With the US trade war already booting global supply chains from China, the Hong Kong civil war about to turn that process nuclear, and the exhaustion of the Chinese development model all coming to head, it’s time we take a step back from the daily news flow to explore what this looks like in historical context. Ann Stevenson-Yang wrote an exceptional book in 2015 – China Alone
The Emergence from, and Potential Return to Isolation – that offers us a guide. Following as the concluding chapters of that book.
The Next Dynastic Cycle
8.1. Openness and closure
Through its history, China has endured or undertaken cycles of openness and closure, sometimes engaging with other nations through trade and investment and sometimes rejecting commercial attachments. The Chinese people historically have endured these cycles in their own rhythm of hopes raised and modulated again, most recently during the decay of the Qing at the end of the nineteenth century, after the Communists took over in the early 1950s, and again since the Dengist revolution in 1978. These moments of euphoria brought the diaspora back to China with the hope of building a more open, participatory China, and the revolutions again sent the diaspora radiating through the world, where Chinese people, unlike their nation, have managed to penetrate every corner of the globe with their communities, their food, and their commerce.
