China & Globalization Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China & Globalization Jeffrey Wasserstrom Abstract: In recent decades, China has become increasingly enmeshed in global institutions and global flows. This article places that phenomenon into historical perspective via a look back to important globalizing trends of a key earlier period: the late 1800s through early 1900s. The essay draws heavily on C. A. Bayly’s discussion of that period, which emphasizes the way that moves toward uniformity do not necessarily produce homogeneity. Bayly’s work is used both to illustrate the limitations of some competing ideas about contemporary globalization and how China is or is not being transformed by it, and to provide a basis for arguing that we are again seeing, now in China, important moves toward uniformity that are not erasing important differences between cultures and countries. How far back in time should one begin in an essay on China and globalization? The term globalization may have gained widespread purchase in its current sense only beginning in the 1960s, but ideas, objects, and people have been circulating across the planet for millennia. This has led some analysts to identify precursors to, or even earlier stages of, globalization in eras much before our own. More- over, it is commonplace to describe China as having a very long history. And recent scholarship–on topics ranging from Silk Road travelers of the Tang Dynasty (618–907) to voyages of exploration and visits to Beijing by Jesuits during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644)–has clearly shown that for much of that extended past, clichés of Chinese isolation and self-containment notwithstanding, China has been continually influenced by, and in turn has had a con - tinual influence on, populations and developments JEFFREY WASSERSTROM is the outside its ever-shifting borders.1 Chancellor’s Professor of History Still, given the current interest in making sense at the University of California, Ir - of China’s rise during a new stage of globalization, vine. His publications include China one historical period stands out as a particularly in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (rev. ed., 2013), Global appealing point of departure: the mid-nineteenth Shanghai, 1850–2010 (2009), and century to early twentieth century. The appeal of Student Protests in Twentieth-Century using this period to frame contemporary dilemmas China: The View from Shanghai (1991). is twofold. First, in that era, as in ours, new tech- © 2014 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences doi:10.1162/DAED_a_00280 157 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00280 by guest on 28 September 2021 China & nologies of communication and trans- ing powers, in short, much as China is Global - portation were sources of fascination and viewed by some in this early part of the ization concern. Second, it was a time, like the twenty-½rst century. present, when China’s place in the world The pre–World War I period, Bayly ar - was generating anxiety–though the con- gues, was on many fronts characterized by cern was primarily domestic, due to Chi - a push toward uniformity, but not homoge- na’s decline from a position of centrality, nization. Countries across the globe became as opposed to today’s international con- tightly enmeshed in an international or - cern about its resurgence. der rooted in new kinds of standardiza- British historian C. A. Bayly’s magisterial tion that decreased the variation between work, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780 places. This new order affected many do - –1914: Global Connections and Comparisons, mains, was registered in many ways, and is an ideal launching point for introducing can be appreciated through the investiga- that earlier period into a discussion of tion of many different historical develop- China’s rise and the contemporary period ments, including the founding of new of globalization. Taking the long view of kinds of globally minded organizations globalization, Bayly describes the decades and the growth of new kinds of globally leading up to World War I–during which minded events, in which countries were China’s fortunes declined dramatically as represented as homologous but distinc- the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) suffered a tive units. The clothes worn by powerful series of losses in wars with foreign pow- men across the globe during this period is ers and struggled to contain devastating one telling example of uniformity with- domestic insurrections–as host to a “great out homogenization. In earlier periods, acceleration” of globalizing processes. elite men dressed radically different from These were not new processes, but they each other, with styles varying by location took on a decidedly modern character.2 and cultural orientation. But by the early Here, the similarities with our own era are twentieth century, men of power tended striking. Then, as now, people had an ex - to wear the same kinds of clothing, even hilarating yet worrisome sense of a world if, for example, a Japanese leader might add becoming ever more tightly intercon- a samurai sash to his frock coat and top nected, of a planet shrinking as goods, hat ensemble. people, fashions, and cultural forms, but Today as well, it is useful to see global- also violence, moved across borders in ization as leading to standardization with - nov el ways and at faster speeds. Then, as out eclipsing difference. As venues that now, the leading states of the status quo emphasize both the basic homologies be - ante (Britain and France) worried (as the tween and differences among countries, United States does today) about being international expositions during the ear- displaced from their positions atop the lier period of “great acceleration” and the glob al hierarchy. It was a time when lead- Olympic Games today prove useful in il - ing thinkers within less powerful polities lustrating the parallels between the two viewed the rise of new powers–such as periods. The country-speci½c exhibitions Germany and Japan, as well as the United at the great World’s Fairs of the 1800s and States–with a mix of envy, concern, and early 1900s, like the opening ceremonies a desire to ½gure out how to adapt to their of contemporary Olympic Games, encour- home states the characteristics and growth aged states to present themselves as mutu- strategies of the new ascendants in the ally intelligible entities, with a similar set global hierarchy. They viewed these ris- of markers (flags of a basic shape), while 158 Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00280 by guest on 28 September 2021 also drawing attention to what sets them flected and carried forward what Bayly Jeffrey apart from one another (colors and sym- calls the era’s tendency toward the “bu - Wasser - strom bols on those flags). Hierarchical status reau cratization of belief.” The goal of this was also plainly marked: whether a coun- parliament was to bring together repre- try was the sort that might host a World’s sentatives of the world’s “ten great reli- Fair or simply host an exhibition at one; gions” who would together explore the and whether a country’s exhibition includ- char acteristics that these creeds held in ed its manufactures and machines (signs common, as well as the features that made of power and often military might, with them distinctive.3 Christianity, Judaism, large artillery pieces, for example, among Islam, and Zoroastrianism were represent- the objects displayed) or simply included ed, in addition to six other creeds, all with its handicrafts and antiquities (a sign of a Asian roots. Among these was Confucian- lower place in the global order). ism, which has long de½ed easy classi½ca - The great international expositions were tion as either a religion or a philosophy, but initially held only in the leading Euro- was then, in fact, designated as a religious pean capitals, but by the late nineteenth faith by influential ½gures in the novel ½eld century, the United States was taking the of religious studies.4 occasional turn at hosting full-fledged Prior to the late nineteenth century, World’s Fairs. At this time, Japan also some of these ten spiritual schools lacked began holding smaller-scale exposition many of the features that we now associate events, becoming the ½rst non-Western with leading religions. Not all were orga - country to do so and the ½rst Asian country nized around clearly speci½ed canonical to be represented by its advanced manu- texts, nor did they all have recognizable factures, as opposed to simply its exotic hierarchies of leaders. But just as countries wares. When the United States hosted were expected to present themselves in World’s Fairs, it generally followed the mutually recognizable ways, religions were template established by the exposition pushed toward standardization. Religious spec tacles staged in Europe, but it also ex - traditions associated with the leading glob - perimented by adding novel features, il - al powers set the model for what a “prop- lustrating one of the many ways that rising er” system of belief was supposed to con- powers both adapt to and leave their mark sist of; thus, Hinduism and Buddhism, on the global order. which had been structured quite differ- The ½rst major non-European World’s ently from one another and from Chris - Fair, the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibi- tianity, made moves to be less completely tion in 1876, was the largest event of its out of step with European expectations. kind ever held in any country, signaling Representatives also made efforts to bring an American ambition not simply to fol- Confucianism in line with expectations low in the footsteps of London and Paris, for a standard “religion,” even though it but to do things on an even greater scale, may have been better classi½ed as a philo- in turn inspiring others to borrow from sophical tradition or secular school of the American playbook.

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