East is east
May 22nd 2010 00:30
The last thing I would have expected to read in an analysis of the recent incident of state fail in Greece and the impending incidents across Europe and the United States was an expression of pure, starry-eyed Orientalism. Yet that’s exactly where Time went, publishing an article by Zachary Karabell on why the developing world was rapidly becoming a much more attractive option for investors.
Even leaving out the fact that most of the “stability” he lauds in places like China was effectively bought by the payroll of a totalitarian security apparatus, there are severe flaws in his thesis. Simply put, Karabell is trying to have it both ways. When the global economy is in good health, Orientalists claim it is due to interconnectedness, that everyone is being buoyed by Confucian growth plans, or whatever. How, then, should we believe that China is insulated from the global economy’s problems in bad times? Surely the dependencies still exist?
Of course they do. But the unspoken suggestion made by Karabell (and many other writers besides) is that those dependencies only go one way, because countries like China are inherently better than countries like the United States. If you recognize an undertone in this suggestion, that’s probably because it is an expression of exceptionalism. You would think that people would thus be careful about it, as American exceptionalism is said to have been one of the factors leading to the perceived inequities in the 20th century’s economic system. And Chinese exceptionalism is a fundamental of its rulers’ governing philosophy . . .
Even leaving out the fact that most of the “stability” he lauds in places like China was effectively bought by the payroll of a totalitarian security apparatus, there are severe flaws in his thesis. Simply put, Karabell is trying to have it both ways. When the global economy is in good health, Orientalists claim it is due to interconnectedness, that everyone is being buoyed by Confucian growth plans, or whatever. How, then, should we believe that China is insulated from the global economy’s problems in bad times? Surely the dependencies still exist?
Of course they do. But the unspoken suggestion made by Karabell (and many other writers besides) is that those dependencies only go one way, because countries like China are inherently better than countries like the United States. If you recognize an undertone in this suggestion, that’s probably because it is an expression of exceptionalism. You would think that people would thus be careful about it, as American exceptionalism is said to have been one of the factors leading to the perceived inequities in the 20th century’s economic system. And Chinese exceptionalism is a fundamental of its rulers’ governing philosophy . . .
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