History of the Chinese People

The cultural glories of the Han people have been grossly overstated. The last time the Han people could be truly proud of themselves was during the Tang and Song dynasties, the former for its military might, and the latter for its cultural achievements. Yet, even so, it was not a purely Han effort. The Tang empire was built upon marriages with the hardy nomadic tribes in the northwest. Some of that gung-ho nomadic spirit definitely filtered through.

The next time China came under Han rule (the Ming dynasty), innovation was all but lost and the empire harked back the glorious days of the Han, Tang and Song dynasties. What was left was pure reaction, giving the Manchus a chance at the throne (which I must say they did pretty well, at least in the initial years). Confucianism as we know it today is merely an interpretation by Ming dynasty scholars, much like neo-Classicism, except much more reactionary and fundamentalist.

Even for the successor to the Han people, the current People's Republic of China, its achievements are benchmarked against those of Europe and the United States of America, the so-called modern West.

It is high time for the Han people, and the Chinese as a whole, to re-invent themselves and carve out a path to call their own.

Modern History of Japan

Japanese history has always been in reaction to something:

1868 to 1945 - Japan in reaction to the West

1945 to 2003 - Japan in reaction to its past

Can Japan finally emerge from the shadows of history? Japan needs to find a way to live at peace with herself and the rest of the world, without losing any of its identity. A Japan like the United States is not Japan at all.

A good model to follow is perhaps Japan from the late 19th century to the 1920s, when it was building a strong liberal democracy and focusing on peaceful expansion and development, before militarism took over.