/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15873444]

What do I read to understand China? Serious answers only, no sinophobia or wumao posting

[Anonymous No.15873447]

>>15873444
Batman

[Anonymous No.15873448]

Bullets and Opium

[Anonymous No.15873451]

>>15873444
>OP unironically used Sinophobia
Opinion disregarded

[Anonymous No.15873459]

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

[Anonymous No.15873468]

>>15873444
>no sinophobia
What are your thoughts on free Tibet?

[Anonymous No.15873475]

>>15873451
Sinophobia is the antisemitism of the 21st century

[Anonymous No.15873544]

>>15873444

[Anonymous No.15875072]

r/sino

[Anonymous No.15875210]

>>15873444
I just started reading Chiang Kai-Shek's book "A Summing up at Seventy: Soviet Russia in China"
It's been pretty interesting so far.

[Anonymous No.15875248]

Start here if you're actually serious. Mao's work (red book, practice and contradiction) is also important, as he is the founder of the current dynasty.

[Anonymous No.15875295]

Start here if you're actually serious. Xi is currently being attacked by disloyal and rival elements in the party and probably can't rely on the loyalty of the military, which is a bad thing to be happening when China is half underwater from the worst floods in 50 years and the poorly constructed Three Gorges Dam may break at any time.

Be sure to read about China's impending financial collapse, predicted by literally every single financial analyst, even the ones who like and support China, for the last several decades.

https://zeihan.com/a-failure-of-leadership-part-iii-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-china/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3tbZiJj6O0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwxl5RsTEws

[Anonymous No.15875326]

>>15875295
>China's impending collapse pedicted by ANALysts
>A-any day now

[Anonymous No.15875339]

>>15875326
I hope it's not any day.. India would absolutely beat the shit out of China, China's military is very weak but India's is good. It's experienced and not filled with corruption.

[Anonymous No.15875359]

>>15875339
What would an Indian expedition into China gain them? They could possibly settle the dispute going on in the border regions but other than that it would just be a waste.

[Anonymous No.15875365]

>>15875339
Turn off CNN anytime

[Anonymous No.15875372]

>>15875359
Not much, I am just pissing off the wumao who shills here every day with the same Stalin images (and on /pol/ with a Soviet flag).

>>15875365
China number two!

[Anonymous No.15875387]

>>15875372
>Stalin images
what

[Anonymous No.15875400]

if it's hard to understand just 1 person how do you expect to understand 1.4 billion people?

[JN !!vXXhA/qzhjm No.15875981]

>>15875295
This. It's kind of a jeremiad, but you can read between the lines to see the pros and cons.

>>15875400
One person can change; 1.4 billion people can't.

[Anonymous No.15876218]

>>15875248
>three volumes of transcripted speeches
fuck everything about that

[Anonymous No.15876319]

>>15875295
retard

[Anonymous No.15876336]

>>15873444
Kissinger

[Anonymous No.15876351]

>>15876319
At least fix the grammar before you post ESL memes. But I guess you're also an ESL chinaman.

[Anonymous No.15876374]

I dont know op, but I hope you find sone good books. Please let us know if you do.

[Anonymous No.15876457]

>>15875295
>trusting people who don't speak chinese to give you any information about china
China Watchers are the intellectual descendants of Kremlinologists, anon. No matter how much perfume they swallow, it's still just fart huffing.

>>15876218
Palladium mag has a few articles on it. From people who have read it, actually speak Chinese, and have read Xi's other works:
>Xi sees himself as a scholar bureaucrat in the Confucian tradition, and wants everyone to partake in this tradition
>Xi sees Communism and the Confucian tradition as being totally in harmony and complementary, if not necessary for each other
>Xi thinks that just because you're a Communist doesn't mean that you can't think Marx was wrong about many things
>Xi is an actual leader
>Xi isn't a Liberal, meaning he's not literally insane and living in a fantasyland
>Xi is demonstratably not living in a fantasyland because he believes that all of the world's current states are incredibly fragile and he's scared shitless about the inevitable collapse that will come

[Anonymous No.15876508]

>>15876319
>"and whatever shits"
Truly a high quality argument from one of the great thinkers of our time. A valuable infographic.

[Anonymous No.15876546]

>>15876457
>Marx was wrong about many things
Where does he expand on that?

[Anonymous No.15876559]

>Jiang Shigong is a constitutional law professor who has established himself as one of the foremost Chinese critics of liberalism. He has contributed directly to the policymaking of the central government, particularly on Hong Kong issues, and has offered among the most authoritative expositions of “Xi Jinping Thought.” In an age in which the star of Chinese liberalism appears to be fading, a more detailed study of the thought of intellectuals like Jiang may offer some corrective to the disproportionate favor in which Westerners have viewed that tendency.
https://palladiummag.com/2020/02/05/jiang-shigongs-vision-of-a-new-chinese-world-order/

[Anonymous No.15876564]

>>15873444
Nick Land.

[Anonymous No.15876582]

>>15876564
What a faggot.

[Anonymous No.15876588]

>>15876559
"The crucial questions in politics are not questions of right and wrong, but of obedience and disobedience. If you do not submit to political authority, then 'If I say you're wrong, you're wrong, even if you're right.'"[12] Echoing Schmitt's theory of the friend–enemy distinction, he added, "Between friends and enemies, there is no question of freedom, only violence and subjugation. This is the reality of politics, a reality that liberals often do not dare to face."
Imagine dedicating your life to an author and not getting the basics.

[Anonymous No.15876600]

>>15876588
How is he wrong?

t. haven't personally read Schmitt

[Anonymous No.15876623]

>>15876546
It's not him, it's all of China. The idea that Marx "had to be" right, or wrong, is an inherently Jewish idea. I'm not memeing here, this is literally part of Jewish intellectualism. Jews construct closed hermeneutical systems wherein you either trust 100% or distrust 100% an author. The idea that Marx was right about some things and wrong about others and that you can take the good and ditch the bad is totally alien, and indeed abhorrent, to Jews. You either agree with what Marx said and have to work with what he said to justify what he "ACTUALLY" meant that is only perceived by the foolish as wrong, or just ditch him as a whole.

The Chinese are under no such compulsions, which is why immediately upon Marxism's entry into China that the Chinese began dismantling Marxism and cobbling in all sorts of other shit. To put this in perspective, many of the earliest and most important Confucians just outright disagreed with Confucius and said he was wrong about a good many things. They're still Confucians. Why? Because in China, intellectual traditions, not discrete identification, matter. If you engage with Marx, you are a Marxist. If you engage with Confucius, you are a Confucian. If you engage with both, you're both.

[Anonymous No.15876642]

>>15876600
He's right that politics isn't about right and wrong, it's about interests, most often class interests.

He's also wrong that liberals don't "dare to face" friend-enemy distinctions, the whole point of liberalism is to obscure friend-enemy distinctions because them being out in the open hampers bourgeois politicians from doing their job serving capital.

[Anonymous No.15876665]

>>15873444
Elizabeth Economy - The Third Revolution

[Anonymous No.15876671]

>>15876623
As far as Marxism(-Leninism) is concerned, that's not an uniquely Chinese phenomenon though.

Besides the many debates of early 20th century Marxists on the issue of dogmatism, I think that good ol' Che puts it best:

>When asked whether or not we are Marxists, our position is the same as that of a physicist or a biologist when asked if he is a "Newtonian," or if he is a "Pasteurian". There are truths so evident, so much a part of people's knowledge, that it is now useless to discuss them. One ought to be "Marxist' with the same naturalness with which one is "Newtonian" in physics, or "Pasteurian" in biology, considering that if facts determine new concepts, these new concepts will never divest themselves of that portion of truth possessed by the older concepts they have outdated.
>The Cuban Revolution takes up Marx at the point where he himself left science to shoulder his revolutionary rifle. And it takes him up at that point, not in a revisionist spirit, of struggling against that which follows Marx, of reviving "pure" Marx, but simply because up to that point Marx, the scientist, placed himself outside of the history he studied and predicted. From then on Marx, the revolutionary, could fight within history. [...] The laws of Marxism are present in the events of the Cuban Revolution, independently of what its leaders profess or fully know of those laws from a theoretical point of view. . .
https://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1960/10/08.htm

[Anonymous No.15876679]

>>15876623
This is probably one of the dumbest posts I've ever seen on this board.

Are you aware that the Chinese for millennia literally had schools where people had to learn the entire canon of Confucian thought by memory to become Mandarins? No disagreement or engagement, just rote memorization just to become part of the bureaucratic class?

The reason contemporary Chinese communists are "dismantling Marx" is because they are no longer Communists. That's why. End of discussion.

In fact, I will go as far as to say that in place of Maoism and Marxism they have created an even more reactionary and fascistic form of capitalism than the West ever would've.

[Anonymous No.15876705]

>>15876679
>they have created an even more reactionary and fascistic form of capitalism than the West ever would've.
Based. Hope they destroy the liberal west.

[Anonymous No.15876728]

>>15876679
>The reason contemporary Chinese communists are "dismantling Marx" is because they are no longer Communists. That's why. End of discussion.
Nice try, ultra-leftist anon. (Post-)Dengist China is no less committed to the ideals of communism than the Bolsheviks were under Lenin's NEP. In the face of international capitalist encirclement, the PRC could simply not afford to maintain a Soviet-style socialist system. Whether you consider contemporary China's market economy as the initial stage of socialism or not, the fact remains that the PRC is led by a vanguardist Marxist-Leninist party which had avoided the pitfalls of opportunism and of political liberalization (as was the case of the Soviet Union).

Quantitative accumulations for qualitative leaps, y'know. Socialism can't be built over night.

[Anonymous No.15876751]

>>15876728
I never said the CCP wasn't successful in it's endeavors but that's not the same as saying they are actually communistic or socialistic.

I mean, at the end of the day, you can read Xi Jinping Thought and tell yourself that this is actually what China is doing, but the reality is that Actually Existing Communism died in 1991 and the only thing that is left is either liberal or fascistic capitalism.

[Anonymous No.15876756]

>>15873444
"The Best Enemy Money Can Buy"

[Anonymous No.15876763]

>>15876671
Oh, certainly not, I'm just explaining this in the context of China and Marxism. I'd argue that all non-Semitic cultures do this. Arabs also do the whole "closed hermeneutics" thing, and the Greeks showed an attitude towards this eclectic intellectual engagement similar to that of the Chinese. Even Christian Westerners, outside of the Bible, tend to do this (and even then, will do it with the Bible, but that's Heresy).

>>15876679
>t. retard
It shows. Have fun voting for Biden.

>>15876728
Thank you for this. This is literally what I'm talking about.

[Anonymous No.15876771]

>>15875339
based indiod. india number one. best military in asia!

[Anonymous No.15876773]

>>15873475
Antisemitism is the antisemitism of all centuries because the jews are the enemy of humanity.

[Anonymous No.15876790]

>>15875339
>can't even use a toilet
I mean when fucking chinks are more civilized than you, you are in deep shit.

[Anonymous No.15876792]

>>15876679
"This is probably one of the dumbest posts I've ever seen on this board."

Do Jewish kids have to memorise a list of cookie-cutter phrases just to graduate into their mandatory 1 year JIDF service?

[Anonymous No.15876796]

>>15876600
Because it's way too rigid and dogmatic compared to Schmitt, and misunderstands the meaning behind the friend-enemy distinction. And blind obedience has nothing to do with law, no serious legal thinker would ever say such a thing.

[Anonymous No.15876810]

>>15876679
>they have created an even more reactionary and fascistic form of capitalism than the West ever would've.
am Chinese. Second to this.

[Anonymous No.15876814]

>>15876763
>Have fun voting for Biden.

I'd rather vote for Howie Hawkins than that senile boomer.

[Anonymous No.15876822]

the mysterious orient, forever inscrutable. how do you pronounce Xi Jinping? no one knows. what does he believe? impossible to tell. what do the innumerable chinese actually do? outside of videos on liveleak we will never know for certain

[Anonymous No.15876830]

>>15873444
Hegel
Xi is the world spirit and a dialectic master, for better or worse

[Anonymous No.15876832]

>>15876751
>Actually Existing Communism died in 1991
Soviet-style socialism, sure. Yet scientific socialism had already died way before that with the ousting of the Anti-Party Group and with Khrushchev's subsequent thaw.

It's pointless to fetishize an economically progressive state whose entrenched political elites had become reactionary in outlook. Whether the Soviet-style economic system was viable or not at that level of material development within the Soviet Union, the state would've remained stagnant at best in lack of educated cadres whose Marxist(-Leninist) character extended beyond the usage of cheap slogans and of Marxian terminology (the so-called 'wooden tongue').

[Anonymous No.15876846]

>>15875295

Hey there, Gordon Chang - glad you could make it to the thread.

>a-a-a-any day now!

[Anonymous No.15876893]

>>15876832
>scientific socialism

[Anonymous No.15876894]

>>15876623
>>15876457
>Xi thinks that just because you're a Communist doesn't mean that you can't think Marx was wrong about many things
>It's not him, I can't give you a quote
So you're just pulling things out of your ass? got it.

[Anonymous No.15876904]

>>15876893

[Anonymous No.15876918]

>>15876906
>dd
打的?

[Anonymous No.15876919]

>>15876904

[Anonymous No.15876921]

>>15876564
No, this man is 100% irrelevant to China or anything really.

[Anonymous No.15876936]

>>15876894
I cited my source in my first post. I also thought it was also pretty clear that I was just regurgitating the Spenglerian Semitic-Dome-World and Kevin MacDonald's Jewish-Movement thesis (they're functionally the same thing).

[Anonymous No.15876963]

>>15876894

Spend any amount of time with Xi and his intellectual entourage and you'll see that they take their departure from Marx, but aren't beholden to him.

Take this passage I came across the other day:

>Xi makes clear that the version of materialist historical analysis that guides Party policy has “not remained static” since the days of Marx. This is a “scientific theoretical system that keeps up with the times.” As such, “we should believe that the theoretical system of socialism with Chinese characteristics is the right theory to lead the Party and the people towards realizing national rejuvenation.”

It's always like this.

[Anonymous No.15876965]

>>15876559
bumping for Shigong as well

[Anonymous No.15876969]

>>15876936
I'm sorry anon, but I need a source explicitly stating your claim. You are not allowed to synthesize theses from information that you have gathered. No one is. I need an authoritative source stating PRECISELY the argument that you are making. No, Xi Jinping's books are not an acceptable source for what Xi Jinping believes. Where is your source?

Don't have one? Heh, thought so.

[Anonymous No.15876973]

IT'S HAPPENING

[Anonymous No.15876989]

Fuck ameriga

[Anonymous No.15877005]

>>15873444
>Sinophobia
The fuck is that? Do the Chinks want to play the victim card too now?

[Anonymous No.15877011]

>>15875339
>India would absolutely beat the shit out of China
imagine thinking that a country's strength is measured by military potential in the 21st century, the age of conventional warfare has long since passed (apart from in the third world)

[Anonymous No.15877015]

>>15876973
thanks for confirming that it's you spamming the China threads accfag.

[Anonymous No.15877018]

>>15876936
You mean this?
https://palladiummag.com/2020/07/08/the-theory-of-history-that-guides-xi-jinping/
The only quote that seems to come remotely close to your interpretation is
>>15876963 and is literally coming straight from the M-L 101 textbook

[Anonymous No.15877023]

amazing how not a SINGLE one of these replies is about /lit/ except for ROTK.

the classics are obvious - each of the four greats had, and still have, widespread cultural influence (ROTK is by far my personal favorite) all the analects in pic related are worth reading, though they can be hefty and rigorous.

the may 4th movement was a huge turning point for chinese literature and draws a line between historical and contemporary. notable authors are
>ding ling (miss sophia's diary)
>ba jin (family, which is regarded as an analogue to dream of the red chamber)
and of course, the most influential author in this post and absolutely mandatory reading,
>lu xun (countless - start with ah q and wild grass)
for contemporary authors,
>yu hua is like the chinese mishima (to live, brothers)
>gao xingjian (buying a fishing rod for my grandfather)
>yan geling (flowers of war)
I'll stop here because I'm pretty sure this is a meme post, but anyone who wants more recs, do drop a reply.

[Anonymous No.15877037]

>>15876457
>Communism and the Confucian tradition as being totally in harmony and complementary
What a joke.

[Anonymous No.15877046]

>>15873444
>understand China?
here ya go anon, this might help. i found it to be very interesting

[Anonymous No.15877054]

>>15877018
Among a few other articles on their site, yeah. They've been gushing about China for awhile. Their article on Jian Shigong is pretty good too (if only for the fact that it's one of the few English publications about the man).

This thesis is hardly new and I'm frankly surprised that you're getting this butthurt about it. If China is such a radical failure of Marxism that it fell into RADICAL REACTIONARY CAPITALISM or whatever, why are you trying to argue that Xi is, despite his own words and the CCP's official statements and documents saying otherwise, some kind of hyper specific Tankie and not exactly what I said he was?

[Anonymous No.15877057]

>>15873468
>free Tibet?
i don't know why that hasn't taken off more. i mean there were fucking huge concerts and stuff for nelson mandela. i guess tibet is just too far away.

[Anonymous No.15877059]

>>15876846
Why would a sinoid shill against his own termite hill?

[Anonymous No.15877070]

>>15877057
Because it doesn't actually do anything. Displays of holiness and piety are only useful in confirming to those in power that you are loyal. The US doesn't have power over China, so displaying your loyalty to those in power in the US won't actually free Tibet, and the people in power in China don't want a free Tibet.

[Anonymous No.15877083]

>>15877057
A separatist movement in favor of reestablishing an authoritarian theocracy is thankfully harder to sell to baizuos than the establishment of a postcolonial shithole led by comprador African elites who are subservient to Western interests. :^)

[Anonymous No.15877102]

>>15877054
>CCP's official statements and documents saying otherwise
Still looking for those

[Anonymous No.15877114]

>>15877102
See the article in >>15877018. Actually read it.

[Anonymous No.15877129]

>>15877114
Why would I care what they have to say?

[Anonymous No.15877141]

>>15877129
Because that's my source, and they use statements and documents by the CCP as theirs.

[Anonymous No.15877148]

>>15873444
1984 (unironically). China is arguably the first nation to mirror the dystopian world of Oceania. Their government is employing sophisticated technology to control the population.

[Anonymous No.15877149]

>>15877114
I just did and the only bit relating to Marx is the quote you mentioned, which couldn't be further away than suggesting "Marx was wrong about many things"

[Anonymous No.15877151]

>>15876973
what??? literally my long-term research goal kek. beyond based

[Anonymous No.15877182]

>>15877149
I'm not sure what you're complaining about. The article has documents and quotes from the CCP. It literally links to CCP publications. Do you want a quote explicitly stating
>We, the CCP, are wrong about Marxism. Some random autist in his mom's basement has it right. We're only doing what we do because we're evil.
Because if so, you're not going to get it. They believe they're doing Marxism correctly, and that entails Marx being wrong. Use your brain. You are allowed to gather information and synthesize it. That's literally what Marx did, so why can't you? The reason your high school teachers wanted a source for everything was to force you to read things, not because you have to appeal to an authority for every single claim. If you're incapable of reading a fucking article, then you're either a moron, or don't know enough about Marxism to get the point. Given how stupid you are, I also have to contest the idea that you seriously read that article in only five minutes, such an act should have taken you at least an hour.

In short, see >>15876969. You're not funny, you're not clever, you're just autistic.

[Anonymous No.15877275]

>>15877023
Ding Ling was a terrible writer (but had an interesting life). Ba Jin wasn't much better. Way too much contemporary shit on that chart too. Not much in the way of quality control, there's genuinely good stuff alongside garbage. The periodization is a disaster too. My guess is that the creator of the chart hasn't actually read all those and just listed as much Chinese lit as he could find on google and goodreads.

[Anonymous No.15877312]

>>15877182
I literally cannot find a single source for their out of context quotes, they're probably just making them up as they go:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22scientific+theoretical+system+that+keeps+up+with+the+times%22
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22theoretical+system+of+socialism+with+Chinese+characteristics+is+the+right+theory+to+lead+the+Party+and+the+people+towards+realizing+national+rejuvenation%22

[Anonymous No.15877346]

>>15877275
I'd say ding ling is worth reading if only for the context of her writing, she captures the attitudes/perspectives of her era pretty well, but her actual writing is admittedly poor and I wouldn't recommend her as a standalone. and yeah the chart works for classics but the contemporary pretty much devolves into genre fiction. I've only read a handful of the contemporary, which ones would you consider the genuinely good stuff?

[Anonymous No.15877414]

>>15877346
i preferred Xiao Hong to Ding Ling, didn't sell her soul to politics either, but I enjoyed a two volume biography of Ding Ling that went into depth about the literary world before and after the communist takeover of the country

good ones on the list, if you mean contemporary: Mo Yan's Life and Death is Wearing Me Out

my all time favorite is The Travels of Lao Can but not the translation included in the chart which cuts out material... a major flaw in the chart is not enough attention paid to translation choice

[Anonymous No.15877451]

>>15873444
>What do I read to understand China?
read the wikipedia on the century of humiliation.
all china does is done not to repeat that

[Anonymous No.15878340]

>>15875248
They got the exact same layout designer as the North Koreans.