Years of Poems and Spirits

The Great Divergence, by Kenneth Pomeranz

To understand Pomeranz’s argument in the book, one needs to look no further than at the title, “The Great DIVERGENCE”. It implies a prior “convergence” or “parallelism” that irreversibly separated after a certain point. That is exactly how Pomeranz modeled the development regimes of Western Europe and East Asia around the turn of 19th century.

To establish that the two economic zones were developing in parallel around 1800 (instead of one ahead of the other), Pomeranz spent two-thirds of the book arguing that, the core areas at both ends of Eurasia were comparable in terms of quality of life and per capita wealth. What’s more, he further contested, there was little material difference in their social, economic or institutional makeup to foretell the kind of different outcome as we know today. It seems to me that he aimed his argument mainly against E. L. Jones, who in his book “The European Miracle” claimed Europe had already had a significant lead in productivity and capital accumulation before the boom of oversea colonization. However, Pomeranz was careful not to be distracted by other versions of European Exceptionalism. For example, although he repeatedly discussed women’s role in China, and its negative impact to production and labor migration, he did not elevate the issue to the stratosphere of liberty or equality, as David Lantz did in his book “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations”. I found Pomeranz’s arguments relevant and cogent. He certainly listed enough reasons to cause his readers to pause before making a judgment of European uniqueness. If I have to find any fault with his presentation, it is probably that the professor’s approach is more like “destruction” than “de-construction”.

Thankfully, in the last third of the book, he did present his own theory why Europe eventually had “guns, germs and steel” while Asia withered in comparison. That led to the notion of “convergence” prior to industrialization. According to Pomeranz, core areas of both ends of Eurasia were heading to the same ecological “cul de sac” (p207). Using an array of parameters: population growth, subsistence level consumption, level of labor input and ecological deprivation, he contended that, other than the discovery of coal, there was little significant technology breakthrough to mitigate the Malthusian tension that was fast building in the “Old World”.

His view of how China and England responded to this common crisis, in my opinion, is at the same time fascinating and awkward. Fascinating because, if I followed his logic correctly, he treated England’s overseas expansion as a tenuous “suspension bridge” just long enough to lead England pass the abyss of ecological decline and on to the technology-powered industrialization age. Awkward because, despite repeated assurance that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the way China operated in the past, he seemed to suggest that, in the end, China did make a “genetic” choice to go down the path of labor-intensive production.

Both conclusions carry with them refreshing ideas but some questionable assumptions. Orthodox Marxists regard European overseas exploitation as a part of “primitive capital accumulation”. Yet neither Wallerstein nor Pomeranz accept this categorization wholesomely. Colonization did not factor prominently in the early stage of Wallerstein’s World System. Pomeranz valued the New World market more than did its capital. To be precise, in Pomeranz’s model, the silver yield from the Americas mattered more as a link in sustaining global trade, than its direct impact on the level of investment. However, in promoting the importance of the American market for English manufacturers, Pomeranz suppressed that of East European markets. To me, this argument and the underlying data was less than convincing: if the East European economy was big enough to account for a large portion of the English core food supply, how could it be a smaller market than the Americas which provisioned only “drug food”? A few pages later, he attributed the lack of concentrated textile production in China partly to the low technical barrier. As a result, each economy sub-zone in China produced its own proto-industry. Yet he did not give a parallel account of what, then, prevented the colonists in Americas from developing their own indigenous proto-industry, given the same low barrier and the high transportation cost that stopped large-scale labor migration?

Whatever question I had with regard to his theories on European history, I did find those on China very insightful. Not only China expanded inward, as he pointed out, it did so in a “cell-splitting” fashion. With a few exceptions (e.g., the Southeast province of GuangXi became a “rice bowl” of GuangDong (p229)), each economic sub-zone, old or new, all had the same nuclei as a full region (Interestingly enough, the same phenomenon still exists today and is causing the same type of market and capital fragmentation as it did two centuries ago). However, I am intrigued as to whether this model of expansion is unique to China or can be found somewhere else outside of Asia. Pomeranz chose Denmark as a “control group” to demonstrate what type of economy England could have ended up of having, had there no New World expansion. But is there a similar case in Europe that could be used to envision China’s fortune had it adopted the English model? Since France was a relatively unified state, and had its own specialized economic zones (as hinted in Wallerstein’s book), would it be an equally illustrative study for Pomeranz? For example, was there “sprouts of labor-intensive” response to the Malthusian crisis in France? If so, when and how did the French realize the advantage of the English model? How did they respond to that?

Whatever Pomeranz did or did not cover in his book, he succeeded in presenting a fresh new look of the pre-industrialized East and West. Today, it is common sense, among the “initiated” at least, that the East was once more advanced than the West. And now the fortunes have reversed. Plotted on a map of historical time, the trajectories of the two worlds must have crossed each other. Pomeranz’s book is a zoomed-in study of the “cross point”. The rest, as we all learn to say, is history.

The International Relations of Northeast Asia. Edited by Samuel Kim

The politics of Northeast Asia stands in stark contrast to that of Southeast Asia. Whereas the Southeast Asian countries view regional cooperation as instrumental to collective peace and prosperity, Northeast Asian regionalism may only become viable after each country in the region is assured of its own peace and prosperity.

Samuel Kim’s book is an informative source to tell us why. It is a collection of scholarly studies of the complex and fluid nature of national and regional politics in Northeast Asia. The authors adopted a variety of theoretical perspectives in examining the history of the region, from World War II to today’s globalization, and have presented insightful analysis of past state behaviors, as well as predictions to future changes.

Many authors in the book consider China, Japan and United States as the major players in the region. Although Korea peninsular and Taiwan are the hot-button points at the moment, the issues involved are relatively narrower in scope, and are easier to define. Furthermore, any possible solutions to those issues are largely dependent on how the major players interact.

Alastair Iain Johnston appears sympathetic to China’s causes. He argues extensively in the book why China should be considered as a conformative member of the world (though not necessarily regional) community. His presentation, however, is mostly defensive in tone. It appears that he is arguing against the proponents of “China-threat”, who Mr. Kim also singles out in the introduction.

Thomas Berger’s analysis of Japan’s Political and Security Dimensions is more detached but equally informative. For example, he devotes large portion of the essay to the unique nature of Japan’s defensive forces. The conclusion he draws, that this is due to “Japan’s historically rooted distrust of the coercive apparatus of the state”, may be arguable to some, but is refreshing nevertheless. He also highlights the conflicting nature of Japan’s international policy, and attributes that to the nation’s uncertainty of its own realist vs. liberal inclinations.

Kent E. Calder’s review on U.S. foreign policy in Northeast Asia is perhaps, in my opinion, the weakest and the least relevant of the book. His concentration on the Korea peninsular and military technology proliferation seems overtly centered on the immediate U.S. interests. One could argue that, in the age of “peaceful power struggle”, economic dynamics is playing an even more direct role than that of defense and security. However, his article is devoid of any in-depth discussion of the complicated and fast-changing relationships U.S. has to the region.

In his introduction, Mr. Kim acknowledges the difficulties to cover and to explain events in Northeast Asia. There are many seemingly in-reconcilable elements in each nation and the region as a whole. Given the various theoretical approaches each author chooses, and even divergent applications of each theory, it is almost impossible to write a review that is cogent and comprehensive enough to cover the entire book. Here I am going to write down some of my own thoughts while reading this book.

I agree with Mr. Kim that there is lack of liberal democracy in the region (p30). China is certainly out of discussion in this regard. Even in Japan, where democracy is institutionalized, it is not the “liberal” democracy as in the western sense. I’d argue that the kind of students movement in West Germany in the 60s is unimaginable even in today’s Japan. In terms of breaking from the past and re-orient a nation’s future based on open and rational discussion, it appears that Taiwan’s independence movement may have done more to deepen democratization than Japan’s Pacifist constitution.

It is apparent to me how strongly scholars in the book feel about the shaky foundation of the “China-threat” theory. By calling it “self-fulfilling”, many of them called into question some of the policy initiatives of the current administration. My observation is, with the departure of a few key neo-conservative figures, some of the policies from the 2nd Bush administration are actually getting more sophisticated.

For example, recent reports praised the patience and maturity of the U.S. delegation to the six-party talks. In the same token, it appears that the administration has come to terms that, in China, they will have to work with an authoritative regime for decades to come. Instead of putting the Sino-US relation in the light of Partner vs. Competitor, the administration is working to pry open a closed state machine in the name of greater global integration.

In his recent trip to China, Treasury Secretary John Snow demanded some concrete but fundamental changes, such as accelerating SOE privatization, establishing independent credit-rating agencies, and removing restrictions on FDI in Chinese banks. Timothy D. Adams, undersecretary at the Treasury Department, characterized those proposals as “a quantum leap in sophistication and scope”. I would agree with this assessment in that they are indeed more cost-effective measures. First of all, some of the demands are in concert with Chinese government’s long-term goals. This not only makes them more receptive, but will also secure U.S. influence in instituting subsequent reforms. Secondly, because the proposed changes are economic in nature, they are more likely to have an immediate positive (if carried out carefully) feedback, thus further solidify the forces for deeper reforms. In other words, compared to similar requests on rights issues, they could prove to be more sustainable. New developments like this, in my opinion, presents yet another proof that economic relations now are gradually replacing security issues at the core of today’s international relations.