He would be glad to know that his intellectual offsprings have become so powerful that a smart brain operating from a single room can have the potential to conquer the entire world.
June 23, 2012
March 23, 2012
Smoke
Dear Chinese government:
According to the following statistics, 50% of Chinese men smoke, consuming one-third of the world’s cigarettes.
As you can imagine, this is a significant drag-down of the Chinese national power, given the well known facts about health hazards caused by smoking.
Please put your authoritarian power in good use and ban smoking outright. No, not just in public places, but illegalize cigarettes all together.
Unlike the dysfunctional democracies like America who have to listen to tobacco lobbyists, you have no such baggage. And I am pretty sure no Chinese tobacco kingpin is more powerful than Bo Xilai, whom you sacked with such ease and grace just last week.
You can easily bankrupt the world’s tobacco industry by eliminating one-third of their revenues. This will go down as one of the major achievements in human history.
The last dynasty, Qing, in a much weaker state, had the gut to ban opium. I am pretty sure China is strong enough now to win a second opium war even if some foreign imperial power is stupid enough to start one.
Sincerely yours.
December 30, 2011
James Landay on “China Will Overtake the US in Computing…Maybe, Someday…”
This is a mandatory reading for all my (current and future) students with an initial Asian training:
First of all, let me share one of the biggest secrets of China (and to some degree other Asian countries like Japan and Korea as well as ethnic Chinese states like Taiwan and Singapore). Do you ever wonder why China developed this authoritarian culture in the first place? It is very simple: a conforming population is much easier to rule than one that can think freely. The Chinese emperors were very calculating on this; they did not even allow alternative sources of authorities to challenge them (like the bishops who can thorn up to European emperors’ arses). On the other hand, they also want the population to be reasonably fluent so that the country can be productive. Thus the duality of the Chinese/Asian education system: on one hand it enforces conformity, and on the other encourages intellect and hard working.
Unfortunately, even though this system worked for the past agriculture and manufacture dominant economic systems, a knowledge-based economy will require citizens who can think. So China will have to change its culture and education systems, or face competitive disadvantages.
Part of the fun for my past MSR and current HKU posts is being close enough to help while far enough to not get dragged down into the sinkhole. I am curious how much I can do as an individual, or there is really some grander scale environmental stuff that I simply cannot reproduce. Results so far are very encouraging; Asian students who worked with me for sufficiently long periods of time (at least one SIGGRAPH cycle) have shown significant progress of thinking skills and at least one of them managed to create SIGGRAPH ideas.
For the sake of more fun, I now extend my grand challenge to MSR Asia to all my (past, current, and future) students: the first one to publish a single-authored SIGGRAPH paper will receive my full financial support, out of my own pocket instead of any grant, to make the trip. (Really, it is not that hard; I am not very smart, and I did that twice already. I make this challenge because only with a single-authored SIGGRAPH paper can you prove your full independence, including creativity.)
November 25, 2011
Voluntary genocide
During thanksgiving the subject of turkey was brought up, which lead to the subject about genocide of American Indians. This reminded me of an Economist article I read earlier, about the extinction of Manchu. And that lead to my thoughts about *voluntary genocide*.
To commit voluntary genocide, all one country/race needs to do is to be (1) audacious enough to invade China, (2) good enough to win the war, and (3) stubborn enough to stay for a sufficiently long period of time. After that, the invading race will be absorbed by the Chinese.
The Japanese were least successful (and most lucky) to reach only stage 1, thus they are still a country. I am not sure exactly what they were thinking before the war, but mathematically, even if they had stationed every Japanese man in China there simply were not enough of them to be in control.
The Mongols were slightly more successful (and less lucky) to reach stage 2; they would have been a Chinese province if the Russians hadn’t intervened.
The Manchus were the most successful (and the least lucky) to reach stage 3. So within just one century after ruling the world’s largest empire, they are now on the brink of extinction.
Probably only the (Asian) Indians have sufficiently large population and strong enough culture to get to China without being completely absorbed. The geography (Himalaya) has prevented any large scale war between these 2 countries throughout the human history. The technology might have finally made this feasible now, though. My calculation is that if China were to engage in any future war with a neighboring country, India would be the most likely one. And I would be curious to see how they will fare.
“Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.” – Benjamin Disraeli
September 11, 2011
A year of no significance
1587, a Year of No Significance (Chinese: 萬曆十五年) is a book by historian Ray Huang (Chinese: 黃仁宇) which described how a sequence of seemingly insignificant events precipitated the eventual downfall of the Ming dynasty, as well as China itself. I remember getting totally fascinated by this book as a high school kid. The book is not flawless, but it is fascinating in highlighting how significant long term trends, which usually happen slowly, are often preceded by very small signs.
It is like the famous Chinese proverb, 一葉知秋: from a falling tree leaf one can know that the autumn is coming.
If future historians are going to write a similar book about the eventual downfall of the America (dynasty) as well as the entire West, the analogous year will be 2001, or probably even a specific day, September 11. Contrast to 1587, this is a year of *major* significance. But THE event is no less precipitating than those in 1587.
I am looking forward to read this book, and I hope it will be as enthralling as the one by Ray Huang.
August 25, 2010
The man who loved China
I am not interested in biography, but I approached this book due to the Needham question: why China was taken over by the west in science and technology around 1500 AD after the amazing advances in earlier times? I was hoping that this book will provide answers, even though I never realistically expected that since this is a question about history, and thus can never be verified scientifically.
Well, I was right about that, as obviously nobody has ever managed to answer the Needham question. But that does not really bother me for several reasons.
First, I, like many others who have been through both Chinese and American style educations, know the main reasons more or less, even though none of us can rigorously prove anything. But answering a historical question is not really the point. The point is to find remedies and solutions. That, fortunately, I, just like many others, already know how to do practically, as evident from our achievements in modern scientific and technological activities.
Second, as pointed out in the book, the Needham question might be moot anyway, as China seems to have regained its rigor and creativity. But I cannot fully agree with this point; I agree that China has been improving, but it still has work to do to catch up with the American level creativity. Even from the young Chinese students I am collaborating today I can still see a lot of old problems that probably have been accumulated through hundreds if not thousands years of bad cultural impacts. But this is obviously fixable at least in an individual level; the million dollar question is whether it is also possible in a large national or even ethnic wise scale.
The funny thing is that the Needham question was not formally addressed until at the epilogue of the book. So the book is really testing my patience. Fortunately, the main part of the book, essentially the biography of Joseph Needham, turns out to be a fascinating read.
I recommend this book to anyone, especially (ethnic) Chinese working in the field of science and technology.
October 29, 2009
Mongol
I watched this movie a few nights ago. It is about Genghis Khan’s early life, between his childhood and his unification of the Mongolian tribes. I guess people might expect or want to see his more (in)famous later life for conquering the entire world, but that belongs to a (rumored) sequel. I actually prefer to watch his early life as that part is less well known.
The movie is unique in several aspects. The dialogues are primarily in Mongolian with occasional Mandarin. Mongolian sounds interesting, kind of halfway between Mandarin and Korean, even though the Mongolian spoken by most actors in the movie are not very authentic. (I have probably heard more authentic ones from real Mongols in Beijing airport.) The scenery is gorgeous, and in fact so difficult to film that the director has been thinking about cutting short or even canceling the sequels. The plot is a bit loose and incoherent, but the style nicely (and maybe coincidentally) reflects the mythological nature of Genghis Khan’s early life and the nomadic Mongolian life style around that time.
The Mongols also possess certain historical fascination to me. The Chinese history books, authored primarily by the Han Chinese, naturally debased the Mongols (and any other ethnic minorities) as barbarians and describe their histories mainly as window dressings of the greatness of the Middle Kingdom. As far as I could recall I have never read a sufficiently accurate and non-biased recount of the Mongolian history. (The history text books authored by the Nationalist government in Taiwan around my time did not even recognize Mongol as an independent country.) This is sad, as the Mongols have made major impacts to world history and geography during their great conquering around the thirteenth century, however short living their empire was. As analyzed by certain historians (e.g. see False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World, by Alan Beattie), the Mongols could be responsible for the formation of dictatorship/authoritarian countries like Russia, Iran, and China, which were actually more liberal than the Europeans prior to the Mongolian invasion.