Comrades will not be popular in Beijing. It's a world history of communism written almost throughout in the past tense.
The picture this book paints is the familiar one. Although it had medieval and later antecedents, modern communism essentially arose from the writings of one man, Karl Marx. It was attempted as a practical arrangement in the Paris Commune of 1871 but was quickly and brutally put down by force of arms. It took over its first nation with the Russian Revolution of 1917 and thereafter became the source of fierce partisan dispute, for and against, throughout Europe. This led to the rise of fascism which claimed to be the only philosophy capable of stopping it, but nonetheless shared some, though by no means all, of its characteristics.
This clash led to World War II, after which half of Europe was forced into the communist mold by virtue of Russian conquest. Then came the fall of China to a communist-led peasant revolt and the partial spread of the belief-system among Southeast Asian countries anxious to shake off the yoke of European colonialism.
Of course there is far more to this book than that. There were terrible wars, notably in Vietnam, and independence struggles in South America and Africa that looked to communism as an ideology to give them a lead.
But the essential point remains -- all of this took place, if the truth be told, in the past. The only significant remaining Marxists in the Western world (which can be taken to include the capitalist economies of Asia such as Taiwan and Japan) are in the literature departments of universities. Poor literature! Poor universities!
On Asia, the book concludes that communism will collapse here as certainly as it did elsewhere. Even today, China has replaced the former creed with a rampant nationalism which, he thinks, poses a serious threat to Taiwan. North Korea is described as brutal, belligerent [and] economically desperate, Vietnam as still steeped in sterile communist academic debates, despite having opened itself up to international tourism.
The author's view of communism in general is that it is, in effect, a religion, with the characteristics of a founder whose words are taken as sacred, prophets, a hierarchical organization, and so on. We even see Karl Marx living with his family in his cramped London apartment, a modern reincarnation, you might think, of Jesus Christ lying in his humble manger.
But compared to other religions, this has been a singularly short-lived one, flourishing for approximately a century and now, though at its peak it dominated the lives of just over half the human race, in the last stages of irreversible decline. The conditions attendant on its early success, those typifying peasant societies that had quickly become industrialized, are unlikely to be duplicated nowadays, the author concludes. Traditional religions have made a come-back, and consumerism, for better or worse, is likely to continue to extend its appeal.
The two long chapters on China are at the heart of the book. Among Harvey's main points are, first, that Mao Zedong (
Harvey's strongest sympathies are with Deng Xiaoping (
Harvey claims that, despite the vast literature on his subject, no other all-inclusive survey such as this book exists. Perhaps other political writers judged it was too soon for a comprehensive overview of communism from its rise to its final fall.
This is a workmanlike book, packed with facts and is strongly anti-communist. The author is a noted British right-wing columnist and legislator who has equally little tolerance for Marxism's jargon or its ideology -- and a vivid sense of the enormous suffering caused by the global upheaval in the century of the movement's most virulent manifestation.
In the mainstream view, the Philippines should be worried that a conflict over Taiwan between the superpowers will drag in Manila. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr observed in an interview in The Wall Street Journal last year, “I learned an African saying: When elephants fight, the only one that loses is the grass. We are the grass in this situation. We don’t want to get trampled.” Such sentiments are widespread. Few seem to have imagined the opposite: that a gray zone incursion of People’s Republic of China (PRC) ships into the Philippines’ waters could trigger a conflict that drags in Taiwan. Fewer
March 18 to March 24 Yasushi Noro knew that it was not the right time to scale Hehuan Mountain (合歡). It was March 1913 and the weather was still bitingly cold at high altitudes. But he knew he couldn’t afford to wait, either. Launched in 1910, the Japanese colonial government’s “five year plan to govern the savages” was going well. After numerous bloody battles, they had subdued almost all of the indigenous peoples in northeastern Taiwan, save for the Truku who held strong to their territory around the Liwu River (立霧溪) and Mugua River (木瓜溪) basins in today’s Hualien County (花蓮). The Japanese
Pei-Ru Ko (柯沛如) says her Taipei upbringing was a little different from her peers. “We lived near the National Palace Museum [north of Taipei] and our neighbors had rice paddies. They were growing food right next to us. There was a mountain and a river so people would say, ‘you live in the mountains,’ and my friends wouldn’t want to come and visit.” While her school friends remained a bus ride away, Ko’s semi-rural upbringing schooled her in other things, including where food comes from. “Most people living in Taipei wouldn’t have a neighbor that was growing food,” she says. “So
Whether you’re interested in the history of ceramics, the production process itself, creating your own pottery, shopping for ceramic vessels, or simply admiring beautiful handmade items, the Zhunan Snake Kiln (竹南蛇窯) in Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, is definitely worth a visit. For centuries, kiln products were an integral part of daily life in Taiwan: bricks for walls, tiles for roofs, pottery for the kitchen, jugs for fermenting alcoholic drinks, as well as decorative elements on temples, all came from kilns, and Miaoli was a major hub for the production of these items. The Zhunan Snake Kiln has a large area dedicated