Ken Hammond is a professor of East Asian and global history at New Mexico State University. He lived in Beijing from 1982-87 and is an expert on Chinese history and fluent in Mandarin. “He is currently associate editor of the Journal of Chinese History published by Cambridge University Press, and heads a research team working on the study of visual materials in Chinese local gazetteers at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.”
In this interview on the “Geopolitics in Conflicts” show, he talked about the West’s Failure to Understand China’s History, and this could lead to unnecessary conflicts and possible disastrous results.
Some examples Hammond cited were:
The Chinese language, especially the classical writing is highly contextual. You have to understand its context before you know what it says. A single word in the proper context can have a whole slew of meaning.
Chinese history through thousands of years has not been expansionist except for brief periods during the Ming and Qing Dynasties before the Han civilization acculturated the Mongols and the Manchus.
China’s (and India’s ) rise is history returning to the norm. The US is anxious that their global dominance is fading – a zero sum game mentality.
Taiwan has been part of China for at least 13 centuries. The US fought a civil war to defeat the secessionists and it should let China solve her own internal problems.
Chinese people can live with the concept of máodùn (矛盾), roughly translatable as “uncertainty or contradiction” and has a long-term mindset as witness by a sequence of 5-year plans.
Deng Xiaoping urged China to keep a low profile and not make any waves. This has led to the west’s assumption that China is going to adopt the liberal democratic system once she becomes more prosperous.
When China modernizes industrially, her economy will be much bigger than the US because of her larger population.
China is struggling with the concepts of “common prosperity”.
The Belt and Road Initiative is China’s attempt to return to the historical norm.
Professor Hammond has given 36 lectures on the 5,000 years of Chinese history.
Here is the First Lecture.
He has published the following Opinion pieces on the Asia Times :
On human rights, US needs to get its own house in order
US and China in ‘new’ Biden era
Trump administration weaponizing academia
Overheated US offensive against China carries real risks