I would respect the proponents of engagement with China in the past more if they said 'It could have worked, but it failed, and we need to look at why' than when they push this 'actually it was never about the things we said it was about at the time' line.
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Replying to @Aelkus
I think one of the things that's hardest for people to accept is that in many ways engagement with the world *did* liberalize Chinese attitudes - and then the Party put a hard choke on it as it reasserted its power.
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I'm glad you made this point. The element of chance and luck is overlooked too much in narratives of inevitable structural change. 1989 happened the way it did in Europe because we had a Soviet leader who in the end didn't want to send in tanks. China had one who did
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Replying to @Pinboard @BeijingPalmer and
There's a very different trajectory China could have followed from 2012, which in retrospect would have vindicated everyone who believes economic liberalism must lead to political pluralism. But the reality is we just roll the dice a lot
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Replying to @Pinboard @BeijingPalmer and
Anyway someone should write a sprawling novel about whether history is determined by individuals or great currents of inevitable fate, and make their wife retype it ten times
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if we're thinking of the same book, I think she actually *copied it by hand*
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The face of a woman who has had enough of this bullshitpic.twitter.com/lssoPOTQ06
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you're familiar with when he gave her his sex diary on the wedding night?
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No, I just remember a similar scene in Anna Karenina
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I recommend A.N. Wilson's highly entertaining biography, which is a mixture of blinding flashes of insight and total nonsense, like a lot of Wilson's writing.
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