Rising China and Its Postmodern Fate: Memories of Empire in a New Global Context

Charles Horner's Rising and Its Postmodern Fate addresses hot topic of China's claim to rise. Unlike other similarly titled books, it is more interested in analysing what China's rise means for Chinese than what it means for Western militaries and economies. Horner examines how China is seeking to assemble a set of lessons from country's past that can serve as a guide... for China's return to prominence... in (p. 10). He critically assesses lessons that are learned and lessons that are not learned.Chinese leaders have recently advocated the revival of Chinese as the profound substance of China's peaceful development (p. 168). Such a call for return to tradition may seem ordinary in postmodernist world. But new official line in fact represents a dramatic turnaround from earlier understanding of Chinese civilisation as source of all ills among Chinese elites, from May Fourth era to Maoist era.In Horner's analysis, most un-Chinese period of Chinese history is People's Republic. Marxist-Leninist-Maoism was Western and so radical a departure from everything that had come before (p. 3) that China and PRC are not same thing (p. 197). The abandonment of Maoist Charles Horner, Rising and Its Postmodern Fate: Memories of Empire in a New Global Context, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2009, 224 pp.radicalism along with doctrine of People's War makes path of peaceful rise a possibility (p. 137). But such a future does not naturally follow from Chinese history.It is difficult to predict future based on past partly because past itself has been moulded and remoulded to serve present and future. China once interpreted its own past in light of yesterday's failures, but now it is coming to a new appreciation of its past in light of today's successes (p. 100). To better understand rising China's place in world, Chinese are looking back to heydays of Yuan and Ming dynasties. The Yuan dynasty, once treated as an era of failed sinification (p. 24), is now praised for its integration into a world system. The Ming dynasty, once viewed as an era of isolation (pp. 11,38), is now praised for its budding commercial revolution and even deeper integration with global economy. The Zheng He fleets, in particular, are glorified as symbol of China's peaceful rise.Horner argues that there are uncomfortable history lessons that should not be glossed over. During Pax Mongolica, was part of someone else's empire (p. 185). At same time, the Rising of Great Khan provides... an intriguing example of potential for imperial aggrandizement of a China-based regime (p. 32). During Ming-era Rising China, Zheng He fleets engaged in gunboat diplomacy (p. 50) very much like any other imperialist power (p. 53), even though they made no territorial conquests.Horner highlights that Qing history is even more subversive (p. 59) and downright dangerous to men who run today (p. 78). The Qing dynasty is still denounced for bringing humiliation to (p. 12). Yet, during Pax Manjurica in eighteenth century, Manchu emperors added close to a million square miles to proper that Ming dynasty had ruled (p. …