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While I know nothing about Tanner Greer, the author of that article, it would not surprise me in the least if he had not read Xi's books. The intro callout is

by rmah 5y ago

While I know nothing about Tanner Greer, the author of that article, it would not surprise me in the least if he had not read Xi's books. The intro callout is from Kevin Rudd, former prime minister of Australia. While I'd give his opinions some weight, I'd hardly consider him an expert on the inner workings of the CCP. And the book highlighted in the article "Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom" was written by Andrzej Walicki, that wikipedia describes as a prof at Notre Dame who "specialized in philosophy of sociopolitics, history of Polish and Russian philosophy, Marxism and liberal thought". I can't recall who it was, but I recall viewing a lecture by a china-scholar maybe 10 years ago who was ranting about how the fall of the soviet union had spurred many economic-socio-political academic types to switch to china. And how most of them could not read chinese so could not read original sources. And how many of them had never visited china. Or communicated with any chinese officials, much less citizens. But that didn't stop them from pontificating about what china was like, what china would do and what china was thinking. I don't know if it's just me, but both western political leadership and media just seem... less than knowledgeable about China.

pasabagi 5y ago
I think the problem is a bit like when you're reading western accademic's take on what some USSR marxist, or some Chinese marxist is saying. There's a good chance the accademic has read a bit of marx, maybe even most of marx, but it's just nothing in comparison to the degree of inculcation you get by actually being a marxist surrounded by other marxists. Everything that's influential in China is like that. You don't learn it in school in the west, it's deep and difficult and takes a lifetime to learn (for instance, if you try to get into eastern philosophy, even with prior philosophy training, it's pretty hard). The history, even the parts of Chinese history europeans had a hand in, is not taught or generally remembered. So the ignorance becomes so compounded and pervasive that you get the situation where even domain experts end up having quite limited expertise, because they're missing deep proficiency in one of the many traditions that makes modern China make sense. It's a bit like when you hear a non-programmer talk about programming. No matter how clever they are, it's always sort of immediately obvious.
- yorwba 5y ago
  > There's a good chance the accademic has read a bit of marx, maybe even most of marx, but it's just nothing in comparison to the degree of inculcation you get by actually being a marxist surrounded by other marxists. Tanner Greer actually has an entire article on the necessity and difficulty of immersing oneself in the discourse: https://scholars-stage.org/the-education-china-hands-need-but-most-do-not-get/ https://scholars-stage.org/the-education-china-hands-need-bu... He's also definitely read "Governance of China", the book series droptablemain suggests he should read (he references it occasionally https://scholars-stage.org/?s=Governance%20of%20China https://scholars-stage.org/?s=Governance%20of%20China ) Suffice to say he knows his stuff.
  - pasabagi 5y ago
    I guess the kind of immersion he's talking about doesn't give me much confidence. If you imagine party propaganda is like the most peripheral part of the entire discourse, and there's this gigantic machinery of ideas that makes the propaganda make sense, it's a bit hopeless just reading this kind of peripheral material with a skeptical eye - because skepticism itself stems from the ability to distinguish common sense from illusion, so if you don't have the right common sense, a lot of the time you'll think someobody is talking nonsense or being cynical when they're not, and vice versa. "he must crack the code of the Communist political jargon and translate into ordinary speech this secret language full of symbols, riddles, cryptograms, hints, traps, dark allusions, and red herrings." This, for instance, seems a bad way to understand ideology. If you see an ideology as just a jargon, ultimately translatable to 'ordinary speech', then you're never going to get to grips with ideology that's fundamentally different to your own. If you're a hegelian, for instance, your view of the world is fundamentally different to that of an empricist. You can't just call that jargon and translate it to ordinary speech. Ideas don't work like that.

by rmah 5y ago

pasabagi 5y ago

I think the problem is a bit like when you're reading western accademic's take on what some USSR marxist, or some Chinese marxist is saying. There's a good chance the accademic has read a bit of marx, maybe even most of marx, but it's just nothing in comparison to the degree of inculcation you get by actually being a marxist surrounded by other marxists. Everything that's influential in China is like that. You don't learn it in school in the west, it's deep and difficult and takes a lifetime to learn (for instance, if you try to get into eastern philosophy, even with prior philosophy training, it's pretty hard). The history, even the parts of Chinese history europeans had a hand in, is not taught or generally remembered. So the ignorance becomes so compounded and pervasive that you get the situation where even domain experts end up having quite limited expertise, because they're missing deep proficiency in one of the many traditions that makes modern China make sense. It's a bit like when you hear a non-programmer talk about programming. No matter how clever they are, it's always sort of immediately obvious.

yorwba 5y ago
> There's a good chance the accademic has read a bit of marx, maybe even most of marx, but it's just nothing in comparison to the degree of inculcation you get by actually being a marxist surrounded by other marxists. Tanner Greer actually has an entire article on the necessity and difficulty of immersing oneself in the discourse: https://scholars-stage.org/the-education-china-hands-need-but-most-do-not-get/ https://scholars-stage.org/the-education-china-hands-need-bu... He's also definitely read "Governance of China", the book series droptablemain suggests he should read (he references it occasionally https://scholars-stage.org/?s=Governance%20of%20China https://scholars-stage.org/?s=Governance%20of%20China ) Suffice to say he knows his stuff.
- pasabagi 5y ago
  I guess the kind of immersion he's talking about doesn't give me much confidence. If you imagine party propaganda is like the most peripheral part of the entire discourse, and there's this gigantic machinery of ideas that makes the propaganda make sense, it's a bit hopeless just reading this kind of peripheral material with a skeptical eye - because skepticism itself stems from the ability to distinguish common sense from illusion, so if you don't have the right common sense, a lot of the time you'll think someobody is talking nonsense or being cynical when they're not, and vice versa. "he must crack the code of the Communist political jargon and translate into ordinary speech this secret language full of symbols, riddles, cryptograms, hints, traps, dark allusions, and red herrings." This, for instance, seems a bad way to understand ideology. If you see an ideology as just a jargon, ultimately translatable to 'ordinary speech', then you're never going to get to grips with ideology that's fundamentally different to your own. If you're a hegelian, for instance, your view of the world is fundamentally different to that of an empricist. You can't just call that jargon and translate it to ordinary speech. Ideas don't work like that.