Choose A Book … First One Is Free
Available for online purchase, each book stands alone. Click on the title to buy.
Book 1 -AN INTRODUCTION – WHAT IS CHINESENESS (Free)
No one gets Chineseness “right.” There is no “right” way to understand China, as there is no right way to understand Chicagoness or any culture that has been, is now, and will be changing constantly. Let’s use a sports metaphor. All we can work on are tendencies. Every individual situation is different. But in a binary choice if we are right 55% of the time, we will be long term winners.
China has always been buffeted by conflicting dualities – conflict and harmony, obligations and self-assertion, local prerogatives and imperial edicts, unity and fragmentation, autarky and trade. One could say, yin and yang. These books will help you find some constants. Along the way, I hope you can get some idea of “what makes China China” Zhongguo suoyi wei Zhongguo 中国 所以為中国.
This book 1 contains references to Chinese and non-Chinese thinkers who have also explored the Chineseness idea.
This really is an introduction to the following books, and is offered without charge. I have kept most books short, around a hundred pages, plus or minus.
To start –
… Through a glass, darkly … Heaven and the Yellow Emperor ….
“If we were to characterize in one word the Chinese way of life for the last two thousand years, the word would be ‘Confucian.’ No other individual in Chinese history has so deeply influenced the life and thought of his people, as a transmitter, teacher and creative interpreter of the ancient culture and literature and as a moulder of the Chinese mind and character.”
Wm. Theodore de Bary, The Trouble With Confucianism. Harvard University Press, 1996
What Chinese people worship is the family and clan, so China only adheres to the doctrines of family and clan, not to the state-nation. Foreign observers say that Chinese are a sheet of loose sand yipan sansha 一 盘散沙
Sun Yat-sen (Sun Yixian, Sun Zhongshan) speech on the Three Principles of the People, 1924
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Book 2 -IS CONFUCIANISM A RELIGION?
Book 2a ($21.99 – Purchase Online Now: $9.99)
Book 2b ($21.99 – Purchase Online Now: $9.99)
Book 2c ($21.99 – Purchase Online Now: $9.99)
Americans on the left and right need a way to talk about tolerance, benevolence, rights and responsibilities. Christian morality as experienced is not an appealing answer for many. The left gives us rights but no responsibilities. The rise of the “nones” (people without a religious affiliation) and simultaneous rise of those professing to be “spiritual but not religious” speaks to a need for an ethic that offers “love one another” and “do unto others …” without the dogma and commercial trappings of some mainstream faiths. Confucianism is the middle ground that we need to carry us into a more peaceful and loving future.
This book is in three parts. Book 2a (Chapters 1 through 6) is background on American cultural divisions and describes how a virtue ethic like Confucianism can assist in American culture wars. Book 2b (Chapters 7, 8 and 9) answers objections to Confucianism as moral guidance and provides comparisons with Christianity. Book 2c contains Appendices and more detailed answers – golden rule, spirituality, teleology and sacred texts.
Each of the three is a standalone work, but obviously they work better together. How like life. (Book 2a, 99 pages; Book 2b, 99 pages; Book 2c, 99 pages)
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Forthcoming Book:
Book 3 -CHINESENESS: THE EARLY YEARS – WHAT LIES BEHIND
Book 3a ($21.99 – Purchase Online Now: $9.99)
Book 3b ($21.99 – Purchase Online Now: $9.99)
Heaven and the Yellow Emperor … a point distant in time … to about 1000 BCE
You may have heard it – Chinese extolling their 5000 years of continuous Chinese culture wuqiannian de wenhua and it gets a bit old for Americans, whose principal contributions to world culture, I tell students, are basketball and time zones. But 5000 years seems a rather extravagant claim. That would take Chinese culture back before the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh. Yes to the emperors, the son of heaven, and the palaces, and the art and sculpture and Confucius. But all that takes us back about 3600 years. Is there any justification for the ‘5000 years’ meme?
And … why are Greeks not Chinese? Greek and then Roman cultures evolved about the same time as Chinese. Why did the Roman empire collapse, not to be reborn, and Chinese dynasties maintained? What is that “west v east” distinction? The importance of trade and the faceless in Chinese art and identifiable persons in Greek and Roman.
This book is in two parts. Book 3a – Chapters 1, 2, and 3 – is Neolithic prehistory, then the Bronze Age and formation of states and kingdoms and moving from tribal conflicts to Shang and Zhou. Book 3b is a bit more on archeology, then empires and Warring States and emergence of Qin. And a bit on terms – zhongguo and huaxia and seres. And strategic thinking – “Hide your light and bide your time” and “peaceful rise” and “reform and opening up” and now “common prosperity.” All inform a sense of Chineseness. (Book 3a, 99 pages; Book 3b, 99 pages)
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Forthcoming Book:
Book 4 -CHINESENESS: LANGUAGE AND CULTURE – WHAT LIES BENEATH
Book 4a ($21.99 – Purchase Online Now: $9.99)
Book 4b ($21.99 – Purchase Online Now: $9.99)
Why do they behave that way? Why can’t they just tell the truth? And when I ask, why do I get accused of this ridiculous, ‘hurting the feelings of the Chinese people?’ – an American rant on “lying, cheating foreigners.”
“I will give thee tables of stone, a law and commandants which I have written.” – Exodus 24:12
“… look west for science, China for culture.”
What evolved in the next 2000 years … …
This book is in two parts. Book 4a is language, writing and culture, correlative reasoning and control of information. Writing as a tool of trade and a tool of domination. Correlation may not be causation, but it can rhyme. Book 4b is trade, harmony, performative declamation and truth. Who owns the truth? What is this moral freedom business, anyway? (Book 4a, 99 pages; Book 4b, 99 pages)
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Forthcoming Book:
Book 5 -CHINESENESS: WE ARE FAMILY … and BROTHERS AND SISTERS
Book 5a ($21.99 – Purchase Online Now: $9.99)
Book 5b ($21.99 – Purchase Online Now: $9.99)
… the first circle … the past is prologue (1) … A leader should be a leader, husband a husband, son a son, brother a brother, friend a friend
… … the second circle … We are all han people … the past is prologue (2). This book is in two parts. Book 5a is family values, the incredible extended family, the clan, the status of the individual in Chinese culture and … you know, most family conflicts are about money – development zones, overbuilding, demographics, and the hundreds of millions who will not make it. Book 5b is about mystery, struggle, and trust. That is, information does not want to be free and sharing is not caring. CCP leaders know the phrase – “You die, I live.” And is China a social volcano? (Book 5a, 99 pages; Book 5b, 99 pages)
Forthcoming Book:
Book 6 -CHINESENESS: WHAT MANIFESTS ITSELF ($21.99 – Purchase Online Now: $9.99)
… what we foreigners see … “it’s the economy, stupid”… land use and real estate and grow GDP. Urban planning as if the economy mattered. Beyond that, the Chinese version of Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents. Now China faces existential problems created by the one-child policy and the economic development model of “too much is not enough.” By 2100, the population will halve. The 40 year economic model is past its sell date. At the same time, China leads the world in new technology in nearly every field – robots, batteries, AI, energy, medicine. It is hoovering up the world’s oil, gas, minerals. Siberia looks promising. It is energetic and positive, unlike the US now. For CCP now, just like in 1902, What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement. (99 pages)
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Forthcoming Book:
Book 7 -CHINESENESS: WHY DID NO ONE WRITE “DECLINE AND FALL OF THE CHINESE EMPIRE?” ($21.99 – Purchase Online Now: $9.99)
Chinese history is full of internal wars, rebellions, palace violence, natural calamities and unrest. The claim of thousands of years of peace is ridiculous. Tianxia all under heaven should be ruled by the emperor, including the barbarians … sorry, foreigners.
Why has an imperial China with a single supreme leader persevered for more than 2000 years? Why did no one write “Decline and fall of the Chinese empire”? In the US, we asked and answered, “what survived Gone with the Wind?” Same, too, in China. China as a libertarian heaven. Hint: If you don’t have traditions of civil society or individual autonomy, you can’t lose them …. The few. The proud. The literati. Semper fi. (99 pages)
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Forthcoming Book:
Book 8 -CHINESENESS: CONFUCIAN VALUES AND CIVIL SOCIETY ($21.99 – Purchase Online Now: $9.99)
Bottom up Confucianism meets top down Confucianism … I took my Chinese government students to voting places in 2012, to see the election judges and voting machines and booths and the last-minute volunteer handouts for president and senators and congressmen and governor and treasurer and state representatives and city clerk and alderman and judges and trustees of the water reclamation district … this extraordinary expenditure of money and time, by government and individuals for … what?
It is an old truism that a civil society and a middle class are necessary for democracy to thrive. China has never had democracy, but it certainly has a large and growing middle class. Some China observers wonder whether the democratic necessities also work in the other direction – does a large middle class at some point demand democracy? Do Confucian values assist or impede a move in the direction of democracy? I think the questions are ill-formed with respect to China.
How should Chinese culture parse this –
Mencius in Jin Xin II, 60 tells us the people are most important, the sovereign least important. The Legalist Book of Lord Shang in Discussion About the People (Shang Jun Shu 1) tells us kindness and benevolence are the foster-mother of transgression – “… If the people are stronger than the government, the state is weak … with the result that the state will be dismembered and will come to ruin … if … the ruler has the wherewithal for defence and war, with the result that the state will flourish and attain supremacy.” (99 pages)
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Forthcoming Book:
Book 9 -CHINESENESS: CIVILIZATION STATE AND FREEDOM ($21.99 – Purchase Online Now: $9.99)
What do you mean, Chinese lack freedom? Chinese can start a business quite easily. Chinese invest, innovate, go to movies and buy books and travel internationally. Shopping malls are far superior in style to anything in the US.
In 2025 the tariff conflict between the US and China is fundamentally a stupid conflict. And also, fundamentally, it is of no matter which economy has greater GDP. What does matter are those freedoms we claim to cherish – to speak and write and associate freely, to criticize government, to think as we wish. That is what Taiwan is really about, and why 140,000 people left Hong Kong between 2020 and 2022. And Tibet and Xinjiang and Ningxia and Hong Kong.
Millions of middle class Chinese live lives that are full of material well-being and they don’t have those freedoms. So why we are so protective of those values? What is freedom for? Hint: agency, the ability “to feel useful in this old world” as Davy Crockett told us in the 1960 movie Alamo. And you can get agency through freedom, but also other ways – like identification with a leader, as we see now in China and in the US. I discuss work by Joseph Chan and Ci Jiwei. (99 pages)
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Forthcoming Book:
Book 10 -CHINESENESS: SOCIETY, CIVIL AND UN- ($21.99 – Purchase Online Now: $9.99)
Confucius in the modern era … a society of strangers … in China and the US. Civility before social capital, social capital before civil society. Trust in the family is one thing. Trust in strangers is another. De Tocqueville said Americans could do that.
What is this social capital thing? I like my own definition – social capital is that which allows transformation of the intangible – plans or ideas – into the tangible – buildings or programs or businesses. Social capital reduces transaction costs in business and government. That is how Chinese businesses have been able to grow dramatically. Within the family, within the network, social capital can be very high.
Now, forget tariffs. Forget IP theft. Forget AI, EVs, solar panels and Chinese dominance of world markets in minerals and high tech and consumer goods.
The fundamental US-China competition is not about those things. It is the struggle between competing philosophies of governance and morality – as King Arthur told us in the movie version of Camelot – might for right instead of might is right.
Central to Marxist theory is the claim that civil society is a fraud. The apparent plurality of nonstate institutions adds up to a system systematically slanted in favor of one category (“class”) of people, defined in terms of their relationship to the available means of production (from Ernest Gellner, The Civil and the Sacred, 1990)
Well, ok – sounds a bit like America now.
And tianxia weigong – all under Heaven is held in common. Datong refers to the great unity of all people under heaven – a tolerant and benevolent society. Sounds wonderful … but this is the real world. Legalist values with a Confucian façade. (99 pages)
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Forthcoming Book:
Book 11 -CHINESE PEOPLE UNDER OCCUPATION – A USEFUL LENS FOR UNDERSTANDING TODAY’S CHINA … … AND SOME NOTES ON CCP INTERNAL RESILIENCE ($21.99 – Purchase Online Now: $9.99)
Chinese People Under Occupation – A Useful Lens for Understanding Today’s China. It can help to think about the Chinese as an occupied people – ruled now by the CCP Dynasty. It is useful to realize that most of CCP is no longer really communist. But there is a resilience internal to CCP. What keeps cadres loyal to the system they joined years ago?
The arguments for resilience – the emperor, the literati, and the farmers – any two against the other. Benefits and Mancur Olson on stationary bandits. CCP as the new literati and the light touch of central government on the people. A village aphorism – “the Center is our benefactor, the province is our relative, the county is a good person, the township is an evil person and the village is our enemy. (99 pages)
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Forthcoming Book:
Book 12 -CHINESENESS: FAILURES OF CIVILITY AND SOCIAL CAPITAL NOW ($21.99 – Purchase Online Now: $9.99)
In the west, the lack of an active civil society is politically worrisome. Civil society is the home of organized disagreement with government but also a home of innovative ideas and the force for change. Without it, democracy is politically adrift. Rulers can never be certain of the quality of information they get. People lose the sense of community that comes with civility and social capital. There are information and emotional holes in society.
What does a society look like without civility? China is a good example.
“We don’t trust nobody nobody sent”- old Chicago saying in ward politics. And we don’t need no stinking civil society. And a short itemization of failures internationally. You remember – In 2019, the NBA was banned in China and criticized strongly in the US for first, failing to punish executive Daryl Morley over a personal comment on Taiwan and then second, for failing to protect Morley and his free speech rights. There is no good way out for many American businesses. (99 pages)
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Forthcoming Book:
Book 13 -CHINESENESS: US AND CHINA – SOME SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES ($21.99 – Purchase Online Now: $9.99)
We write all the time about differences between the US and China. Amid the anxiety and paranoia about ascendant China it might help to consider a few ways in which the US and China are similar. Just for some perspective. So, geography and physical size and weather. Ok.
But health care and education as principal long term problems; government debt; isolated males and deteriorated family structures; moving to a better school district; local government fiscal problems; corruption and a shameful history; an evolving pattern of loyalty to a leader over government expertise. And symbiosis of oligarchs and government. (99 pages)
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