge the existence of the West nor grant it any significance.

  • The Scarecrow@TheScarecrow

    “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet”.

    Probably the best way to “coexist”, as the bumper sticker says, is to keep the hell away from each other. If your whole society and culture have mutually exclusive visions of the meaning of life, and your place and value in the world, who is the genius who thought it would be a good idea for everybody to just recklessly commingle?

    The Kalahari bushmen and the Australian aborigines lead rich and fulfilling lives without having a McDonalds on every corner, why does China need American movies and basketball to be happy?