I'm gonna try and catch you while you are early but can you start doing summaries at the end of important points that you make like in the "13 Lies about reality"? I love you content but its pretty information dense and its difficult for some people (me) to keep up, love your stuff.
My grandfather, who was a relevant member of the communist party, visited China while Mao was alive. In an international conference he said, to paraphrase "...and what if there is a nuclear armageddon? We will build socialism from the ashes." The Chinese clapped as madmen while the Soviet, and other delegations just stood in horror.
Oh Somehow well known figure can't remember if it was mao said with 1billion people in the event of nuclear annihilation even if we trade one for one with Americans we would still be the most populous nation on earth
A good way to describe it is to say that Chinese people are incredibly nationalistic. They tend to strongly support the government, yes, but it is because they strongly support the country/nation itself. Not the other way around. I have met many (culturally) chinese people who are disappointed in/disgusted by their country, and many who are proud. I have not met a single one who does not care. This is why uprisings are disdained in good times, and supported in bad. In good times to rebel is to harm the nation, and in bad times it is to help.
This is the rule in nation states, not the exception. For example this has applied to all countries in Europe for all of history as well and even today. America is the exception in that it is not a nation state. So the feeling of patriotism has more to do with supporting America for being Number One rather than being nationally or ethnically "American"
@@georgios_5342 I would argue that America is a nation state, but rather than being a nation based on something like ethnicity, or the essence of being American, it is based on a creed, one which is best expressed in the declaration of independence, and to an American anyone who excepts and defense that creed is an American.
North Korea would have collapsed by now if it weren’t for China. Otherwise, South Korean forces would’ve already conquered the region and begun reintegrating and redeveloping the land
"A society becomes totalitarian when it's structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud" - Fred Flintstone
Fun Fact: Contrary to propaganda that Chiang Kai Shek was pro-capitalism, Chiang antagonized the capitalists of Shanghai, often attacking them and confiscating their capital and assets for the use of the government. Chiang confiscated the wealth of capitalists even while he denounced and fought against communists. Chiang crushed pro-communist worker and peasant organizations and rich Shanghai capitalists at the same time. Chiang continued the anti-capitalist ideology of Sun Yat-sen, directing Kuomintang media to openly attack capitalists and capitalism, while demanding government controlled industry instead.
chiang was very corrupt. he didn't care for the peasants or workers, nor did he care about stability of the country. he was after power, even when the japanese invaded (he still sought to control everything until he was forced to compromise). besides, sun yat-sen didn't choose chiang to be his successor, chiang forced his way in to become leader.
@@sinoroman Fun fact: Song Jiaoran did not choose Sun Yuet San as successor either. Sun Yuet San is selected by Chiang only because that selection make him legitimate of KMT monopoly. Sun Yuet San is never representative of early KMT age.
@ᡩᡝᡵᡤᡳ ᡥᡡᠸᠠᠩᡩᡳ Sun is a bastard in the first place. Sun assigned Chiang to assassinate his subordinate and blamed Chen Jiongming for this. Chiang learned that political assassination is acceptable from Sun. Mao is rightful to declare Hunan independence exactly 100 years ago, exactly dated 10-Oct-1920.
@@mappingshaman5280 during that time, secret societies want to overthrow Qing and possibly reinstall Ming. They thought about Ming in 1912 when Qing collapsed. I know Taiping and political movements will be in the game but not sure if underground groups will be considered. We’ll see what happens
As far as I've read and analysed, China has mostly been like this for almost it's entire history. They have been rich, prosperous and influential but they have mostly always have been under some form of authoritism barring a few years of Sun Yat Sen or maybe a few decades in sixteenth century.
Actually mainland China don't even see a democratic election since eternity. Nationalist governement under Sun Yat-sen is not elected by people, but by Congress and their version of electoral college that are just consist of the party member (國民大会), which is actually more resemble of how CCP elect Xi Jinping today than today Taiwan. Taiwan is a oddball because Taiwanese never share the same historic background that prohibit possibility of democracy.
China is a communist Country and Democracy Countries will never support how China controls its people. China with their current leader has become a dangerous Country and a major threat to the world and democracy. China needs to release the 7 Countries they colonized.
"When the Tang dynasty was ruled by Turkish nobility" That is a massive oversimplification. The Li family that ruled the Tang were entrenched nobility and patrilineally Han, only on occasion marrying women of foreign tribes like the Xianbei to which the Tang ultimately had close ties. The Tang were fundamentally Han albeit with turkish influences and not "foreign" as the Qing and Yuan were. This brings me to another point. I've been noticing this recurring theme of "turkish chinese nobility" in your videos, and I believe that last time (afaik the ice age alt his video) it concerned the Zhou who you claimed were "ruled by a Turkish elite". I literally couldn't find any information on that at all. Also found the part with the Xiongnu > Huns weird. It's still far from known whether the Huns truly were related to the Xiongnu.
I'm glad that you proved how history is very important and the goal is counter HEGOMONY .. false pride and increase human COPRATION .. moa a ts tung a true humanist.. chi is trying to be hegomonic a difrent breed but he made ,, china great again, in practical term's
I believe this is also partially why they view history as quite cyclical in east asia, but thats also because it’s a self fulfilling prophecy that the conservative culture plays into.
@@stevencooper4422 thats stupid, how is political positions in the dna? theres cultures, natural resources, wars etc that influence how a country moves through time. Canada doesnt face the same problems as Iraq or India so of course their political "solutions" are going to be different
@@stevencooper4422 Collectivism isn't in the genes, which do change over time even in homogenous groups to adapt to enviromental changes. East Asians have lived this way for thousands of years, yet in several countries are already changing, wether they're expats or nationals in mosy nations surrounding China. "Racial realism" is pseudoscience.
@@Yellow.1844 Collectivism and Individualism are deeply ingrained parts of culture, and it isn't far off to say it's part of the DNA of a people, though perhaps not literally.
you claim that "the West" abolished slavery, but fail to remember that Serfdom existed throughout Europe for many years(and their vast colonial empires were often slave states). While not slaves, they could be traded and sold, and were forcibly tied to the land they were on. You contrast the Roman Republic with the Chinese Empire, but fail to remember that the Romans were known for terrible treatment of slaves and had an empire, even before the empire.
Its natural landscape is their disadvantage when it comes to their ethics. It's simply too hard to be independent when nomad tribes constantly raid you, as well as constant infighting between kings.
China is great culturally at creating wealth, but performs terribly when faced with warrior cultures, such as Japan and Mongolia. Several times in history, a technologically and numerically superior Chinese forces were crushed by Mongolians and Japanese.
In chinese the word "emperor" if translated directly means the ruler of both the land and the sky. And this system was implied in China for two thousand years.
Not quite. Chinese emperors called themselves "tian zi" which could be translated to "the son of heaven". No emperor in China or Japan would be bold enough to claim "ruler of the sky" title since it would be considered desecration to the deity/deities of whatever religion the emperor embraces. (I'm ethnically Chinese)
I always remember Cody’s video on what if the nationalists won, that no matter what ideology or government you slap on it, it’s still gonna china. The country makes the ideology as much as it does the other way around. And that applies to other large countries with deeply identifiable cultural standards.
No successful political structure is designed to be successful. You know everything about Amazon's business model, but can you build another Amazon? All political system is gradually formed during the proccess of solving problems. China's government makes things done. There is not ideology here.
Here's a timeline I made where the nationalists win the Civil war and I took what whatifalthist said in this vid into consideration th-cam.com/video/3xqtJrduDhY/w-d-xo.html If you're only interested in the part about China here are the relevant timestamps about China and the bare minimum to understand the context of my alternate timeline 0:34-13:55, 14:45-15:44, 17:34 - 17:46, 20:04 - 20:29, 24:28 - the end of the video Also since my vid is more about Mexico in order to understand the beginning if you're not well versed in mexico history you may want to Watch this from 4:13 - 6:16, 7:17 - 8:11 & 8:39- 9:10 th-cam.com/video/_noYhhZhXPg/w-d-xo.html And then this one from 0:44 - 1:22 & 2:25 - 4:56 th-cam.com/video/bmO3-4LF4KM/w-d-xo.html
@@lefterismagkoutas4430 Here's a timeline I made where the nationalists win the Civil war and I took what whatifalthist said in this vid into consideration th-cam.com/video/3xqtJrduDhY/w-d-xo.html If you're only interested in the part about China here are the relevant timestamps about China and the bare minimum to understand the context of my alternate timeline 0:34-13:55, 14:45-15:44, 17:34 - 17:46, 20:04 - 20:29, 24:28 - the end of the video Also since my vid is more about Mexico in order to understand the beginning if you're not well versed in mexico history you may want to Watch this from 4:13 - 6:16, 7:17 - 8:11 & 8:39- 9:10 th-cam.com/video/_noYhhZhXPg/w-d-xo.html And then this one from 0:44 - 1:22 & 2:25 - 4:56 th-cam.com/video/bmO3-4LF4KM/w-d-xo.html
As someone who grew up in America, but lives in China and speaks Chinese, I find this to be an extremely accurate understanding of the Chinese zeitgeist throughout the ages with really great examples comparing historical and modern events. While I don't necessarily see the labels of "legalist", "Confucian", and "Daoist/Buddhist" as the best adjectives to describe these time periods, nor do I totally agree with the description of Mao being detached from the people and reality, I think it really highlights how the Chinese people and culture are misunderstood by the west. This video also somewhat (but not totally) resembles how Chinese people see their own history as cyclical through the stages of great economic power in which they become too confident, the focus inward, foreign domination, a quest to regain their rightful place in the world which is accompanied by technological, philosophical, and artistic advancement, and then the reset.
I am also in China, 12 years. Yep I concur. War now is differently scary because we have nukes. There will be war in this region before long and it won’t be one and done. It’s probably going to be a draw out affair with many stages as the world has little thinking, reflecting, periods. He is wrong regarding what Chinese think of the west and their government because the question is way to complex to discuss in this limited forum.
Going from america to china is like saying "man, i want to go to prison now." Not that american laws are perfect, far from it, but safe to say it's WAY better than chinese law.
@@ChristopherGray00 have you been to china? I did not find it as oppressive as the majority of western media or you make it out to be. Actually found it very inviting and very free from danger relative to western countries
@@FafnirSiggurdson No right to critique your government, no right to vote for representatives, no right to freedom of press, no right to explore the free internet, no minimum wage, Not oppressive at all
Indeed. Just last year the EIU rated them a flawed democracy. Although he also put Sri Lanka, Tanzania and the like as flawed democracies, and those are certainly less democratic. All democracies are technically flawed, its just Rudyard is only splitting it into three categories, so it is not perfect.
The Tang Dynasty was not Turkish, it just had some prominent Turkic generals and others. But the Tang Dynasty itself was not Turkic at all in membership
I'm a descendent on Li (Chuye) Keyong the Shatuo turk who established the Later Tang. The Tang rulers were ethnically han, and the turkic peoples were kind of a nation in a nation in the central plains of China. The emperor used local warlords like my ancestor to control the local population.
The founding emperor of Tang is Ōno Seimin (大野 世民), a Siberian/Russian warlord with a Japanese surname who believe in Buddism and crowned himself as a emperor of China. That said, he did prefer his Chinese name Li Shimin. The Siberian ruling class of Tang was so few in numbers, and the majority of generals and feudal lords were indeed Turks.
Thanks for continually bringing intriguing andd curiosity satisfying content mr.Lynch. I am truly excited when a whatifalthist video pops up in my notifications! ☺
I sometimes feel people tend to forget we as a humans are not so unique to different groups of humans , there are/were a lot of europeans who write about having a big government (Authoritarian) when the population is big and so many cultures/civilization believed in that. Too me, I'm happily living in a democratic government but I don't like the idea of trying to dismiss our own past wisdom and the nature of ourselves.
Once again, Whatifalhist comes with his main weakness of oversimplyfying stuff like calling Tang a Turkish dynasty. 28:52 China the state doesn't but Chinese the people with Chinese citizenship and origin do. look up the Kongsi republics
Whatifalhist is notoriously obsessed with the Turkik race. He often attributes them with more than he should and simultaneously refrains from pointing to their atrocities. Oh! And also in many of his videos he imagines a future where Turkey rules all of Eastern Europe and the middle East. Even though that would literally only be achieved through the extermination of half of Europe and Anatolia. So yeah Whatifahist overestimating the Turks is nothing new. He clearly has never been to Eastern Europe or Anatolia.
those were created by merchant communities who escaped china’s cultural disrespect of merchants, so chinese democracy can exist outside of china but not in china itself
@@mint8648 Merchant communities using the Hui system which first appeared under the Song dynasty. These are developments that cannot be untangled with China even if not implimented by the Chinese government of the time.
From what I've read, the response to 9/11 is much less like the Indians wars, and much more like the Barbary wars or Korean punitive expedition, a series of small unit counter piracy raids, rather than the raising of a significant militia to fight a brief, major war.
Except it wasn't like that this time. Whatever the cause, the response to 9/11 was a prolonged "War on Terrorism". It wasn't just some short punitive raid to kill terrorists responsible for 9/11, it was the large-scale invasion and occupation of Afghanistan for decades, trying to reshape the country to the US' liking, trying to establish entirely new governments. The "war" expanded to multiple countries, including the egregious invasion of Iraq on totally false pretexts, which had nothing to do with 9/11, but the US leadership exploited Americans' fear and anger over 9/11 to push the agenda for more war. Other countries were recruited, coerced, or bribed/paid off to take part, in a confusing hunt for groups deemed "terrorist", with very little agreement and consensus about just what was included in this nebulous category.
True. The war was more of a policing campaign than an actual war. The US saw the success they had with japan, and tried to replicate it with Iraq and Afghanistan. I will be honest though. Iraq seems to show alot of Promise. Iraq is fully independent, and even votes against the US in the UN in a few cases. This is honestly great, as it means their not a puppet regime. Iraq genuinely seems to have a bright future, despite what these old ass uncles keep saying about the country. The US shouldv spent that $2 trillion on Iraq instead of afghanistan.
How do you break the cycle of a country that has always clung to a certain way of governance, ideas that are so entrenched in the populist, that they’ve been doing longer than most nations or even people groups have even existed..
A Chinese pal once said "f Maozedong died 30 years earlier, he would be a legendary man. If Mao Zedong died 20 years earlier, he would still be a model for Chinese leaders to follow. 10 years earlier, he'd be an outstanding man. But by the time he died, his reputation is tarnished by foolish mistakes. He failed to relinquish power when the time was right, and didn't consult enough people. I fear the same will happen with Winnie the Pooh."
indeed Mao dying in 1956 = legendary Mao dying in 1966 = 50/50 still ok Mao dying in 1976 = he clearly did not know when to exit so he looks better in the history books one has to learn the proper timing to 'exit' - you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain gotta learn from figures like Lin zexu: hero for fighting the British in the opium wars emperor then sends Lin to crush the heavenly kingdom peasant rebellion Lin: immediately "dies" of the flu before entering the war had he fought the rebels he would have been an "evil elitist prosecutor of the proletariat" - but lucky for him he died just before having to dirty his hands (such timing much wow) another example: Hugo Chavez - dies right before the economy collapses - now can blame everything on his successor LOL
9:30 And this is why I, as an African, love western civilization. They did what multiple African civilizations couldn't. They condemned and ended slavery on the continent. yeah, they partook in it but compared to the Arabs and many African kingdoms/empires, they actively worked to end it.
@@danielwest6095 sad but true. In Nigeria (my country) the British ended the slave trade that the Hausa's and Fulani's used to exploit us in the south. We practically wouldn't exist as a country without their help.
Africa had many prosperous civilizations before colonialism west and east Africa not to mention of course north Africa, just because some guy draw a border and called this arbitrary space some arbitrary name doesn't mean that he really created a country, having a national flag and anthem having a name for nationality or passport is what simple minded people think when they talk about countries rather a country is made through the right of conquest if a country was founded by another power then you are basically a puppet and we can easily see that in all of Africa and how Europe especially France is installing puppet dictators all over the continent in order to exploit the natural resources while leaving for you the scraps. In addition, Slavery was necessary in pre modern warfare , stop judging people from a presentist lens, also the west didn't ban slavery for a moral reason that's just a narrative they push and you've bought into it but rather they ended it because it couldn't be combatable with capitalism (less consumers less working class less profit) it was one of the pillars of the feudal socioeconomic system that ran against every principle of the capitalism. Also these no contemporary historical evidence that the 2500 years of Trans Saharan or East African slave trade happened on a larger scale than the Atlantic it's an Ad-Hoc claim made by western "historians" or Orientalist with a clear agenda to promote western narrative of a "civilizing factor". Another thing to mention that the Atlantic slave trade was based on racial supremacy unlike what slavery was back then. Lastly you need to read Al-Muqadima from Ibn-Khaldun it will shed to you a lot of lights on how countries or civilizations are formed and how they vanish. Peace
Also since you are referring to that time in the video I forgot to mention that Christianity absolutely never banned or even condemned slavery the guy is just making shit up.
Another warlord era of China will be so hard to predict since China is a country with nuclear capability. It's hard to say what would happen if the nukes fall into the hands of warlords. We never seem a major country with nukes falls into civil war. The outcome might be much more deadly than a reformed democratic or isolated China.
no one would use nuclear weapon in a localised conflict unless they're predisposed zealotry. Since using one is essentially scorched earth for the next 30 to 80 year depending on how on how clean/aged the nuclear weapon is.
I'd rather have 10 warlord states with nukes than 1 murderous empire. Warlord states are interested in survival and integration with the world instead of world domination.
I highly doubt china is going to actually break apart. This is pure copium coming from someone who clearly is insecure about the rise of china. Though giving him the benefit of the doubt, it might be a figure of speech, a 'warlord period' might mean competing factions inside the CCP actively struggling over the direction where the country should go without it actually devolving to civil war.
I think humanity as a whole is authoritarian in nature. Tribal chiefs, kings and emperors have been the leaders since prehistory. The Greeks and Romans were the exception and not the rule, albeit modern liberalism and republican style governments can find their roots there. Even after the Roman Republic, kingdoms were the European norm for well over a thousand years.
The Germanic Tribes were not authoritarian. Kingdoms aren't inherently authoritarian. They are often led by charismatic leaders who can get different groups or vassals to work together. If not, they lose power. The Roman Empire was more authoritarian.
I disagree, most of human history was of humans as hunter-gatherers that lived communally and shared wealth, humans as a species are not inherently authoritarian because upwards of 95% of the time of human existence on earth has been a story of peaceful and communal life. I
Correction: Modern is 2015-future. Because when I traveled in 2010, or 2012 China it was welcoming to foreigners, it was a rusted out shell of old authoritarian rules nobody followed, dusted with Gobi sand. Neon lights flashing with excitement on dirt roads around new factories in the South when Americans brought jobs and hope to a moldy and humid life. 2015 is when you see shopping malls complete construction and open up all across the city, in various cities. Parking garages go from being primarily for scooters and motorcycles to primarily for luxury cars. Young people go from hanging out neat wonton noodles on the street corner and just being employed and enjoying life, to hustling for a better career in the modern economy and scared of having any fun. Even in 2015 traveling around you could still see remnants of 1990s 1980s 2000s, that boom times, and it was mostly demolished in 2016, 2017. A good example is Sanya. Comments?
2010-2015 was Chinas golden era. The moment XiJinping became nationalistic, you saw the entire image collapse. I dont think many chinese are fond of the direction xi jinping is taking the country, despite what they say. Alot of people want good trade relations with Washington over Russia, yet XiJinping is emotional, and prioritized his friendships, over the country. Alot of Chinese also wanted a railway from China to America. Americans were excited aswell. But it was pretty obvious what happened next, when XiJinping came to power.
Quite accurately portraying East Asia/China/"China-wannabe". Collectivism vs individualism is pretty much spot on. I do struggle in my personal/work life in the West because what I value (based on confucianism) sometimes clash with western work structure. Sure Companies preach Group synergy, working together etc but in reality, everyone is out for themselves while I'm here somewhat selflessly thinking about what's best for my whole work group and the company. After 5 years, I'm the last one left of my original group since everyone back stabs and leaves company for better paycheck and better social status. My manager? Instead of promoting me, he just hires new people with better schooling but 0 experience on the job skill and give them higher pay grade than I do and have me train them. Sigh. Taking to those that left all said they left mainly because of this manager.. It seems that manager above him don't notice or don't care even though pretty much everyone under him has left while other managers mostly retained employees. Wonderful western society work structure. I should probably threaten to leave or actually leave but I value stability due to having young family and my confucian ideals been working for me so I'm probably going to stay because that's for the best for all for now.
As an American who was raised and born here? As I grow older? I can really relate to how you're feeling. I feel like here in the West people are really out for themselves and I feel like there's a sense of loneliness within the society, especially if you live in the city. It's nice to be in a group in where people have a common goal and are willing to help one another succeed instead of stomping on one another.
It's quite dehumanising to see some people on the internet thinking everyone in the PRC is as brainwashed as a North Korean. In reality people there debate politics and disagree with their Government 24/7, 365. People seem confused as to how people could 'tolerate' such an Authoritarian system, and the truth is most people do it because the alternative to whatever they *can* get from public outrage is getting beat by police or so much worse.
Sounds mostly like Chinese people are too afraid to sacrifice in order to get those freedoms. Being historically beaten down by the authoritarian governments has baked cowardice into the culture.
@@oldmandoinghighkicksonlyin1368 Alright, badass keyboard warrior. Reveal your identity to us and then go become an activist or whistleblower against your own country first. Or even better: go to China and practice your activism and martyrdom there. But I’d be okay with you starting with your own country first. Let’s see how well you do.
Damn that World of Tanks add hit me real hard since I uninstalled the game literally 2 weeks ago... Real hard in the "I don't regret it, since it's gone so far downhill since 2018" department.
I was a big fan until the HE changes. This change destroyed the core gameplay loop. The only people complaining about HE were Clan wars professionals who saw it as a "casual mechanic" that damaged competitive play. I uninstalled about 3 weeks ago but I had stopped playing for a while.
I've never played it and have no interest in it and quite frankly think most of the channels who it sponsors also have no interest in it. This is just the sad reality of making money on youtube these days. But it helps that whatifalthist's voice sounds completely disinterested no matter what he's talking about. Almost makes the sponsor seem sarcastic haha
9:43 I think it's pretty unfair to take certain kingdoms/empires from western Europe that banned slavery/close systems at varying times(for it to return eventually anyways until final abolishments around the 1800s and early 1900s), But then generalise all of Islamic and Indian history into one ignoring the various periods and kingdoms/empires that had banned the institions of slavery or reformed similar feudal systems.
Yes.. true.. Not to mention many nation in west actually did it coz they knew its times up.... and they will pay a heavy prize now.. they did all their lucrative profits from slavery and forced other to stop it.. ( not supporting it ) but many nations economy was dependent on it....
I think one of the biggest reasons Taiwan is such a thorn in the mainland's side is that they ditched authoritarianism (Chang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang were pretty heavy on that side), and showed the world that no, chinese people are not inherently destined as slaves of an emperor/goverment, and thus making using this in an argument for the need of liberalization in mainland China not true.
A democratic China structured in a way similar to the EU - free trade, free movement, shared regulations, but with individual states that implement their own policies would be one of the greatest gifts to the world. Things could be run efficiently, and power-hungry megalomaniacs would be limited in what damage they could cause, all the while the resulting competition would encourage good reforms ranging from social policies to business-friendliness, you would certainly see the Rule of Law develop. Ironically this system could only develop while there's an outside dominant power that is simultaneously non-hostile, but rather supportive, that is the America of 1980s-1990s
This is oversimplification to describe China. China is an empire: social value of people living near the capital is far different to people living not near to capital. Government and ruler can cherry pick their preferred value and enforce it locally. This is as flawed as saying Taliban represented Afghan society.
No they aren’t, society does give it power, but often times they act without the people’s wishes in mind, due to lack of representation. Also they don’t always represent society itself, just the more powerful group.
14:23 Why Song dynasty is classified as isolationist? It has the largest trade as percentage of GDP in ancient China history. The trade of silk, porcelain and tea made song the highest gdp per capita in the world of 1000s-1100s.
A few points: -Western individualism absolutely did not spring only from the Germanic tribes. First, a sense of individual rights, responsibilities, and a distinct persona were highly developed in the Greek and Roman worlds. It's true there was always a more Aristocratic flavor to this, it was not necessarily the kind of base level populism we see today (although in Rome it did eventually become this) but it certainly existed there well before they had contact with northern Europe. It just so happens that because the dramatic tribes tend to be less urbanized and less materially wealthy, they had a somewhat flattered social hierarchy than the Mediterraneans. In addition, there is another metaphysical been here from Christianity, which by asserting the Spiritual Equality of All Souls (without proof) leads for the kind of egalitarian liberal individualism you see today, which is very different than what was in the classical world. - The total deaths from the first World War were around 40 million, so more than all those other events you mentioned.
One thing to keep in mind is that authoritarianism or totalitarianism is basically the norm across human history. Free countries are the exception so another interesting question is whether humans naturally create authoritarian society and the creation of free societies was just a fluke that we take for granted now.
@Bilo while your view certainly holds some truth, it's a vast oversimplification of political history. Authoritarianism is influenced by many factors like culture, religion, Geography, society and of course like you said monopoly On power.
Personally I don't think that there will ever be democracy in China. There's not only no tradition of democracy but there isn't even any tradition of alternate centers of power. Europe never had any god-kings and besides kings/emperors there were always nobles, autonomous citites, merchants, guilds and other centers of power. The first parliaments were often gatherings of nobles which later evolved to represent and include more people which led to modern democracy. But China was either a unified state or fractured chaos when the state collapsed turning it into many warlords ares/warring kingdoms. Hong Kong was democratic but it's just a city state and it was incredibly influenced by the British and Taiwan is basically a bigger version of the same thing (a small country) and influenced by the Americans for decades because they are protected by them.
The republic of China almost took over all of China. And it still exists today. Of course there can be democracy. Traditions of democracy never existed in a lot places that are democracies today.
@@FrostbitexP The Republic did rule basically all of China at one point. But it was not some sort of shining paragon of democracy, with all the internal factions constantly being at odds with each other (not to mention Yuan Shikai making himself emeperor) until the KMT literally got booted from China. Obviously it was at it's infancy at the time but in the short time it did rule the mainland, it wasn't doing it well. I'm not saying there can't be a democracy, but we should not have democracy for the sake of democracy.
@@FrostbitexP The Original Republic of China, that is the KMT Republic of China, is equally or more oppressive, they were not even as democratic as the CCP. Taiwan transited democratically because they lost much of the Chinese identity, it is essentially westernized in every aspect, and that is also because Taiwan has not been controlled by China for a very long time (it was occupied by Japan before, and had many locals). So the Taiwan situation is very different from the Mainland.
Korea, or South Korea at least, is a pretty democratic nation. It has it's issues, but it is ahead of most of it's other democratic neighbors in comparison. What do you make of that?
@@dustin3294 LOL. The one that's been raped by the Mongols 1000 years ago, the British in the opium wars, literally by the Japanese in WW2, and still can't even take an island it claims just 100 miles off its coast?
I love the Jungian shadow example you used. 100% on the dot. This video is one of the most educational videos I've seen on youtube. Thank you for such wonderful content :)
Love your channel! I watch it with my wife instead of regular TV. So glad you're putting this hard work out there and if in doubt know that you have big fans all over the world
25:40 - Are you implying that the Yankees won the Civil War so hard that they erased the influence of the other founding cultures, remaking the country solely in their image? 25:00 - Serpentza pointed out that in China the central government is extremely popular, but local administrations are wildly unpopular, because there is a tendency to blame the problems on the local bureaucrats who directly caused them (for now).
local bureaucrats in china are for the most part democratically elected, weeding out the bad actors and underperformers is essential for the party to function at the higher levels because thats where they get their candidates for higher offices.
This reminds me of another great video that was released recently and that deals with a similar issue: "China vs India The State and the Society" by Kraut. That might be great to watch after this for even more information.
I do love me some Kraut. It's just a shame he's a bit of a whig/linear historian and I sense that he has that general sense of cultural shame associated with Europeans (especially Germans). But his videos are informative, well made, and well researched.
It’s important to note that atleast in the eyes of the Chinese, it doesn’t matter what political system a country has, political stability has a direct translation to the prosperity of a nation. Democracy works well because it’s widely accepted , and although it works in western countries, in other countries it has some obvious downsides. They look at the Soviets as an example of “democratic change”, where the Russian state lost 25% of its land territory influence, dropped from second highest gdp to dropping below the top 10 countries, its geopolitical interests in which were built so meticulously by the previous Tsars lay in ruins as yet another country once in its domain moves closer to the west. And all that was gained was a brief democratic movement before a transition to another authoritarian-like government. For those who think that freedom would make China better is oversimplified, even malicious in the eyes of the Chinese. Unfortunately it’s hard to rally Chinese against the CCP when comments that insult the CCP will never get viewed by the CCP themselves, and the Chinese people who actually read it will obviously get the wrong intention, or even the right intention since obviously there are sinister motives to any comment regarding China. In truth China can be summarized as having a strong state but a weak society. Although this may sound bad, compare it to India which has a weak state but a strong society. China doesn’t get so much media attention because of the things it has done, Mao’s evil actions would not have been exposed if China had not re-emerged as a world power and threaten the existing world order. As such i always feel like videos about China just try and farm views while this fear exists. With no Chinese audience, there is no regulation and no incentive to balance and avoid bias.
@@mint8648 I guess a good way to put it would be at a local level the customs there were more impactful to the nation as a whole and the direction it took, compared to the higher levels of governance (effective institutions). People saying India has a strong society and a weak state are getting that from a video done by Kraut. Basically the customs of the people are more impactful than the laws and effectiveness of the state. China in this case having an overwhelming state compared to the influence of its society (local customs). India's customs of caste and particular beliefs lead to a not particularly strong state, compared to China, meritocracy wasn't as prevalent and hence strong central and effective government never really took hold, or a turely united China like what has been seen through history since China first came into being. There hasn't really been that many instances of a turely united India by Indians given how old the civilization of that Indian peninsula are. Weak state I suppose would mean ineffective or it's institutions aren't that effective or working as hoped. The ability to get what needs to be done. I just see it as customs are society and institutions are the state. Maybe strong isn't the word, but whatever the word is, the customs don't naturally lead to an effective (strong) state.
Oh please. Biden cheated to win. America will never have an honest election again. Why don't you start a revolution if you don't want to get used to oppression?
A minor misinformation at 18:53: while it is true that legalism was the philosophical principle used to rule China from the time the first feudal Chinese dynasty was founded in 3rd century BC all the way to 1911, the officials weren't always selected by a centralized test. China used an "inspect-and-recommend" system before Tang dynasty to select government officials who earned the highest reputation locally by practicing Confucianism, unfortunately it was a poorly organized mess with comparatively many loopholes to exploit.
I think it was 2008 that was the tipping point for many of these modernising countries, where a lot of them started down their current path. And not only is the world becoming more conservative but democracy has become a lot less inviting to the common people. Unfortunately if you asked most people in even the US if they believe in democracy theyd likely suggest that authoritarianism is the way to go with a bend in their own groups favor. While most non american/western european democracies havr been skewing to flawed democracies. So the idea of a democratic china is a very hopful one but id say its incredibly unlikely.
China has so many nation ending problems, that when the current regime collapses, the west and Japan will have their way with China and they will probably stop at nothing to make China a democracy
@@priestofronaldalt Japan is in deep doo doo itself so it's a no go on attacking China. As for the west, Europe is in the same boat as Japan, both socially and economically, and I think America is going to be in an isolationist phase when China collapses.
@@thedude5294 yea its probably for the best. they will put in an effort (given probably not the best one) because they will see this as the final victory in the ideological battle against communism and will use this peace to fix some of their own issues.
One interesting theory I've heard is that after the fall of the USSR China sent over a group of economists to try and figure our why the USSR failed. And they came to the conclusion that, communism was tried too soon in the USSR (they went straight from feudalism to communism) because they didn't allow for the capitalists to come in a build up the society for the communists to take over. But now what we might be seeing is a belief in China that the world is in late state capitalism where the Marxists need to come in and subvert the capitalist to implement some kind of socialist workers paradise.
Do you think that democracy is a favourable alternative to a functioning Chinese meritocracy? I am by no means an expert so I may be incorrect here, but I have heard that the CCP works roughly as follows. All members begin as low level local representitives and are gradually promoted up the heirarchy based on performance (I would imagine party loyalty is also factored into promotions, but the promotee must be compotent relative to their peers). In theory, this would ensure a compotent government, which is likely why China has been so successful since Mao's regime. While I recognise the capacity for corruption in this system it definitely contains attractive elements that could be the basis of an effective alternative to democracy. If anyone knows of any good books about the Chinese government and economy, please comment below.
@Bilo For example, in theory i do have the "freedom of movement." Ofcourse the catch is i need to work atleast 3 months to get enough money to actually go anywhere outside my country, even do anything in a neighbouring country. And thats considering i didnt pay any taxes or eat anything. Which means i need to slave away a whole year, in order to enjoy the promised "freedom of movement" they gave us in 1989. "Freeedom" is a commodity, and you need money to buy it. Not any more free than before tbh.
Doesn't China also have a significant degree of democracy at local and regional level? I'm sure I've read numerous success stories about Chinese citizens getting rid of corrupt local officials through democratic will.
@@PsilentMusicUK Just like most socialist countries, China gives people more to say when it comes to their workplace. Workers get to vote for their factory or firm's party secretary. The party secretary is separate from the bosses and management, and can be elected or recalled any time the people think he doesnt protect their interests. His role is to make sure the management doesnt mistreat the workers. Works alot better than "worker unions" in the West that have no real authority, cuz the party secretary can report the management's misdeeds to the party and get them replaced. It was the same here in the PRB Bulgaria when my dad started working. They got to vote not only for party secretaries but even for management positions. Unfortunately we get no say in work nowadays, you either agree to the bosses terms or left without a job.
@@meganoobbg3387 Workers unions can still be beneficial though. They existed in the USSR and had a lot of clout - a lot more than in the UK, and that's pre-Thatcher. Unions here still have some success when dealing with individual cases, but they are practically impotent when it comes to any large scale issues like working conditions or wages across the sector.
Damn man, you're on a roll, 3 videos in less than a week?! Loving it Also, you should check out Kraut's new video "China vs India - The State and the Society"
I got a notification for this video when I was away from home. I usually have data turned off for TH-cam, but in this case I had to make an exception by turning it off and eating into my data plan.
We have seen the global map of guilt, shame and fear societies multiple times. I am really curious about the "fear" based society and how it would work exactly, since almost no country shows it. Is it simply "you do something bad, we torture you"? Anyone has input about this?
Fear based societies are extremely rare because unlike guilt-based societies (where social order is policed internally within the individual) or shame-based societies (where members of the community police each other to maintain social order), fear based societies rely on a third party to maintain order - exp. while you may feel guilty if you did something wrong or you will be motivated to do better if your family is disappointed in you, you generally don’t truly “fear” yourself or your family as an institution - but a police officer, someone who is an external force who you don’t really know is much more capable of exercising fear as a force of social control. This is very difficult and required constant pressure and surveillance, which necessitates a totalitarian state that uses fear to control every facet of a society. If there is a facet of society where fear is not present then that area can then be used nurture things that can undermine the social order (for example see the little cubby hole that was away from surveillance cameras in 1984 where the protagonist kept his diary). It is for this reason that Hannah Arendt defines totalitarian states as a societal structure in which terror permeates both the public and private sphere (see The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt) As noted by Whatifalthist, fear based societies (I.e. totalitarian) are inherently unstable and can collapse very quickly, which is why they tend to be rare. Examples that I can think of include Stalinist Russia during the Great Purge, The General Government of Poland under Nazi Occupation, Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge, and the Congo Free State under Leopold II. North Korea is in my opinion not an example because ethno-nationalism and a kind of semi-Confucian relationship between the Kim family and the North Korean people is also used to maintain social order, and so is not a fully fear based society (see The Cleanest Race by Brian Reynolds Myers for more)
For China, it's because privacy used to be (still is in a sense) a privilege only reserved for the state, since they believed that only the state needed to keep secrets. An individual keeping secrets was considered to be untrustworthy, like if you entered my home uninvited and I asked you to leave, you could say "Why? What secrets are you keeping that would cause you to kick me out?" When you have no privacy, you live in constant worry.
I view the rise of China as an ideological challenge to the Western metanarrative of modernity: like how human nature prioritizes freedom, or how liberal democracy is the "end of history" and should be universally adopted regardless of conditions. China's economic growth shows that authoritarian governments can get sh*t done too, and that the future of a nation is not dictated solely by its form of government, but rather the political landscape at large.
I think Chile has proved it before China. Freedom is not human nature. People in some cultures prefer security, food and wealth. Liberty do not feed their children, freedom do not make money. At least they don't know how abstract ideas, like "liberty" achieve these goals. The essence of liberty in the west is not its abstract concept, but hundreds of years of practice and social evolution. Through concrete actions, like revolutions, self-governance, communities, the western world became what it is now. Even people in some "democracies", like india, do not really understand liberty in the western sense.
I think China proved to the world, that authoritarian governments, and organizational structures in general, are NOT the way to get shit done. Look how well Russia fared when they dealt with authoritarian governance structures. The entire country gets plagued with misinformation, as no one is willing to challenge the information. Chinas growth is not sustainable. Once China experiences its first recession, and once the mainlanders experience economic hardships, your gonna see alot of lies from officials and government. Already, we see this with Covid and Evergrande.
I really love these deep dives into world civilizations. Usually when you see videos on civilizations you never hear about how their unique cultures shape the pros and cons to their advanced civilizations and you make me crave more
I think PRC citizens love the government as long as they believe they are making China prosperous. If that illusion is shattered opinions will change real quick. (like you said and maybe now with the real estate debt crisis and energy crisis)
Yeah especially in the rural areas. Maybe sort of same reasons why many rural areas of US is most Nationalist even if they are poor. China government of course likes to also broadcast any bad news happening overseas especially in the USA.
PRC citizens love the government even they are frozen by cold or starve to death in 1950s. Citizen mentally would not love this, but slave mentally would. I recently learnt that at the battle of lake Changjin how much ROC surrendered army are sent to Korea and frozen to death. Mao knew those soldiers are sure-death and insist to put them to death. All soldiers can be sacrificed as long as he believes he can kill major UN troops. And his people love Mao, claiming such sacrifices are heroic.
flawed rationale. but, always worth a laugh. regular han citizens will rebel if there is starvation in the urban center, very unlikely to happen. food amount can sustain metropolitan areas, that's for sure
The Chinese love the CCP regardless of how effective the CCP is. Americans don't understand collectivism. You see, the PRC and Nazi Germany and the USSR are all democracies. The "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" is allowed to have that name... Because it genuinely is a democracy. Democracy means the majority rule. "the people" "das volk" "camerata" "товарищи" "同志们" "동지들" rule. They are socialists, from their ideological point of view, the workers and peasants own everything. This factory is not owned by businessman elite CEO noble Mr Jin Xao... It's instead... Owned by all of us. We all own it. *This is the lie socialists are told.* Americans don't understand this. And this follows onto the state level. Everything in China is owned by the Chinese. If you insult the CCP or China, you insult all Chinese. They are all one. The CCP was put there by the majority. Just as Adolf Hitler or Lenin was put into power by the majority. It wasn't a vote, but it was still the majority. This is how collectivism works, this is how they think. The North Koreas and Chinese believe they are more democratic and free than the Americans. So I hate to say it, but the idea that people across the world want to be like the US, is false. Even if in truth the Americans have it better, from the Chinese perspective, China has it better. You have to settle for the reality... That the Chinese are the ones who want to "liberate" you. Just as the Nazis and Italians fought to "liberate" Europe. The Chinese think you live in an illusion, that will shatter when they show you "true democracy".
@@csmth96 No thats the mentality of a true believer, a zealot. the same people who would strap explosives to themselves and do suicide bombings. Which. after 20 years. won the war against the US.
I’ve heard someone say that China is more like a civilization state rather than a nation state, seeing as how China has been a kind of constant throughout human history. Europe, Arabia, Africa, India, etc, their societies, kingdoms, empires, and civilizations come and go, but there has always been China
I’d love to see a video explaining why you think the general trends of history still apply today even when technology is so powerful in its ability to circumvent terrain, economic regionalism, and bio engineering.
@@jackyex yeah we are and we are stubborn and violent and selfish not as smart as we like to think we are and lots of other not always good things just like people in the past. Technology just allows us to be stupid and self destructive faster and better.
@@jackyex I guess my point was...just because we have international consumer distribution networks, realitive ease of travel, and the ability to actually enact eugenics(oh boy bioengineering I have night vision but am still an asshole!) that all that stuff will make things that much better because...human nature.
A good way to think about this is that, no matter how much technology has changed in the past, humans really haven't. At least behaviorally. We might have different ideologies, different religions, new ways to interact with more people faster, but the way we interact, Abc the things we want and need from ourselves and each other, haven't really changed. I'm not going to say humans have an immutable nature, that's highly unlikely to be true, but the one thing that strikes me reading history is how undeniably human we've always been.
as always, a simple question with a complex answer! Recently discovered your channel, glad to find out that someone is still thinking ahead. Like you I don´t think that we are going to a more stable period, but things area what they are...
I love your videos so much. They are enlightening and help me expand my understanding of certain subjects in a way that forces critical thought. Keep making awesome vids and thank you!!!
Here are just a few ideas for videos (I don't expect you to do half of these; they're just ideas): Africa: What if the Bantu migrations never happened? What if Songhai never supplanted Mali? What if the Dutch stayed in South Africa? What if the zebra could be ridden like the horse? What if Egypt never united? What if Egypt remained a major power after the bronze age collapse? Asia: What if Wu Zetian converted China to Buddhism? What if the century of humiliation never happened? What if the Xinhai revolution took over China? What if Confucius never existed? What if Buddhism remained a powerful force in India? What if Persia was colonised by Russia or Britian? What if Majapahit never fell? Europe: What if Justinian's reconquests never happened? What if Napoleon never existed? What if France became a constitutional monarchy like England? What if Scotland and England never united? What if Rome became Manichaean instead of Christian? What if Russia was united by Novgorod instead of Moscow? What if the revolutions of 1848-1849 succeeded? What if the reconquista failed? What if Rome collapsed in the third century? America: What if the US was a monarchy? What if Argentina was a superpower? What if Bolivar successfully united South America? What if the Incas repelled the Spanish? What if the amerindians had horses? World: What if an American disease wiped out 90% of the old world's population? What if the black death never happened? What if the Turks conquered Morocco and Turkey became a colonial power? What if Scandinavian countries were colonial powers? What if Islam never existed?
I think the difference between the USSR and CCP is that in the CCP has somehow tied Chinese nationalism and ideology to communism, so now they are interdependent. If you hate communism you hate China and vice versa. Meanwhile in the Soviet Union, there wasn't such Russian nationalism, but more interdependence and mingling of different ethnic groups as "comrades" working together. That is why they didn't have ethnic cleansing like currently in China (at least after Stalin) and a lot of ethnic minorities were also member (some even high-ranked) of the Party.
Partly because currently all so-called democratic-movement thugs in China blatantly attack everything come from their own country, including every bit of traditional Chinese culture and now even the food. Their madness is really unbelievable to people who don't know what happened in Chinese world. There are no democratic movement, only surrenderist and their counterpart, who use every means to resist the west and hate those thugs, and in turn, being supportive to the communist party. This is how communism linked with nationalism in China. As a Chinese, I really hate this circle but as long as we didn't revitalize our civilization this will be the political environment of China.
25:38 Oh God yes. "We are great sinner bathed in the injustices we have inflicted upon all, but you! You *broke the rules!* And now we shall unless the avalanche upon you! Then we'll spend huge amounts of time and money futilely trying to remake you in our image before we drop you like a hot potato and go back to our self-loathing." This is why you don't kick the giant in the shins people. We might notice and do *something* about it, vigorously. And nobody wants that. That rarely ends well for anyone.
Going back and forth from hiding from the world and trying to control it. I can't help but make a jojo reference. It's like China goes back and forth between Kira and Diavolo in response to fear and tragedy.
Something about Asian culture in general seems more predisposed towards conformity, whereas Western culture has at least flirted with individualism until truly ramping it up after the USA became the dominant cultural power. I'm mixed White-Asian and at least in my experience, Asians who are more _"culturally Asian"_ seem to have a heightened sense to conform. Easy example is that I think skepticism in the government is healthy. My friends and relatives in Asia think "the law exists for a reason" and avoid questioning the reasons too much.
The Yellow River is literally the reason why China promoted conformity so much. The river flooded in catastrophic ways so the different Sinitic tribes of prehistoric China HAD to work together to "tame" it. These ideas of collectivism, ritual, harmony, authoritarianism, hierarchy, honor, and etiquette become widespread in the early Chinese states and were later codified by philosophers such as Confucius. Other East Asian states just copied the Chinese philosophical model.
he's either confused or misinformed. i've seen this kind of thing on some forums or articles, they are incorrect. whatifalthist should do some more research than to rely on suspicious sources
What if the Urals divided the steppe in two? Basically meaning what if the Ural mountains extended to Afghanistan and there was no way around. What would Russia be like? Mongolia? How would this have affected Rome via blocking passage of the huns, what kind of civilizations would form on both sides?
There are two new variables when it comes to contemporary china that can keep it together and the current system in power: 1: The enemy (west/USA) nothing unifies as well as an enemy. 2: Modern technology, by surveilling the population you can quench any early dissidents before they get any followers.
This is something I’ve asked myself so many times and I continued have dark thoughts of what should be done to the Chinese to stop there authoritarianism and even if it’s possible to stop it. Even with countries like Taiwan,Singapore, and a couple others they still were authoritarian till fairly recently and still only proves small Chinese states can potentially become democratic. (I haven’t watched the video yet I just wanted to say this since I’ve been thinking about it for around a year now)
@@priestofronaldalt you can have a democracy, sure. But I doubt a democratic China would be an effective force. It would probably be like India with widespread corruption and discrimination of minorities as well. Not much different than now besides the camps.
If you take a look at Singapore's government, you would see a faulty yet somewhat free system ruled by one political party for about majority of its entire existence. Staying in power only due to its desire and success to increase the economy. Still an authoritarian one, but unusually lenient.
One thing to note about Legalism: it gets a bad rap in modern society as being overly authoritarian, not unfairly might I add, but it should also be noted it was widely considered to be incredibly egalitarian. By it's very dogma, Legalism requires the development of a merit-based system of governance, which has proven highly influential in court politics throughout the history of China. fin
@@yanzx01 wrong, complete opposite of reality, capitalism works for every individual, the only enemies of capitalism are sociopathic tyrants or uneducated morons. Which one are you?
@@AverageAlien I am the one getting milked by the government because they fucked up both the economy and the pandemic. Which delusional dream do you live in?
WhatIfAltHist you should make a video called after WW3 highlighting the world after WW3 depending on who wins to further expand your geopolitics series
US never tried to force it's own style of capitalism. It helped countries like France, Germany and Japan greatly after WW2 and the US exported many of their economic theories to these countries and they accepted many of them, yet, Japanese style capitalism, US style capitalism and German style capitalism are quite different, and the US does not have a problem with this.
In response to the thumbnail question: collectivism has a fair bit of overlap with and is more conducive to authoritarianism, but is still separate from it, as the total anarchy often leads to authoritarianism as well, and as demonstrated by other nations in the region collectivist systems can exist outside authoritarian systems
If you don't mind my two cents. The authors of the expanse do very well in acknowledging human nature, interactions, and societies in a broad sense. However I don't find lines being firmly drawn between mars, earth, and the belt, nor many aspects of the respective entities to be particularly plausible. For example I can absolutely see the belt taking on the fractious system they have, alongside having various cultural aspects such as the extreme aversion to safety hazards and endangerment. However, I don't see them as being less developed in any way, industrially, economically, technologically, etc. than mars, and in fact believe many separate belter states would individually surpass mars. I also doubt the various factions would unify into the belt, mars, and earth entities that they have. Rather I would expect lines would be drawn across these regions. For example a given bloc would contain entities from earth, mars, and the belt and would fave other blocs that do the same. And instead of mostly unified nations these would take the form of much more fluid alliances with far greater sovereignty between members. For example, the US, its loyalist colonies/states, US colonies that broke off but who's interest allign based on a common cultural heritage, compatible economic system, and moral framework, and various other colonies attracted to the alliance simply because it opposes their stronger neighbors. With all these entities acting as allies but still as independent entities. I could see some extra terrestrial colony still developing the epstein drive and leading several colonies in a wave of independence movements similar to how mars did and forming their own bloc. Et Al. Along similar lines though, I'd love to see whatif's take on the battletech universe. I'd love to see his thoughts on the various implausibilities, idiosyncrasies, of what I view as a *mostly* well developed fictional group of nation states.
@@melvinlemay7366 Without competition between countries like US and China it would be hard to see humans expand to such a degree to create colonies on Mars because of huge expense it would take. I can see also why Earth in Expanse wouldn’t want to give up Mars or the colonies.
hole up, 17:09 Turkish Tang dynasty? What is he on about? Does the surname of the the ruling family of Tang; Li sound Turkic to you? Though the video do raise SOME valid points, such as the dynamics between Confucianism and Legalism. But it's just trying to simplify a system in reality that is a lot more complex, all done so he can do an oversimplified prediction into the 2050s and 2080s. Economists who spend their lives studying macroeconomic trends can't even tell for certain what's going to happen in the next 5 years, So I have my reservations on a youtuber's prediction on the most complex country's future 30 years down the line. If I were to predict the future of China, it'll be a continuation of Socialism with Confucian and Legalist system, these are the Chinese characteristics in the current official state Ideology, ""Socialism with Chinese Characteristics"" So the cyclical dynastic cycle the video trying to push into the 2080s is just not happening when China already have modern institutions, Just like he said, China is industrialized and can't go back Dynastic cycle was due to Ancient China lacking modern institutions to sustain the meritocratic nature of the government, thus weakening the state. With modern institutions and communication technology, the idea of Nationalism can be easily propagated and cultivated, to a point that the existence of the state becomes the default and the constant truth.
But why? Let us all admit that authoritarianism and democracy are just two directions on the political spectrum. Authoritarianism isn't necessarily bad, democracy isn't necessarily good, and they weren't completely opposed. Americans are accustomed to looking at things in a binary way, but in fact they are both opposing and unified. Whether authoritarianism vs. democracy is good or bad depends on what criteria you use. For China, which has made tremendous progress in the last few decades under authoritarian politics, then for China authoritarianism is good for them. But Westerners believe that if China is strong, the West will be weakened or threatened, which is essentially a dualistic Cold War mentality. In fact, the strength of one country can also lead to the development of other countries, and there are many cases in history, and Westerners should abandon this binary way of thinking.
@@shreyvaghela3963 None of the Founding Fathers were in favor of a pure democracy, read the Federalist Papers, they explicitly outlined why an Athenian style democracy was flawed idea and why the Framers gave us a Republic. "Anglos are natural Liberal" I take it you mean Anglo-Saxon? Well, as for everyone, that's absurd to claim such a wide generalization, but for the Founding Fathers, it's more reasonable to claim that they were all various shades of Liberal, yes. We'd call it Classical Liberalism now, since the term has drifted significantly in the last 250 years, effectively becoming Conservativism. American Conservatives 'conserve' Classical Liberalism as the Founders and Framers understood it (which just makes the whole internet meme thing of 'owning the libs' plain silly) while Neo-liberalism has drifted into it's whole own thing. So in a fashion, virtually all of American politics still follows a form of Liberalism of one form or another. Baring of course the marx-derived socialists and communists, or the hardline religious groups. I don't know if moral authoritarian Evangelical Christians or Pro-Sharia Law Muslims could be counted as liberal at all. It's a shame words of such importance have had so much meaning stripped from them. The muddled definition of Liberalism and the interchangeability of the words 'democracy' and 'republic' despite the very major differences (and the effort made by the Framers to distinguish the two) make political discourse so much more complicated than it needs to be and leads to conflict when there need not be conflict.
@@shreyvaghela3963 Dude. No. America is NOT a democracy. It is a Constitutional Federal Republic. I seriously don't know what history books you are using. You ignored my comment if your stuck on the Washington thing the other person posted about, I was talking about ALL of the Founding Fathers and Framers of the Constitution, many of which disagreed with each other quite vigorously (to the point the fought duals to the death). None of them would have ever called America a democracy, that system didn't even work for a city-state, much less a nation state, they knew that and they specifically made a Republic.
@@joedapro1118 Being united is only good if you are a homogenous society. China is like 90% Han, so it works for them. In places like Spain, France or India its absolutely the worst
@@davidwang4402 maybe if the ROC won the war, but they've liberalized SO much since then. I doubt the ROC would have concentration camps today like the PRC does.
Link to World of Tanks:tanks.ly/3Df58It
I now know that there’s going to be a sponsorship I’ll have to skip before I even knew
I hope that you will have a happy day/rest of the day
I know that this might be stupid but how do i know if a history book Is a reliable source or no since you read a lot of them?
I'm gonna try and catch you while you are early but can you start doing summaries at the end of important points that you make like in the "13 Lies about reality"? I love you content but its pretty information dense and its difficult for some people (me) to keep up, love your stuff.
Whatifalthist why did you leave the server?
My grandfather, who was a relevant member of the communist party, visited China while Mao was alive. In an international conference he said, to paraphrase "...and what if there is a nuclear armageddon? We will build socialism from the ashes." The Chinese clapped as madmen while the Soviet, and other delegations just stood in horror.
Thats a Sigma Grindset if I ever heard one /s
@@fazed343 Why the sarcasm? This is literally peak Sigma male energy.
Based Maoists
@@dr.woozie7500 Average socialism in one country fan vs average nuclear armageddon enjoyer.
Oh
Somehow well known figure can't remember if it was mao said with 1billion people in the event of nuclear annihilation even if we trade one for one with Americans we would still be the most populous nation on earth
A good way to describe it is to say that Chinese people are incredibly nationalistic. They tend to strongly support the government, yes, but it is because they strongly support the country/nation itself. Not the other way around. I have met many (culturally) chinese people who are disappointed in/disgusted by their country, and many who are proud. I have not met a single one who does not care.
This is why uprisings are disdained in good times, and supported in bad. In good times to rebel is to harm the nation, and in bad times it is to help.
"In good times to rebel is to harm the nation, and in bad times it is to help."
Awesome quote.
@@realtissaye
Yeah but rebellion' aren't always needed in democracies, just vote y'know
This is the rule in nation states, not the exception. For example this has applied to all countries in Europe for all of history as well and even today. America is the exception in that it is not a nation state. So the feeling of patriotism has more to do with supporting America for being Number One rather than being nationally or ethnically "American"
@@georgios_5342
I would argue that America is a nation state, but rather than being a nation based on something like ethnicity, or the essence of being American, it is based on a creed, one which is best expressed in the declaration of independence, and to an American anyone who excepts and defense that creed is an American.
How can they rebel with no fire arms.
"Totalitarian states generally collapse within a generation..."
*Nervously looks at North Korea*
They're propped up by China as a buffer between them and the US troops in South Korea
Maybe it’s if you can hold on till the next generation than they will only know the dictatorship
They do... if another totalitarian regime that says "we're here to liberate you" comes by and collapses it.
North Korea would have collapsed by now if it weren’t for China. Otherwise, South Korean forces would’ve already conquered the region and begun reintegrating and redeveloping the land
Collapse from what. The only thing Nort Korea has going for it is that it still exists mainly because China allows it to exist.
"A society becomes totalitarian when it's structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud" - Fred Flintstone
The greatest philosopher of modern time.
When did he say that?
True for the West. Not for China.
ah yes fred flintstone the greatest political scientist in history
@@Fr00stee Well yeah, how else do you think he manages to cope with his several war crimes against the Neanderthals?
Fun Fact:
Contrary to propaganda that Chiang Kai Shek was pro-capitalism, Chiang antagonized the capitalists of Shanghai, often attacking them and confiscating their capital and assets for the use of the government. Chiang confiscated the wealth of capitalists even while he denounced and fought against communists. Chiang crushed pro-communist worker and peasant organizations and rich Shanghai capitalists at the same time. Chiang continued the anti-capitalist ideology of Sun Yat-sen, directing Kuomintang media to openly attack capitalists and capitalism, while demanding government controlled industry instead.
Chiang wasn't so much pro-capitalist as he was anti-communist (and fascist - whether or not he realized it is another story).
chiang was very corrupt. he didn't care for the peasants or workers, nor did he care about stability of the country. he was after power, even when the japanese invaded (he still sought to control everything until he was forced to compromise). besides, sun yat-sen didn't choose chiang to be his successor, chiang forced his way in to become leader.
@@sinoroman Fun fact: Song Jiaoran did not choose Sun Yuet San as successor either. Sun Yuet San is selected by Chiang only because that selection make him legitimate of KMT monopoly. Sun Yuet San is never representative of early KMT age.
@ᡩᡝᡵᡤᡳ
ᡥᡡᠸᠠᠩᡩᡳ Sun is a bastard in the first place. Sun assigned Chiang to assassinate his subordinate and blamed Chen Jiongming for this. Chiang learned that political assassination is acceptable from Sun.
Mao is rightful to declare Hunan independence exactly 100 years ago, exactly dated 10-Oct-1920.
Based
When you play Victoria 2 and China Westernizes:
Literally everyone: haha, I'm in danger.
i hope Ming or some similar states are in Victoria III
@@sinoroman why would ming be in vic III? You realise Vic III will start in 1836 right?
@@mappingshaman5280 during that time, secret societies want to overthrow Qing and possibly reinstall Ming. They thought about Ming in 1912 when Qing collapsed. I know Taiping and political movements will be in the game but not sure if underground groups will be considered. We’ll see what happens
Also China: ( fractures )
Napoleon warned us about China.
*gets extremely advanced*
*stagnates because "we are so strong"*
*realises their mistake when other countries are ahead*
*civil war*
and repeat
umm... u sure ur not predicting the u.s future?
Sounds like the US in the near future
Let's not forget
>loses glory due to civil war
>has a gamer moment
动态网自由门 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Free Tibet 六四天安門事件 The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 天安門大屠殺 The Tiananmen Square Massacre 反右派鬥爭 The Anti-Rightist Struggle 大躍進政策 The Great Leap Forward 文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 人權 Human Rights 民運 Democratization 自由 Freedom 獨立 Independence 多黨制 Multi-party system 台灣 臺灣 Taiwan Formosa 中華民國 Republic of China 西藏 土伯特 唐古特 Tibet 達賴喇嘛 Dalai Lama 法輪功 Falun Dafa 新疆維吾爾自治區 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 諾貝爾和平獎 Nobel Peace Prize 劉暁波 Liu Xiaobo 民主 言論 思想 反共 反革命 抗議 運動 騷亂 暴亂 騷擾 擾亂 抗暴 平反 維權 示威游行 李洪志 法輪大法 大法弟子 強制斷種 強制堕胎 民族淨化 人體實驗 肅清 胡耀邦 趙紫陽 魏京生 王丹 還政於民 和平演變 激流中國 北京之春 大紀元時報 九評論共産黨 獨裁 專制 壓制 統一 監視 鎮壓 迫害 侵略 掠奪 破壞 拷問 屠殺 活摘器官 誘拐 買賣人口 遊進 走私 毒品 賣淫 春畫 賭博 六合彩 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Winnie the Pooh 劉曉波动态网自由门
At least they are not scraping their navy this time
As far as I've read and analysed, China has mostly been like this for almost it's entire history. They have been rich, prosperous and influential but they have mostly always have been under some form of authoritism barring a few years of Sun Yat Sen or maybe a few decades in sixteenth century.
To be fair to china, so have basically 99% of all civilizations in history
@@M414-q6o That's the weirdest part people act like Democracy is the standard while even today it still isn't.
@@M414-q6o but none had as much government control as china
Actually mainland China don't even see a democratic election since eternity. Nationalist governement under Sun Yat-sen is not elected by people, but by Congress and their version of electoral college that are just consist of the party member (國民大会), which is actually more resemble of how CCP elect Xi Jinping today than today Taiwan. Taiwan is a oddball because Taiwanese never share the same historic background that prohibit possibility of democracy.
China is a communist Country and Democracy Countries will never support how China controls its people. China with their current leader has become a dangerous Country and a major threat to the world and democracy.
China needs to release the 7 Countries they colonized.
"When the Tang dynasty was ruled by Turkish nobility" That is a massive oversimplification. The Li family that ruled the Tang were entrenched nobility and patrilineally Han, only on occasion marrying women of foreign tribes like the Xianbei to which the Tang ultimately had close ties. The Tang were fundamentally Han albeit with turkish influences and not "foreign" as the Qing and Yuan were.
This brings me to another point. I've been noticing this recurring theme of "turkish chinese nobility" in your videos, and I believe that last time (afaik the ice age alt his video) it concerned the Zhou who you claimed were "ruled by a Turkish elite". I literally couldn't find any information on that at all.
Also found the part with the Xiongnu > Huns weird. It's still far from known whether the Huns truly were related to the Xiongnu.
Whatifalthis for some reason is a massive fan of Turks, it's practically a meme at this point
This guy just loves turks.
I'm glad that you proved how history is very important and the goal is counter HEGOMONY .. false pride and increase human COPRATION .. moa a ts tung a true humanist.. chi is trying to be hegomonic a difrent breed but he made ,, china great again, in practical term's
Yes, I also thought that sounded weird
@@tj-co9go Donald said I will make America great but chi made china great again practically without mouse and fanfare
I believe this is also partially why they view history as quite cyclical in east asia, but thats also because it’s a self fulfilling prophecy that the conservative culture plays into.
I mean, it's in their genes. They always will be a collective society, just as they always were.
@@stevencooper4422 thats stupid, how is political positions in the dna? theres cultures, natural resources, wars etc that influence how a country moves through time. Canada doesnt face the same problems as Iraq or India so of course their political "solutions" are going to be different
@@Yellow.1844 For the same reason that Haiti will always be poor.
@@stevencooper4422 Collectivism isn't in the genes, which do change over time even in homogenous groups to adapt to enviromental changes. East Asians have lived this way for thousands of years, yet in several countries are already changing, wether they're expats or nationals in mosy nations surrounding China. "Racial realism" is pseudoscience.
@@Yellow.1844 Collectivism and Individualism are deeply ingrained parts of culture, and it isn't far off to say it's part of the DNA of a people, though perhaps not literally.
All WIAH videos are effectively twice as long once you factor in all the pausing you need to do to read the various graphics and maps
Yes and its a good thing in my opinion, probobly comes fown to how you want to learn
Very true
dont forget seeing comments lol
@@channel_void yep I think i spend way more time reading comments then watching the video
this is so real it hurts
you claim that "the West" abolished slavery, but fail to remember that Serfdom existed throughout Europe for many years(and their vast colonial empires were often slave states). While not slaves, they could be traded and sold, and were forcibly tied to the land they were on. You contrast the Roman Republic with the Chinese Empire, but fail to remember that the Romans were known for terrible treatment of slaves and had an empire, even before the empire.
He’s talking about the USA dumbass
Even in most of medieval Europe serfs werent sold.
Its natural landscape is their disadvantage when it comes to their ethics. It's simply too hard to be independent when nomad tribes constantly raid you, as well as constant infighting between kings.
You pretty much described Europe as well
China is great culturally at creating wealth, but performs terribly when faced with warrior cultures, such as Japan and Mongolia. Several times in history, a technologically and numerically superior Chinese forces were crushed by Mongolians and Japanese.
Thats good thing, individualism is killing the west right now.
@@00fgytduydrtu no
Not individualism but rather fanaticism theres a huge diffrence.
@@00fgytduydrtu
Individuals are what made the West.
In chinese the word "emperor" if translated directly means the ruler of both the land and the sky. And this system was implied in China for two thousand years.
Huangdi right? I've read that it should be translated as "thearch" something like "godly ruler" or god-ruler. Not sure though.
@@jasonmuniz-contreras6630 God-Emperor of Du-- China?
Not quite. Chinese emperors called themselves "tian zi" which could be translated to "the son of heaven". No emperor in China or Japan would be bold enough to claim "ruler of the sky" title since it would be considered desecration to the deity/deities of whatever religion the emperor embraces. (I'm ethnically Chinese)
@@wisdomleader85 here in the west we had Roman emperors who had themselves called Dominus et Deus, "master and god".
The ''Son of Heaven'' idea.....
I always remember Cody’s video on what if the nationalists won, that no matter what ideology or government you slap on it, it’s still gonna china. The country makes the ideology as much as it does the other way around. And that applies to other large countries with deeply identifiable cultural standards.
No successful political structure is designed to be successful. You know everything about Amazon's business model, but can you build another Amazon? All political system is gradually formed during the proccess of solving problems. China's government makes things done. There is not ideology here.
The problem is: CCP is not nationalistic. The West wrongly think CCP is nationalistic.
"mom it chinaed again"
Here's a timeline I made where the nationalists win the Civil war and I took what whatifalthist said in this vid into consideration th-cam.com/video/3xqtJrduDhY/w-d-xo.html
If you're only interested in the part about China here are the relevant timestamps about China and the bare minimum to understand the context of my alternate timeline 0:34-13:55, 14:45-15:44, 17:34 - 17:46, 20:04 - 20:29, 24:28 - the end of the video
Also since my vid is more about Mexico in order to understand the beginning if you're not well versed in mexico history you may want to Watch this from 4:13 - 6:16, 7:17 - 8:11 & 8:39- 9:10
th-cam.com/video/_noYhhZhXPg/w-d-xo.html
And then this one from 0:44 - 1:22 & 2:25 - 4:56
th-cam.com/video/bmO3-4LF4KM/w-d-xo.html
@@lefterismagkoutas4430 Here's a timeline I made where the nationalists win the Civil war and I took what whatifalthist said in this vid into consideration th-cam.com/video/3xqtJrduDhY/w-d-xo.html
If you're only interested in the part about China here are the relevant timestamps about China and the bare minimum to understand the context of my alternate timeline 0:34-13:55, 14:45-15:44, 17:34 - 17:46, 20:04 - 20:29, 24:28 - the end of the video
Also since my vid is more about Mexico in order to understand the beginning if you're not well versed in mexico history you may want to Watch this from 4:13 - 6:16, 7:17 - 8:11 & 8:39- 9:10
th-cam.com/video/_noYhhZhXPg/w-d-xo.html
And then this one from 0:44 - 1:22 & 2:25 - 4:56
th-cam.com/video/bmO3-4LF4KM/w-d-xo.html
As someone who grew up in America, but lives in China and speaks Chinese, I find this to be an extremely accurate understanding of the Chinese zeitgeist throughout the ages with really great examples comparing historical and modern events. While I don't necessarily see the labels of "legalist", "Confucian", and "Daoist/Buddhist" as the best adjectives to describe these time periods, nor do I totally agree with the description of Mao being detached from the people and reality, I think it really highlights how the Chinese people and culture are misunderstood by the west. This video also somewhat (but not totally) resembles how Chinese people see their own history as cyclical through the stages of great economic power in which they become too confident, the focus inward, foreign domination, a quest to regain their rightful place in the world which is accompanied by technological, philosophical, and artistic advancement, and then the reset.
I am also in China, 12 years. Yep I concur. War now is differently scary because we have nukes. There will be war in this region before long and it won’t be one and done. It’s probably going to be a draw out affair with many stages as the world has little thinking, reflecting, periods. He is wrong regarding what Chinese think of the west and their government because the question is way to complex to discuss in this limited forum.
atleast ur not still in bradford mate
Going from america to china is like saying "man, i want to go to prison now."
Not that american laws are perfect, far from it, but safe to say it's WAY better than chinese law.
@@ChristopherGray00 have you been to china? I did not find it as oppressive as the majority of western media or you make it out to be. Actually found it very inviting and very free from danger relative to western countries
@@FafnirSiggurdson No right to critique your government, no right to vote for representatives, no right to freedom of press, no right to explore the free internet, no minimum wage,
Not oppressive at all
South Africa = Democracy not Flawed Democracy, now that's a take.
Indeed. Just last year the EIU rated them a flawed democracy. Although he also put Sri Lanka, Tanzania and the like as flawed democracies, and those are certainly less democratic. All democracies are technically flawed, its just Rudyard is only splitting it into three categories, so it is not perfect.
My thoughts aswell exactly!
Lol
The Tang Dynasty was not Turkish, it just had some prominent Turkic generals and others. But the Tang Dynasty itself was not Turkic at all in membership
I'm a descendent on Li (Chuye) Keyong the Shatuo turk who established the Later Tang. The Tang rulers were ethnically han, and the turkic peoples were kind of a nation in a nation in the central plains of China. The emperor used local warlords like my ancestor to control the local population.
The founding emperor of Tang is Ōno Seimin (大野 世民), a Siberian/Russian warlord with a Japanese surname who believe in Buddism and crowned himself as a emperor of China. That said, he did prefer his Chinese name Li Shimin. The Siberian ruling class of Tang was so few in numbers, and the majority of generals and feudal lords were indeed Turks.
胡说八道，大野是唐之前的王朝赐予李氏家族的外族姓氏，只是因为当时他们效忠的那个帝是鲜卑族，而李家世代是汉族，只是从李世民的祖父母开始和少数民族有了通婚，但是那个时期本来就是中国历史上的一个民族大融合时期，他们只是无数通婚家族中的一个具有代表性的家族@@gesalbte
Thanks for continually bringing intriguing andd curiosity satisfying content mr.Lynch. I am truly excited when a whatifalthist video pops up in my notifications! ☺
@Anonymous Anonymous lol, that I am!
When you said mr.lynch I thought for a second you meant david lynch
Love em as well 😁
I sometimes feel people tend to forget we as a humans are not so unique to different groups of humans , there are/were a lot of europeans who write about having a big government (Authoritarian) when the population is big and so many cultures/civilization believed in that. Too me, I'm happily living in a democratic government but I don't like the idea of trying to dismiss our own past wisdom and the nature of ourselves.
Humans? Fun fact: If you go to Endia 🇮🇳 you'll see lots of dirty disgusting stinky slums
@@NightcorEDM Slums have existed worldwide, what is your point exactly?
Once again, Whatifalhist comes with his main weakness of oversimplyfying stuff like calling Tang a Turkish dynasty.
28:52 China the state doesn't but Chinese the people with Chinese citizenship and origin do. look up the Kongsi republics
Whatifalhist is notoriously obsessed with the Turkik race. He often attributes them with more than he should and simultaneously refrains from pointing to their atrocities. Oh! And also in many of his videos he imagines a future where Turkey rules all of Eastern Europe and the middle East. Even though that would literally only be achieved through the extermination of half of Europe and Anatolia. So yeah Whatifahist overestimating the Turks is nothing new. He clearly has never been to Eastern Europe or Anatolia.
those were created by merchant communities who escaped china’s cultural disrespect of merchants, so chinese democracy can exist outside of china but not in china itself
@@mint8648 Merchant communities using the Hui system which first appeared under the Song dynasty. These are developments that cannot be untangled with China even if not implimented by the Chinese government of the time.
@@ikengaspirit3063 yea
I agree Tang Dynasty china wasn’t Turkic it had Turkic elements through tangs cosmopolitan and friendly relations with the nomads of the north.
From what I've read, the response to 9/11 is much less like the Indians wars, and much more like the Barbary wars or Korean punitive expedition, a series of small unit counter piracy raids, rather than the raising of a significant militia to fight a brief, major war.
Except it wasn't like that this time. Whatever the cause, the response to 9/11 was a prolonged "War on Terrorism".
It wasn't just some short punitive raid to kill terrorists responsible for 9/11, it was the large-scale invasion and occupation of Afghanistan for decades, trying to reshape the country to the US' liking, trying to establish entirely new governments.
The "war" expanded to multiple countries, including the egregious invasion of Iraq on totally false pretexts, which had nothing to do with 9/11, but the US leadership exploited Americans' fear and anger over 9/11 to push the agenda for more war.
Other countries were recruited, coerced, or bribed/paid off to take part, in a confusing hunt for groups deemed "terrorist", with very little agreement and consensus about just what was included in this nebulous category.
Brief? 20 YEARS WAS BRIEF?
You gotta read more bud.
True. The war was more of a policing campaign than an actual war.
The US saw the success they had with japan, and tried to replicate it with Iraq and Afghanistan.
I will be honest though. Iraq seems to show alot of Promise.
Iraq is fully independent, and even votes against the US in the UN in a few cases. This is honestly great, as it means their not a puppet regime.
Iraq genuinely seems to have a bright future, despite what these old ass uncles keep saying about the country. The US shouldv spent that $2 trillion on Iraq instead of afghanistan.
How do you break the cycle of a country that has always clung to a certain way of governance, ideas that are so entrenched in the populist, that they’ve been doing longer than most nations or even people groups have even existed..
trending Twitter hashtags, duh
The current way of governance is way different that the past.
IDK, ask Taiwan.
How: break it up into smaller states, they will compete and learn from each other. And smaller states are just better; look at Taiwan and Vietnam.
@@korakys Nah, we stay a united China to fuck you up. Try harder, loser.
A Chinese pal once said
"f Maozedong died 30 years earlier, he would be a legendary man.
If Mao Zedong died 20 years earlier, he would still be a model for Chinese leaders to follow.
10 years earlier, he'd be an outstanding man.
But by the time he died, his reputation is tarnished by foolish mistakes.
He failed to relinquish power when the time was right, and didn't consult enough people.
I fear the same will happen with Winnie the Pooh."
The Chinese have continually stumbled because, well, they are Chinese
@@scottanno8861 Racist much? As if the whites never stumbled. Oh wait they're stumbling right now.
indeed
Mao dying in 1956 = legendary
Mao dying in 1966 = 50/50 still ok
Mao dying in 1976 = he clearly did not know when to exit so he looks better in the history books
one has to learn the proper timing to 'exit' - you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain
gotta learn from figures like Lin zexu:
hero for fighting the British in the opium wars
emperor then sends Lin to crush the heavenly kingdom peasant rebellion
Lin: immediately "dies" of the flu before entering the war
had he fought the rebels he would have been an "evil elitist prosecutor of the proletariat" - but lucky for him he died just before having to dirty his hands (such timing much wow)
another example:
Hugo Chavez - dies right before the economy collapses - now can blame everything on his successor LOL
@@onlyfacts4999 You're right. They need to toughen up and unify. Wait..
@@scottanno8861 not cuz they are Chinese stop being a racist. they are stumbling because of there horrible Communist government
9:30 And this is why I, as an African, love western civilization. They did what multiple African civilizations couldn't. They condemned and ended slavery on the continent. yeah, they partook in it but compared to the Arabs and many African kingdoms/empires, they actively worked to end it.
These are all facts that are completely overlooked these days
@@danielwest6095 sad but true. In Nigeria (my country) the British ended the slave trade that the Hausa's and Fulani's used to exploit us in the south. We practically wouldn't exist as a country without their help.
This comment was written by a white man.
Africa had many prosperous civilizations before colonialism west and east Africa not to mention of course north Africa, just because some guy draw a border and called this arbitrary space some arbitrary name doesn't mean that he really created a country, having a national flag and anthem having a name for nationality or passport is what simple minded people think when they talk about countries rather a country is made through the right of conquest if a country was founded by another power then you are basically a puppet and we can easily see that in all of Africa and how Europe especially France is installing puppet dictators all over the continent in order to exploit the natural resources while leaving for you the scraps.
In addition, Slavery was necessary in pre modern warfare , stop judging people from a presentist lens, also the west didn't ban slavery for a moral reason that's just a narrative they push and you've bought into it but rather they ended it because it couldn't be combatable with capitalism (less consumers less working class less profit) it was one of the pillars of the feudal socioeconomic system that ran against every principle of the capitalism.
Also these no contemporary historical evidence that the 2500 years of Trans Saharan or East African slave trade happened on a larger scale than the Atlantic it's an Ad-Hoc claim made by western "historians" or Orientalist with a clear agenda to promote western narrative of a "civilizing factor". Another thing to mention that the Atlantic slave trade was based on racial supremacy unlike what slavery was back then.
Lastly you need to read Al-Muqadima from Ibn-Khaldun it will shed to you a lot of lights on how countries or civilizations are formed and how they vanish.
Peace
Also since you are referring to that time in the video I forgot to mention that Christianity absolutely never banned or even condemned slavery the guy is just making shit up.
Another warlord era of China will be so hard to predict since China is a country with nuclear capability. It's hard to say what would happen if the nukes fall into the hands of warlords. We never seem a major country with nukes falls into civil war. The outcome might be much more deadly than a reformed democratic or isolated China.
no one would use nuclear weapon in a localised conflict unless they're predisposed zealotry. Since using one is essentially scorched earth for the next 30 to 80 year depending on how on how clean/aged the nuclear weapon is.
Unless the central government simply destroys the nukes when it's obvious they're about to fall, like Apartheid South Africa did.
I'd rather have 10 warlord states with nukes than 1 murderous empire. Warlord states are interested in survival and integration with the world instead of world domination.
@@majungasaurusaaaa 10 warlord states with biological weapons then. Say hello to the new black death.
I highly doubt china is going to actually break apart. This is pure copium coming from someone who clearly is insecure about the rise of china. Though giving him the benefit of the doubt, it might be a figure of speech, a 'warlord period' might mean competing factions inside the CCP actively struggling over the direction where the country should go without it actually devolving to civil war.
I think humanity as a whole is authoritarian in nature. Tribal chiefs, kings and emperors have been the leaders since prehistory. The Greeks and Romans were the exception and not the rule, albeit modern liberalism and republican style governments can find their roots there. Even after the Roman Republic, kingdoms were the European norm for well over a thousand years.
Yes I think your right and acknowledging this helps overcome that nature.
The Germanic Tribes were not authoritarian. Kingdoms aren't inherently authoritarian. They are often led by charismatic leaders who can get different groups or vassals to work together. If not, they lose power. The Roman Empire was more authoritarian.
@@shorewall you can not be a democracy and not be authoritarian, but you can't be a real democracy and be authoritarian.
I'd assume the Roman empire was also quite authoritarian in many ways. As for the Greeks, I assumed the Spartans were very authoritarian.
I disagree, most of human history was of humans as hunter-gatherers that lived communally and shared wealth, humans as a species are not inherently authoritarian because upwards of 95% of the time of human existence on earth has been a story of peaceful and communal life. I
Correction: Modern is 2015-future. Because when I traveled in 2010, or 2012 China it was welcoming to foreigners, it was a rusted out shell of old authoritarian rules nobody followed, dusted with Gobi sand. Neon lights flashing with excitement on dirt roads around new factories in the South when Americans brought jobs and hope to a moldy and humid life. 2015 is when you see shopping malls complete construction and open up all across the city, in various cities. Parking garages go from being primarily for scooters and motorcycles to primarily for luxury cars. Young people go from hanging out neat wonton noodles on the street corner and just being employed and enjoying life, to hustling for a better career in the modern economy and scared of having any fun. Even in 2015 traveling around you could still see remnants of 1990s 1980s 2000s, that boom times, and it was mostly demolished in 2016, 2017. A good example is Sanya. Comments?
I think he exaggerated the challenges China would be facing in the future.
2010-2015 was Chinas golden era.
The moment XiJinping became nationalistic, you saw the entire image collapse.
I dont think many chinese are fond of the direction xi jinping is taking the country, despite what they say.
Alot of people want good trade relations with Washington over Russia, yet XiJinping is emotional, and prioritized his friendships, over the country.
Alot of Chinese also wanted a railway from China to America. Americans were excited aswell. But it was pretty obvious what happened next, when XiJinping came to power.
Quite accurately portraying East Asia/China/"China-wannabe". Collectivism vs individualism is pretty much spot on. I do struggle in my personal/work life in the West because what I value (based on confucianism) sometimes clash with western work structure. Sure Companies preach Group synergy, working together etc but in reality, everyone is out for themselves while I'm here somewhat selflessly thinking about what's best for my whole work group and the company. After 5 years, I'm the last one left of my original group since everyone back stabs and leaves company for better paycheck and better social status. My manager? Instead of promoting me, he just hires new people with better schooling but 0 experience on the job skill and give them higher pay grade than I do and have me train them. Sigh. Taking to those that left all said they left mainly because of this manager.. It seems that manager above him don't notice or don't care even though pretty much everyone under him has left while other managers mostly retained employees. Wonderful western society work structure. I should probably threaten to leave or actually leave but I value stability due to having young family and my confucian ideals been working for me so I'm probably going to stay because that's for the best for all for now.
Welcome to BossArchy, Your replaceable anytime and your just a number.
As an American who was raised and born here? As I grow older? I can really relate to how you're feeling. I feel like here in the West people are really out for themselves and I feel like there's a sense of loneliness within the society, especially if you live in the city. It's nice to be in a group in where people have a common goal and are willing to help one another succeed instead of stomping on one another.
Cant you find a better boss and serve him?
A bad boss doesnt deserve a good vassal, even chinese knows that.
Quit and start your own business. Raise your kids back in China.
Just apply for a new job? The next 5 businesses would be happy to take you on and double your salary
This video appears to be 30 minutes long, but it's actually some 50 minutes because you have to pause and read the maps
Yes my man. People say they listen to it in double speed. I do slow, sometimes go back, and pause for graphics
It's quite dehumanising to see some people on the internet thinking everyone in the PRC is as brainwashed as a North Korean. In reality people there debate politics and disagree with their Government 24/7, 365. People seem confused as to how people could 'tolerate' such an Authoritarian system, and the truth is most people do it because the alternative to whatever they *can* get from public outrage is getting beat by police or so much worse.
Sounds mostly like Chinese people are too afraid to sacrifice in order to get those freedoms. Being historically beaten down by the authoritarian governments has baked cowardice into the culture.
@UCXgm9dreh9em7g_iJyWNF1g or maybe they’re comfortable with their government system? You’re a pussy on the internet talking about “cowardice” lmao
@@oldmandoinghighkicksonlyin1368 Alright, badass keyboard warrior. Reveal your identity to us and then go become an activist or whistleblower against your own country first. Or even better: go to China and practice your activism and martyrdom there. But I’d be okay with you starting with your own country first. Let’s see how well you do.
@@ZhangK71 damn you're the one to talk, you can't even speak out against the bully that screwed you up when you were 12.
@@erenb.2806 You know your comeback is weak as fuck when it sounds like it’s made by an _actual_ 12-year-old lmao
Damn that World of Tanks add hit me real hard since I uninstalled the game literally 2 weeks ago...
Real hard in the "I don't regret it, since it's gone so far downhill since 2018" department.
Ikr
I was a big fan until the HE changes. This change destroyed the core gameplay loop. The only people complaining about HE were Clan wars professionals who saw it as a "casual mechanic" that damaged competitive play. I uninstalled about 3 weeks ago but I had stopped playing for a while.
I've never played it and have no interest in it and quite frankly think most of the channels who it sponsors also have no interest in it. This is just the sad reality of making money on youtube these days. But it helps that whatifalthist's voice sounds completely disinterested no matter what he's talking about. Almost makes the sponsor seem sarcastic haha
Hey, come over to the War Thunder side
@@prussianowl233 Straight from one grind-fest to another? No thanks.
9:43
I think it's pretty unfair to take certain kingdoms/empires from western Europe that banned slavery/close systems at varying times(for it to return eventually anyways until final abolishments around the 1800s and early 1900s),
But then generalise all of Islamic and Indian history into one ignoring the various periods and kingdoms/empires that had banned the institions of slavery or reformed similar feudal systems.
Yes.. true..
Not to mention many nation in west actually did it coz they knew its times up.... and they will pay a heavy prize now.. they did all their lucrative profits from slavery and forced other to stop it.. ( not supporting it ) but many nations economy was dependent on it....
I think one of the biggest reasons Taiwan is such a thorn in the mainland's side is that they ditched authoritarianism (Chang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang were pretty heavy on that side), and showed the world that no, chinese people are not inherently destined as slaves of an emperor/goverment, and thus making using this in an argument for the need of liberalization in mainland China not true.
A democratic China structured in a way similar to the EU - free trade, free movement, shared regulations, but with individual states that implement their own policies would be one of the greatest gifts to the world.
Things could be run efficiently, and power-hungry megalomaniacs would be limited in what damage they could cause, all the while the resulting competition would encourage good reforms ranging from social policies to business-friendliness, you would certainly see the Rule of Law develop.
Ironically this system could only develop while there's an outside dominant power that is simultaneously non-hostile, but rather supportive, that is the America of 1980s-1990s
Take population into account first. The entirety of China is vast and contains multiple ethnicities. The island of Taiwan is so tiny and mostly Han.
@@AbeYousef you mean a Consideration?
@@davidwang4402China is still mostly han though
@@abbyalphonse499 True, but also take population into account, something that I didn’t mention.
Edit: my bad I did mention, I’m stupid
The proportions of warfare related casualties in China are so staggering that make WW1 look like just another war.
@Safwaan I didn't use the pandemic as an excuse to not lose weight, you can see the results in my most recent parades, I still miss the donuts though
@Safwaan Nothing that my friend Xi Jinping can't handle for me, as for the mustache and eyes, some meth usually does the work
@Safwaan It is my secret, don't spread, I actually like western stuff
Chinese Military History be like:
Warlord Su Tu Sao fought general Liu Wang at the Battle of Destiny 1080 AD, causalities 8 billion.
There's one thing you need to know about governments. They are merely representations of the values that society holds dear.
This is oversimplification to describe China.
China is an empire: social value of people living near the capital is far different to people living not near to capital. Government and ruler can cherry pick their preferred value and enforce it locally.
This is as flawed as saying Taliban represented Afghan society.
No they aren’t, society does give it power, but often times they act without the people’s wishes in mind, due to lack of representation. Also they don’t always represent society itself, just the more powerful group.
@@csmth96
Well.. they do have a lot of rural support in Afghanistan.
@@mirzahamzabaig5667 Taliban do not need any foreign aid to sustain if they have extensive rural support.
@@csmth96
...no? Economy still exists.. it's not like they can just grow everything there. Especially since their region is mountainous.
14:23 Why Song dynasty is classified as isolationist? It has the largest trade as percentage of GDP in ancient China history.
The trade of silk, porcelain and tea made song the highest gdp per capita in the world of 1000s-1100s.
Fun fact: None of us has watched the entire video yet
True most of the time
Me :3
Yeah that's almost everyone lmao
Unless someone is on double the speed( 2x speed that is)
*2x speed mode activate*
A few points:
-Western individualism absolutely did not spring only from the Germanic tribes. First, a sense of individual rights, responsibilities, and a distinct persona were highly developed in the Greek and Roman worlds. It's true there was always a more Aristocratic flavor to this, it was not necessarily the kind of base level populism we see today (although in Rome it did eventually become this) but it certainly existed there well before they had contact with northern Europe. It just so happens that because the dramatic tribes tend to be less urbanized and less materially wealthy, they had a somewhat flattered social hierarchy than the Mediterraneans. In addition, there is another metaphysical been here from Christianity, which by asserting the Spiritual Equality of All Souls (without proof) leads for the kind of egalitarian liberal individualism you see today, which is very different than what was in the classical world.
- The total deaths from the first World War were around 40 million, so more than all those other events you mentioned.
One thing to keep in mind is that authoritarianism or totalitarianism is basically the norm across human history. Free countries are the exception so another interesting question is whether humans naturally create authoritarian society and the creation of free societies was just a fluke that we take for granted now.
@Bilo while your view certainly holds some truth, it's a vast oversimplification of political history.
Authoritarianism is influenced by many factors like culture, religion, Geography, society and of course like you said monopoly On power.
As a Taiwanese (studied mainly "Chinese" history during my school years ) , I really appreciate the study and research behind this video.
Personally I don't think that there will ever be democracy in China. There's not only no tradition of democracy but there isn't even any tradition of alternate centers of power. Europe never had any god-kings and besides kings/emperors there were always nobles, autonomous citites, merchants, guilds and other centers of power. The first parliaments were often gatherings of nobles which later evolved to represent and include more people which led to modern democracy. But China was either a unified state or fractured chaos when the state collapsed turning it into many warlords ares/warring kingdoms.
Hong Kong was democratic but it's just a city state and it was incredibly influenced by the British and Taiwan is basically a bigger version of the same thing (a small country) and influenced by the Americans for decades because they are protected by them.
The republic of China almost took over all of China. And it still exists today. Of course there can be democracy. Traditions of democracy never existed in a lot places that are democracies today.
@@FrostbitexP The Republic did rule basically all of China at one point. But it was not some sort of shining paragon of democracy, with all the internal factions constantly being at odds with each other (not to mention Yuan Shikai making himself emeperor) until the KMT literally got booted from China. Obviously it was at it's infancy at the time but in the short time it did rule the mainland, it wasn't doing it well. I'm not saying there can't be a democracy, but we should not have democracy for the sake of democracy.
@@FrostbitexP The Original Republic of China, that is the KMT Republic of China, is equally or more oppressive, they were not even as democratic as the CCP. Taiwan transited democratically because they lost much of the Chinese identity, it is essentially westernized in every aspect, and that is also because Taiwan has not been controlled by China for a very long time (it was occupied by Japan before, and had many locals).
So the Taiwan situation is very different from the Mainland.
Korea, or South Korea at least, is a pretty democratic nation. It has it's issues, but it is ahead of most of it's other democratic neighbors in comparison. What do you make of that?
@@lolmeme69_ Taiwan was apparently the most democratic country in Asia according to some democracy index.
The same thing can be said about Russia. You should make a video about them as well.
Actually, Russia has an even worse track record.
@@priestofronaldalt I was just about to say that too lol. At least China somewhat had a Democratic government.
Kraut did a lovely video about the topic already.
China: authoritarian-collectivist but meritocratic.
Russia: authoritarian-collectivist but hereditary monarchy-oligarchy.
When government becomes too big, the citizen is disposable.
The inferiority of their kind makes that government still impotent
@@scottanno8861 inferiority of what? China? The civilization that has been one of the most prosperous for the past 2 millennium? 🤡
@@dustin3294 LOL. The one that's been raped by the Mongols 1000 years ago, the British in the opium wars, literally by the Japanese in WW2, and still can't even take an island it claims just 100 miles off its coast?
@@scottanno8861 You just listed all the event that happened when the country itself was on brink of collapsed or literally in middle of War
@@scottanno8861 and yet they stand 1.4 billion strong, you don’t need to derive self worth from being racist lol
I love the Jungian shadow example you used. 100% on the dot. This video is one of the most educational videos I've seen on youtube. Thank you for such wonderful content :)
Love your channel! I watch it with my wife instead of regular TV. So glad you're putting this hard work out there and if in doubt know that you have big fans all over the world
25:40 - Are you implying that the Yankees won the Civil War so hard that they erased the influence of the other founding cultures, remaking the country solely in their image?
25:00 - Serpentza pointed out that in China the central government is extremely popular, but local administrations are wildly unpopular, because there is a tendency to blame the problems on the local bureaucrats who directly caused them (for now).
local bureaucrats in china are for the most part democratically elected, weeding out the bad actors and underperformers is essential for the party to function at the higher levels because thats where they get their candidates for higher offices.
This reminds me of another great video that was released recently and that deals with a similar issue: "China vs India The State and the Society" by Kraut. That might be great to watch after this for even more information.
Okay so I'm not the onoy one who crosses over between them
I do love me some Kraut. It's just a shame he's a bit of a whig/linear historian and I sense that he has that general sense of cultural shame associated with Europeans (especially Germans). But his videos are informative, well made, and well researched.
@@etherealkraken2662 he's a non white Austrian. Perhaps he just doesn't connect with European culture that much.
@@satyakisil9711 Perhaps. Still a fan of his channel though
I mean the premise is decently accurate, but he doesn't go into any genetic distinctions and roots, and gets vast swaths of history just wrong.
It’s important to note that atleast in the eyes of the Chinese, it doesn’t matter what political system a country has, political stability has a direct translation to the prosperity of a nation. Democracy works well because it’s widely accepted , and although it works in western countries, in other countries it has some obvious downsides. They look at the Soviets as an example of “democratic change”, where the Russian state lost 25% of its land territory influence, dropped from second highest gdp to dropping below the top 10 countries, its geopolitical interests in which were built so meticulously by the previous Tsars lay in ruins as yet another country once in its domain moves closer to the west. And all that was gained was a brief democratic movement before a transition to another authoritarian-like government. For those who think that freedom would make China better is oversimplified, even malicious in the eyes of the Chinese. Unfortunately it’s hard to rally Chinese against the CCP when comments that insult the CCP will never get viewed by the CCP themselves, and the Chinese people who actually read it will obviously get the wrong intention, or even the right intention since obviously there are sinister motives to any comment regarding China. In truth China can be summarized as having a strong state but a weak society. Although this may sound bad, compare it to India which has a weak state but a strong society. China doesn’t get so much media attention because of the things it has done, Mao’s evil actions would not have been exposed if China had not re-emerged as a world power and threaten the existing world order. As such i always feel like videos about China just try and farm views while this fear exists. With no Chinese audience, there is no regulation and no incentive to balance and avoid bias.
I see you also watched the Kraut video!
can you explain how india has strong society? and what “weak state” means?
Please, Mao's fucked up governing are always known by the people
@@mint8648 I guess a good way to put it would be at a local level the customs there were more impactful to the nation as a whole and the direction it took, compared to the higher levels of governance (effective institutions).
People saying India has a strong society and a weak state are getting that from a video done by Kraut.
Basically the customs of the people are more impactful than the laws and effectiveness of the state. China in this case having an overwhelming state compared to the influence of its society (local customs).
India's customs of caste and particular beliefs lead to a not particularly strong state, compared to China, meritocracy wasn't as prevalent and hence strong central and effective government never really took hold, or a turely united China like what has been seen through history since China first came into being. There hasn't really been that many instances of a turely united India by Indians given how old the civilization of that Indian peninsula are.
Weak state I suppose would mean ineffective or it's institutions aren't that effective or working as hoped. The ability to get what needs to be done.
I just see it as customs are society and institutions are the state. Maybe strong isn't the word, but whatever the word is, the customs don't naturally lead to an effective (strong) state.
@@dhruvchawla1996 Yeeee 😂
When people are used to oppression for centuries
authoritarianism will be the norm in their society
There is russia and middle east to
Oh please. Biden cheated to win. America will never have an honest election again. Why don't you start a revolution if you don't want to get used to oppression?
@@wanghui562 Democracy's can also turn Authoritarian.
A minor misinformation at 18:53: while it is true that legalism was the philosophical principle used to rule China from the time the first feudal Chinese dynasty was founded in 3rd century BC all the way to 1911, the officials weren't always selected by a centralized test. China used an "inspect-and-recommend" system before Tang dynasty to select government officials who earned the highest reputation locally by practicing Confucianism, unfortunately it was a poorly organized mess with comparatively many loopholes to exploit.
Jusg asking but can i have the source. I cant seem to find much books on ancient chinese bureaucracy.
so much misinformation in this video. smh
@@bobbyhill1110
You can find a bit of information about it under the "precursor" section on Wikipedia's "Imperial Examination" page.
He also called the Tang Turkish and foreign, I mean they had Turkish ancestry but holy fuck is that inaccurate.
@@illuminaticomfirmed6948 true
love your channel, man
I think it was 2008 that was the tipping point for many of these modernising countries, where a lot of them started down their current path. And not only is the world becoming more conservative but democracy has become a lot less inviting to the common people. Unfortunately if you asked most people in even the US if they believe in democracy theyd likely suggest that authoritarianism is the way to go with a bend in their own groups favor. While most non american/western european democracies havr been skewing to flawed democracies. So the idea of a democratic china is a very hopful one but id say its incredibly unlikely.
It's really wierd to me how westerners started hinging their entire identity as people on the spread of democracy. It's a really shitty system.
China has so many nation ending problems, that when the current regime collapses, the west and Japan will have their way with China and they will probably stop at nothing to make China a democracy
@@priestofronaldalt Japan is in deep doo doo itself so it's a no go on attacking China. As for the west, Europe is in the same boat as Japan, both socially and economically, and I think America is going to be in an isolationist phase when China collapses.
@@thedude5294 yea its probably for the best. they will put in an effort (given probably not the best one) because they will see this as the final victory in the ideological battle against communism and will use this peace to fix some of their own issues.
@@thedude5294 ill take democracy any day over an idiotic authoritarian ruler
One interesting theory I've heard is that after the fall of the USSR China sent over a group of economists to try and figure our why the USSR failed. And they came to the conclusion that, communism was tried too soon in the USSR (they went straight from feudalism to communism) because they didn't allow for the capitalists to come in a build up the society for the communists to take over. But now what we might be seeing is a belief in China that the world is in late state capitalism where the Marxists need to come in and subvert the capitalist to implement some kind of socialist workers paradise.
Also Sorry I hate entering text on my phone so please forgive spelling and grammar
And my opinion on the economic decline we've seen primarily comes from lack of independent money from government.
Best channel on TH-cam . thank you sir !!!!!!!!
Do you think that democracy is a favourable alternative to a functioning Chinese meritocracy? I am by no means an expert so I may be incorrect here, but I have heard that the CCP works roughly as follows. All members begin as low level local representitives and are gradually promoted up the heirarchy based on performance (I would imagine party loyalty is also factored into promotions, but the promotee must be compotent relative to their peers). In theory, this would ensure a compotent government, which is likely why China has been so successful since Mao's regime. While I recognise the capacity for corruption in this system it definitely contains attractive elements that could be the basis of an effective alternative to democracy.
If anyone knows of any good books about the Chinese government and economy, please comment below.
Democracy is "rule of the elite" not "rule of the people" as it says in childrens books.
@Bilo For example, in theory i do have the "freedom of movement." Ofcourse the catch is i need to work atleast 3 months to get enough money to actually go anywhere outside my country, even do anything in a neighbouring country. And thats considering i didnt pay any taxes or eat anything. Which means i need to slave away a whole year, in order to enjoy the promised "freedom of movement" they gave us in 1989. "Freeedom" is a commodity, and you need money to buy it. Not any more free than before tbh.
Doesn't China also have a significant degree of democracy at local and regional level? I'm sure I've read numerous success stories about Chinese citizens getting rid of corrupt local officials through democratic will.
@@PsilentMusicUK Just like most socialist countries, China gives people more to say when it comes to their workplace. Workers get to vote for their factory or firm's party secretary. The party secretary is separate from the bosses and management, and can be elected or recalled any time the people think he doesnt protect their interests. His role is to make sure the management doesnt mistreat the workers. Works alot better than "worker unions" in the West that have no real authority, cuz the party secretary can report the management's misdeeds to the party and get them replaced. It was the same here in the PRB Bulgaria when my dad started working. They got to vote not only for party secretaries but even for management positions. Unfortunately we get no say in work nowadays, you either agree to the bosses terms or left without a job.
@@meganoobbg3387 Workers unions can still be beneficial though. They existed in the USSR and had a lot of clout - a lot more than in the UK, and that's pre-Thatcher. Unions here still have some success when dealing with individual cases, but they are practically impotent when it comes to any large scale issues like working conditions or wages across the sector.
Damn man, you're on a roll, 3 videos in less than a week?! Loving it
Also, you should check out Kraut's new video "China vs India - The State and the Society"
hell yeah , we live in a society .
That video is basically paraphrasing Francis Fukuyama’s book “The Origins of Political Order.” Would highly recommend it to any Whatifalthist fans.
krauts video was just an ummahhh, wish there were more like that
WhatIfAltHist and Kruat are my top favorite channels in terms of geopolitics and history.
I got a notification for this video when I was away from home. I usually have data turned off for TH-cam, but in this case I had to make an exception by turning it off and eating into my data plan.
This is a accurate depiction of China unlike some other channels on TH-cam, keep up mate
We have seen the global map of guilt, shame and fear societies multiple times. I am really curious about the "fear" based society and how it would work exactly, since almost no country shows it. Is it simply "you do something bad, we torture you"? Anyone has input about this?
Fear based societies are extremely rare because unlike guilt-based societies (where social order is policed internally within the individual) or shame-based societies (where members of the community police each other to maintain social order), fear based societies rely on a third party to maintain order - exp. while you may feel guilty if you did something wrong or you will be motivated to do better if your family is disappointed in you, you generally don’t truly “fear” yourself or your family as an institution - but a police officer, someone who is an external force who you don’t really know is much more capable of exercising fear as a force of social control.
This is very difficult and required constant pressure and surveillance, which necessitates a totalitarian state that uses fear to control every facet of a society. If there is a facet of society where fear is not present then that area can then be used nurture things that can undermine the social order (for example see the little cubby hole that was away from surveillance cameras in 1984 where the protagonist kept his diary). It is for this reason that Hannah Arendt defines totalitarian states as a societal structure in which terror permeates both the public and private sphere (see The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt)
As noted by Whatifalthist, fear based societies (I.e. totalitarian) are inherently unstable and can collapse very quickly, which is why they tend to be rare. Examples that I can think of include Stalinist Russia during the Great Purge, The General Government of Poland under Nazi Occupation, Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge, and the Congo Free State under Leopold II. North Korea is in my opinion not an example because ethno-nationalism and a kind of semi-Confucian relationship between the Kim family and the North Korean people is also used to maintain social order, and so is not a fully fear based society (see The Cleanest Race by Brian Reynolds Myers for more)
All society nowadays are a cocktail blend of the 3. You can't build a society purely based on any one of them.
@@JayJay-wf2oe .....But the cocktail components may have different ratios.
For China, it's because privacy used to be (still is in a sense) a privilege only reserved for the state, since they believed that only the state needed to keep secrets. An individual keeping secrets was considered to be untrustworthy, like if you entered my home uninvited and I asked you to leave, you could say "Why? What secrets are you keeping that would cause you to kick me out?"
When you have no privacy, you live in constant worry.
As a southern Chinese it is practically weird to think of us as being ruled by "foreigners", aka northern Chinese, for most of our history.
The fuck you on about 💀💀
I always wanted to know where is the Whatifaltist ship going
I think its going to the capital of Thailand.
its moving to ba sing se
@@nonamesaretaken5616 nah it's moving to the capital of Thailand, don't remember what it's called though.
@@priestofronaldalt look it up then
@@priestofronaldalt Bangkok
Appreciate this community so much.
You did your research on this one. Lotta tricky history to weave through here and I didn't notice any mistakes
Noticed you improved the resolution and cuality of maps (especially topographic ones)👍
I view the rise of China as an ideological challenge to the Western metanarrative of modernity: like how human nature prioritizes freedom, or how liberal democracy is the "end of history" and should be universally adopted regardless of conditions. China's economic growth shows that authoritarian governments can get sh*t done too, and that the future of a nation is not dictated solely by its form of government, but rather the political landscape at large.
I think Chile has proved it before China.
Freedom is not human nature. People in some cultures prefer security, food and wealth. Liberty do not feed their children, freedom do not make money. At least they don't know how abstract ideas, like "liberty" achieve these goals.
The essence of liberty in the west is not its abstract concept, but hundreds of years of practice and social evolution. Through concrete actions, like revolutions, self-governance, communities, the western world became what it is now. Even people in some "democracies", like india, do not really understand liberty in the western sense.
@@gavinwang7886 Chile?? More like Singapore proved it then china copies the model.
I think China proved to the world, that authoritarian governments, and organizational structures in general, are NOT the way to get shit done.
Look how well Russia fared when they dealt with authoritarian governance structures. The entire country gets plagued with misinformation, as no one is willing to challenge the information.
Chinas growth is not sustainable. Once China experiences its first recession, and once the mainlanders experience economic hardships, your gonna see alot of lies from officials and government. Already, we see this with Covid and Evergrande.
@@theburden9920 anything good should be learn to be copied
I really love these deep dives into world civilizations. Usually when you see videos on civilizations you never hear about how their unique cultures shape the pros and cons to their advanced civilizations and you make me crave more
Thanks for bringing this up
I think PRC citizens love the government as long as they believe they are making China prosperous. If that illusion is shattered opinions will change real quick. (like you said and maybe now with the real estate debt crisis and energy crisis)
Yeah especially in the rural areas. Maybe sort of same reasons why many rural areas of US is most Nationalist even if they are poor. China government of course likes to also broadcast any bad news happening overseas especially in the USA.
PRC citizens love the government even they are frozen by cold or starve to death in 1950s. Citizen mentally would not love this, but slave mentally would.
I recently learnt that at the battle of lake Changjin how much ROC surrendered army are sent to Korea and frozen to death. Mao knew those soldiers are sure-death and insist to put them to death. All soldiers can be sacrificed as long as he believes he can kill major UN troops. And his people love Mao, claiming such sacrifices are heroic.
flawed rationale. but, always worth a laugh. regular han citizens will rebel if there is starvation in the urban center, very unlikely to happen. food amount can sustain metropolitan areas, that's for sure
The Chinese love the CCP regardless of how effective the CCP is.
Americans don't understand collectivism.
You see, the PRC and Nazi Germany and the USSR are all democracies. The "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" is allowed to have that name... Because it genuinely is a democracy.
Democracy means the majority rule. "the people" "das volk" "camerata" "товарищи" "同志们" "동지들" rule. They are socialists, from their ideological point of view, the workers and peasants own everything.
This factory is not owned by businessman elite CEO noble Mr Jin Xao... It's instead... Owned by all of us. We all own it. *This is the lie socialists are told.*
Americans don't understand this.
And this follows onto the state level. Everything in China is owned by the Chinese. If you insult the CCP or China, you insult all Chinese. They are all one. The CCP was put there by the majority. Just as Adolf Hitler or Lenin was put into power by the majority.
It wasn't a vote, but it was still the majority.
This is how collectivism works, this is how they think. The North Koreas and Chinese believe they are more democratic and free than the Americans.
So I hate to say it, but the idea that people across the world want to be like the US, is false. Even if in truth the Americans have it better, from the Chinese perspective, China has it better.
You have to settle for the reality... That the Chinese are the ones who want to "liberate" you. Just as the Nazis and Italians fought to "liberate" Europe.
The Chinese think you live in an illusion, that will shatter when they show you "true democracy".
@@csmth96 No thats the mentality of a true believer, a zealot. the same people who would strap explosives to themselves and do suicide bombings. Which. after 20 years. won the war against the US.
I’ve heard someone say that China is more like a civilization state rather than a nation state, seeing as how China has been a kind of constant throughout human history. Europe, Arabia, Africa, India, etc, their societies, kingdoms, empires, and civilizations come and go, but there has always been China
I’d love to see a video explaining why you think the general trends of history still apply today even when technology is so powerful in its ability to circumvent terrain, economic regionalism, and bio engineering.
But human nature.
@@paticusmaximus12 What about human nature? Humans are naturally hypocrital.
@@jackyex yeah we are and we are stubborn and violent and selfish not as smart as we like to think we are and lots of other not always good things just like people in the past. Technology just allows us to be stupid and self destructive faster and better.
@@jackyex I guess my point was...just because we have international consumer distribution networks, realitive ease of travel, and the ability to actually enact eugenics(oh boy bioengineering I have night vision but am still an asshole!) that all that stuff will make things that much better because...human nature.
A good way to think about this is that, no matter how much technology has changed in the past, humans really haven't. At least behaviorally. We might have different ideologies, different religions, new ways to interact with more people faster, but the way we interact, Abc the things we want and need from ourselves and each other, haven't really changed. I'm not going to say humans have an immutable nature, that's highly unlikely to be true, but the one thing that strikes me reading history is how undeniably human we've always been.
as always, a simple question with a complex answer! Recently discovered your channel, glad to find out that someone is still thinking ahead. Like you I don´t think that we are going to a more stable period, but things area what they are...
These videos are amazing! I would definitely suck up almost every new upload you make!
I love your videos so much. They are enlightening and help me expand my understanding of certain subjects in a way that forces critical thought. Keep making awesome vids and thank you!!!
Here are just a few ideas for videos (I don't expect you to do half of these; they're just ideas):
Africa:
What if the Bantu migrations never happened?
What if Songhai never supplanted Mali?
What if the Dutch stayed in South Africa?
What if the zebra could be ridden like the horse?
What if Egypt never united?
What if Egypt remained a major power after the bronze age collapse?
Asia:
What if Wu Zetian converted China to Buddhism?
What if the century of humiliation never happened?
What if the Xinhai revolution took over China?
What if Confucius never existed?
What if Buddhism remained a powerful force in India?
What if Persia was colonised by Russia or Britian?
What if Majapahit never fell?
Europe:
What if Justinian's reconquests never happened?
What if Napoleon never existed?
What if France became a constitutional monarchy like England?
What if Scotland and England never united?
What if Rome became Manichaean instead of Christian?
What if Russia was united by Novgorod instead of Moscow?
What if the revolutions of 1848-1849 succeeded?
What if the reconquista failed?
What if Rome collapsed in the third century?
America:
What if the US was a monarchy?
What if Argentina was a superpower?
What if Bolivar successfully united South America?
What if the Incas repelled the Spanish?
What if the amerindians had horses?
World:
What if an American disease wiped out 90% of the old world's population?
What if the black death never happened?
What if the Turks conquered Morocco and Turkey became a colonial power?
What if Scandinavian countries were colonial powers?
What if Islam never existed?
I want to ride a Zebra.
I think the difference between the USSR and CCP is that in the CCP has somehow tied Chinese nationalism and ideology to communism, so now they are interdependent. If you hate communism you hate China and vice versa. Meanwhile in the Soviet Union, there wasn't such Russian nationalism, but more interdependence and mingling of different ethnic groups as "comrades" working together. That is why they didn't have ethnic cleansing like currently in China (at least after Stalin) and a lot of ethnic minorities were also member (some even high-ranked) of the Party.
Partly because currently all so-called democratic-movement thugs in China blatantly attack everything come from their own country, including every bit of traditional Chinese culture and now even the food. Their madness is really unbelievable to people who don't know what happened in Chinese world. There are no democratic movement, only surrenderist and their counterpart, who use every means to resist the west and hate those thugs, and in turn, being supportive to the communist party. This is how communism linked with nationalism in China. As a Chinese, I really hate this circle but as long as we didn't revitalize our civilization this will be the political environment of China.
lol the USSR Why the USSR didn't have Russian nationalism, don't forget the WWII Soviet propaganda fight for mother Russia
Because there is no communism in China anymore
Chinese just use their political structure to control China
25:38 Oh God yes.
"We are great sinner bathed in the injustices we have inflicted upon all, but you! You *broke the rules!* And now we shall unless the avalanche upon you! Then we'll spend huge amounts of time and money futilely trying to remake you in our image before we drop you like a hot potato and go back to our self-loathing."
This is why you don't kick the giant in the shins people. We might notice and do *something* about it, vigorously. And nobody wants that. That rarely ends well for anyone.
Going back and forth from hiding from the world and trying to control it.
I can't help but make a jojo reference. It's like China goes back and forth between Kira and Diavolo in response to fear and tragedy.
Something about Asian culture in general seems more predisposed towards conformity, whereas Western culture has at least flirted with individualism until truly ramping it up after the USA became the dominant cultural power. I'm mixed White-Asian and at least in my experience, Asians who are more _"culturally Asian"_ seem to have a heightened sense to conform.
Easy example is that I think skepticism in the government is healthy. My friends and relatives in Asia think "the law exists for a reason" and avoid questioning the reasons too much.
The Yellow River is literally the reason why China promoted conformity so much. The river flooded in catastrophic ways so the different Sinitic tribes of prehistoric China HAD to work together to "tame" it. These ideas of collectivism, ritual, harmony, authoritarianism, hierarchy, honor, and etiquette become widespread in the early Chinese states and were later codified by philosophers such as Confucius. Other East Asian states just copied the Chinese philosophical model.
The tang dyansty wasn’t turkic, but there were some turkic influence in the tang dynasty
he's either confused or misinformed. i've seen this kind of thing on some forums or articles, they are incorrect. whatifalthist should do some more research than to rely on suspicious sources
@@sinoroman He has an obsession with Turkic people
Amazing video👌👌
What if the Urals divided the steppe in two? Basically meaning what if the Ural mountains extended to Afghanistan and there was no way around. What would Russia be like? Mongolia? How would this have affected Rome via blocking passage of the huns, what kind of civilizations would form on both sides?
There are two new variables when it comes to contemporary china that can keep it together and the current system in power: 1: The enemy (west/USA) nothing unifies as well as an enemy. 2: Modern technology, by surveilling the population you can quench any early dissidents before they get any followers.
I swear these vids are too good to be free
This is something I’ve asked myself so many times and I continued have dark thoughts of what should be done to the Chinese to stop there authoritarianism and even if it’s possible to stop it. Even with countries like Taiwan,Singapore, and a couple others they still were authoritarian till fairly recently and still only proves small Chinese states can potentially become democratic. (I haven’t watched the video yet I just wanted to say this since I’ve been thinking about it for around a year now)
The people of China are still people. If humans as a species can run real democracy, then China is capable, they have no excuse.
@@priestofronaldalt you can have a democracy, sure. But I doubt a democratic China would be an effective force. It would probably be like India with widespread corruption and discrimination of minorities as well. Not much different than now besides the camps.
Dr. Woozie "Not much different than now besides the camps."
Um....
Yes and taiwan, singapore, japan have all been dominated by one party until recently
If you take a look at Singapore's government, you would see a faulty yet somewhat free system ruled by one political party for about majority of its entire existence. Staying in power only due to its desire and success to increase the economy. Still an authoritarian one, but unusually lenient.
One thing to note about Legalism: it gets a bad rap in modern society as being overly authoritarian, not unfairly might I add, but it should also be noted it was widely considered to be incredibly egalitarian. By it's very dogma, Legalism requires the development of a merit-based system of governance, which has proven highly influential in court politics throughout the history of China. fin
It's still a socialist and classist system of government. The only model that works is the free market capitalist republic one
@@AverageAlien the only thing a free market capitalist republic works for is the rich and powerful pal
@@yanzx01 wrong, complete opposite of reality, capitalism works for every individual, the only enemies of capitalism are sociopathic tyrants or uneducated morons. Which one are you?
@@yanzx01 but then again, why would the words of some dictator fanboy tankie mean anything?
@@AverageAlien I am the one getting milked by the government because they fucked up both the economy and the pandemic. Which delusional dream do you live in?
WhatIfAltHist you should make a video called after WW3 highlighting the world after WW3 depending on who wins to further expand your geopolitics series
Not everyone wants US style capitalism. This may be hard for some to accept, but it is the truth.
did u mean democratic? not capitalistic?
Not everyone wants food either.
A lot of countries want Islamofascism or CCP actual Fascism. :D
I think the Western world has a much too high opinion of its current state.
US never tried to force it's own style of capitalism. It helped countries like France, Germany and Japan greatly after WW2 and the US exported many of their economic theories to these countries and they accepted many of them, yet, Japanese style capitalism, US style capitalism and German style capitalism are quite different, and the US does not have a problem with this.
In response to the thumbnail question: collectivism has a fair bit of overlap with and is more conducive to authoritarianism, but is still separate from it, as the total anarchy often leads to authoritarianism as well, and as demonstrated by other nations in the region collectivist systems can exist outside authoritarian systems
Thanks for the quality time Whatifalthis
Can you do world building societal analysis videos about fictional universes like the Expanse?
sus
He has already done things like that
If you don't mind my two cents. The authors of the expanse do very well in acknowledging human nature, interactions, and societies in a broad sense. However I don't find lines being firmly drawn between mars, earth, and the belt, nor many aspects of the respective entities to be particularly plausible. For example I can absolutely see the belt taking on the fractious system they have, alongside having various cultural aspects such as the extreme aversion to safety hazards and endangerment. However, I don't see them as being less developed in any way, industrially, economically, technologically, etc. than mars, and in fact believe many separate belter states would individually surpass mars. I also doubt the various factions would unify into the belt, mars, and earth entities that they have. Rather I would expect lines would be drawn across these regions. For example a given bloc would contain entities from earth, mars, and the belt and would fave other blocs that do the same. And instead of mostly unified nations these would take the form of much more fluid alliances with far greater sovereignty between members. For example, the US, its loyalist colonies/states, US colonies that broke off but who's interest allign based on a common cultural heritage, compatible economic system, and moral framework, and various other colonies attracted to the alliance simply because it opposes their stronger neighbors. With all these entities acting as allies but still as independent entities. I could see some extra terrestrial colony still developing the epstein drive and leading several colonies in a wave of independence movements similar to how mars did and forming their own bloc. Et Al.
Along similar lines though, I'd love to see whatif's take on the battletech universe. I'd love to see his thoughts on the various implausibilities, idiosyncrasies, of what I view as a *mostly* well developed fictional group of nation states.
@@melvinlemay7366 Without competition between countries like US and China it would be hard to see humans expand to such a degree to create colonies on Mars because of huge expense it would take. I can see also why Earth in Expanse wouldn’t want to give up Mars or the colonies.
please make a video about Israel,and the big question on whether its a part of the west or not
Yet another fantastic video, thank you!
hole up, 17:09 Turkish Tang dynasty? What is he on about? Does the surname of the the ruling family of Tang; Li sound Turkic to you?
Though the video do raise SOME valid points, such as the dynamics between Confucianism and Legalism.
But it's just trying to simplify a system in reality that is a lot more complex, all done so he can do an oversimplified prediction into the 2050s and 2080s.
Economists who spend their lives studying macroeconomic trends can't even tell for certain what's going to happen in the next 5 years, So I have my reservations on a youtuber's prediction on the most complex country's future 30 years down the line.
If I were to predict the future of China, it'll be a continuation of Socialism with Confucian and Legalist system, these are the Chinese characteristics in the current official state Ideology, ""Socialism with Chinese Characteristics""
So the cyclical dynastic cycle the video trying to push into the 2080s is just not happening when China already have modern institutions, Just like he said, China is industrialized and can't go back
Dynastic cycle was due to Ancient China lacking modern institutions to sustain the meritocratic nature of the government, thus weakening the state. With modern institutions and communication technology, the idea of Nationalism can be easily propagated and cultivated, to a point that the existence of the state becomes the default and the constant truth.
But why? Let us all admit that authoritarianism and democracy are just two directions on the political spectrum. Authoritarianism isn't necessarily bad, democracy isn't necessarily good, and they weren't completely opposed. Americans are accustomed to looking at things in a binary way, but in fact they are both opposing and unified. Whether authoritarianism vs. democracy is good or bad depends on what criteria you use. For China, which has made tremendous progress in the last few decades under authoritarian politics, then for China authoritarianism is good for them. But Westerners believe that if China is strong, the West will be weakened or threatened, which is essentially a dualistic Cold War mentality. In fact, the strength of one country can also lead to the development of other countries, and there are many cases in history, and Westerners should abandon this binary way of thinking.
The way your mic changes around 27 mins is so pleasing
We need a same video but ''Is America naturally Democratic?"
George Washington didn't believe in democracy so...
@@fullmetaltheorist George Washington is not entire America. Just one person and he did gave republic. Anglos are natural Liberal
@@shreyvaghela3963 None of the Founding Fathers were in favor of a pure democracy, read the Federalist Papers, they explicitly outlined why an Athenian style democracy was flawed idea and why the Framers gave us a Republic.
"Anglos are natural Liberal" I take it you mean Anglo-Saxon? Well, as for everyone, that's absurd to claim such a wide generalization, but for the Founding Fathers, it's more reasonable to claim that they were all various shades of Liberal, yes. We'd call it Classical Liberalism now, since the term has drifted significantly in the last 250 years, effectively becoming Conservativism. American Conservatives 'conserve' Classical Liberalism as the Founders and Framers understood it (which just makes the whole internet meme thing of 'owning the libs' plain silly) while Neo-liberalism has drifted into it's whole own thing. So in a fashion, virtually all of American politics still follows a form of Liberalism of one form or another. Baring of course the marx-derived socialists and communists, or the hardline religious groups. I don't know if moral authoritarian Evangelical Christians or Pro-Sharia Law Muslims could be counted as liberal at all.
It's a shame words of such importance have had so much meaning stripped from them. The muddled definition of Liberalism and the interchangeability of the words 'democracy' and 'republic' despite the very major differences (and the effort made by the Framers to distinguish the two) make political discourse so much more complicated than it needs to be and leads to conflict when there need not be conflict.
@@Lusa_Iceheart all of that is irrelevant. One man is not entire nation. You have to look at entire history. America is democratic
@@shreyvaghela3963 Dude. No. America is NOT a democracy. It is a Constitutional Federal Republic. I seriously don't know what history books you are using. You ignored my comment if your stuck on the Washington thing the other person posted about, I was talking about ALL of the Founding Fathers and Framers of the Constitution, many of which disagreed with each other quite vigorously (to the point the fought duals to the death). None of them would have ever called America a democracy, that system didn't even work for a city-state, much less a nation state, they knew that and they specifically made a Republic.
When you put unity above everything else, the individual's needs dissipates.
China is better United then divided
@@davidwang4402 yeah, being united is generally a good thing, but being united by the PRC isn't really a good thing.
@@joedapro1118 Being united is only good if you are a homogenous society. China is like 90% Han, so it works for them. In places like Spain, France or India its absolutely the worst
@@joedapro1118 I believe China under ROC rule would’ve been almost the same. Except it will be an ally of the USA and receive influence.
@@davidwang4402 maybe if the ROC won the war, but they've liberalized SO much since then. I doubt the ROC would have concentration camps today like the PRC does.
I love the content, keep it up! I constantly check your channel for new videos and watch them as quick as I can!