This book argues for computer-aided collaborative country research
based on the science of complex and dynamic systems. It provides an in-depth discussion of systems and computer science, concluding that
proper understanding of a country is only possible if a genuinely interdisciplinary and truly international approach is taken; one that is
based on complexity science and supported by computer science. Country studies should be carefully designed and collaboratively carried out,
and a new generation of country students should pay more attention to the fast growing potential of digitized and electronically connected
libraries. In this frenzied age of globalization, foreign policy makers may – to the benefit of a better world – profit from the radically new
country studies pleaded for in the book. Its author emphasizes that reductionism and holism are not antagonistic but complementary, arguing
that parts are always parts of a whole and a whole has always parts.
Comprehending the complexity of countries is a monumental contribution to deep thinking about countries as complex and dynamic systems.
GEOPOLITICS is the game of strategists figuring out how countries behave. The Ukraine war has shown how assumptions about countries or the behaviour of their leaders are wrong, plunging the world into what Henry Kissinger has called a “totally new era”.
Hans Kuijper, a retired Dutch diplomat and exceptional Sinologist, has written an indispensable guide to understanding where country studies have gone wrong, and how we can use systems thinking and computers (ICT) to unravel the quagmire of flawed country studies.
His book is a tour de force into the philosophy of social science, drawing on his incredible reading of ancient Chinese and Western philosophy, science and current country studies.
The thesis of this book is quite simple: country studies have an explanandum (something, i.e. a country to be explained), but so-called country experts do not have an explanans, a tested or testable theory that not only explains, but stands out from other scientific theories in different disciplines such as geography, demography, ecology, politics, economics, sociology, linguistics, or anthropology.
Thus, “China experts” unjustifiably claim to explain China, even when basing their writings on a single discipline, as if they are knowledgeable about everything concerning the country. As the saying goes, “No ant can see the pattern of the whole carpet.”
Kuijper has identified a fundamental gap in conventional country studies. If you study a country (part) without taking a crude look at the world (whole) and not considering how interaction affects simultaneously the parts and the whole, that is to say, only making conjectures without a testable theory, you are only practicing pseudo-science, not science. For science is more than expressing opinions.
Comprehending the complexity of countries is a monumental contribution to deep thinking about countries as complex and dynamic systems.
In chapters one to seven, the author methodically and relentlessly exposes the enduring confusion, building step-by-step his thesis, examining theories and models, clarifying the concept of country (as distinct form area), showing how cities and countries have much in common, and exploring the scientific and technical feasibility of collaborative country studies.
The author moves essentially from a multi-disciplinary to an inter-disciplinary approach, to the higher order of a trans-disciplinary way of thinking about the development of countries as adaptive complex dynamic systems.
He examines how countries comprise both spontaneous and man-made systems, interacting both exogenously and endogenously (chapter six).
The ancient Chinese recognised that empires rise and fall from both “external invasions and internal corrosion”. Chapter seven delves deeply into the issue how modern scientific tools such as artificial intelligence, big data analysis and computer simulation could aid country studies.
Science fiction assumes that if we put all available information about one subject into a supercomputer, the subject would be replicated as a hologram, thus helping us predict its behavior.
Whether we have sufficient information and computing power is only a matter of political will and imagination.
Kuijper uses the example of networked digital libraries to substantiate his view that the study of a country could be greatly improved by deploying electronically available information about countries and regions.
Having conceptualised the model for studying countries, Kuijper examines its profound implications for higher education, arguing for “connecting the dots” (chapter eight).
He is most original when he argues that ancient Greek and Chinese thought are alike in thinking about the organic whole, whereas the specialisation of Western science caused the divergence between Western and Chinese ways of research.
The modern university, originally created to truly educate (bring up children) and spiritually elevate, became more and more specialised in less and less, making graduates complexity-illiterate.
Students do not learn to connect the dots, to see the whole. The author argues for tearing down intellectual walls and mental silos to see the grand order of man and nature.
Since each and every country has emergent properties irreducible to the properties of its constituent parts, we have to make use of the science of complex (not: complicated) and dynamic (not: linearly changing) systems in order to really comprehend the country.
An example of not connecting the dots is the fact that it took years for development economists to realise that lifting a country out of poverty involves more than economic factors.
Similarly, ecologists took decades to realise that more scientific data on global warming is not going to change policy when economists (influencing the policymakers) habitually assume that markets can solve the problem of global warming in total defiance of the fact that it will take a combination of state and market to change human behaviour.
I consider Kuijper’s discussion of reductionism versus holism (Chapter nine) a huge contribution to moving beyond the quagmire of Western exclusive and antithetical versus Chinese inclusive and correlative thinking.
The reduction to atomistic parts of free individuals creates blinkers. Western scientists draw ever more distinctions, but tend to miss the whole (from which they are apart and of which they are a part) and how the whole changes with the parts.
The whole is not a matter of either – or but of both – and, meaning that reductionism and holism are complementary rather than contradictory to each other.
The book is the amazing achievement of an independent, determined scholar reading thoroughly in depth to find out that we need complexity thinking to understand complex phenomena, resisting the ingrained habit of simplistic reductionism, the default way of human understanding.
It took at least four centuries to convince doctors to give up the idea of blood-letting as a solution to sickness.
So, it is not surprising that pseudo-scientists still think that they can pass as country experts without the help of many collaborating disciplinary-experts, using big data analytical tools.
Kuijper helps us navigate this complex subject by using a short abstract for each chapter, backed by key references. General conclusions are drawn in chapter 10. He then draws his very practical and very useful recommendations with the last chapter distilling his key insights.
This is a wonderful book, not just for sinologists, but for all who consider themselves to be country experts. It gives insight into the question of how we have got ourselves in a terrible mess over the current geopolitical path to conflict.
This book speaks truth to power, but whether those in power will listen, is the big and urgent question to which there seems to be no simple, straight answer.
Andrew Sheng writes on global issues from an Asian perspective. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
China’s search for technological mastery will succeed because it is essentially replicating the actual history of the economics and policies that led the United States to technological dominance, rather than the ideological history of what many Americans believe lies behind their success
For years, American policymakers and pundits have believed China’s search for technological mastery or supremacy is doomed to fail or at least be consigned forever to mediocrity and also-ran status. This belief lies behind the strategy, first put forward by the Donald Trump administration, and now followed by Joe Biden’s White House, to restrict or ban the transfer of crucial technologies, notably the most advanced semiconductors and their production methods.
And yet, paradoxically, China is bound to succeed, despite the inevitable hiccups and setbacks, because it is essentially replicating the actual history of the economics and policies that led the United States to technological dominance, rather than the ideological history of what many Americans believe lies behind their success.
They have applied their own ideological models to predict China’s supposedly “inevitable” failure, instead of using their own actual history of American technology and science, and economic policy, to analyse China’s development and acquisition of key technologies in the 21st century.
This is perhaps not surprising. Rich, powerful and successful people usually tell a different story about how they get to where they are to what actually happened to them. It’s human nature.
China’s Great Firewall
It’s generally believed that free enterprise is the necessary and sufficient condition for hi-tech industries. This means: the free flow of information and talent; open market; no or minimal government intervention, also called deregulation; and intellectual property rights protection. It’s believed only the market can choose winners and eliminate the losers, and that any state attempt to choose “national champions” is bound to fail and to be wasteful.
China’s so-called Great Firewall of the internet stands as both an actual barrier and a potent symbol that is antithetical to all those fundamental neoliberal assumptions, which, granted, are being increasingly challenged and even undermined, even among some US professional economists and historians. However, if you believe in all those assumptions, you of course will logically argue that China is bound to fail. But is it?
Let’s consider the historical reference: the Great Wall of China. It has been alternately argued that it was built to resist foreign invaders, and/or to keep in the domestic population. Either way, it was too porous to be truly effective.
A piece of Web3 tech helps banned books through the Great Firewall’s cracks
16 Apr 2022
The same argument has often been made about the ineffectiveness and absurdity of the Great Firewall. Many Chinese households can just get a VPN and then can pretty much access whatever they want from outside China. Yet, as it turns out, porousness or partial online filter and censorship, has been a godsend for Beijing’s industrial policy for hi-tech development. This is no doubt an unintended consequence, but once it has been realised, its value is deeply appreciated by the authorities. Incidentally, that’s why officials tolerate the widespread use of VPNs, despite occasional and ineffective crackdowns.
In China, for people who have the know-how, education or mere curiosity, they can easily bypass the Great Firewall for information to start a business, launch a research project or steal a foreign design. These are the people you need to be in hi-tech industries. Yet, for the vast majority of Chinese, access to contents outside China is still restricted.
China also restricts foreign business and informational access. It has banned such companies as Google, Facebook and Twitter. But of course, it welcomes companies such as Apple, Starbucks and Wall Street banks.
The Great Firewall serves as the online market barrier to foreign entry, or the internet moat to protect infant industries from foreign competition or business invasion; again, one of two functions of the ancient Great Wall.
Intellectual property theft
No one would argue intellectual property theft or industrial espionage is essential to the economic development of a country. However, many economic historians have pointed out that whether it was the rise of Elizabethan England, 19th century America, modern Japan and South Korea, or contemporary China, intellectual property theft and/or industrial espionage played a key role in their economic rise; and state industrial policy as well.
But a successful country doesn’t steal forever. Once it reaches a certain critical stage of hi-tech development, when it has amassed the talent, resources and facilities, it starts to innovate. Then, it starts developing and protecting its own intellectual property regime to prevent others from stealing -and of course, to complain about theft.
That’s the stage China is entering. According to the China National Intellectual Property Administration last month, 696,000 invention patents were authorised in 2021, an average of 7.5 of high-value patents per 10,000, or nearly double the ratio for 2017. Whether those patents were really as useful or original as they claimed is not the issue here, but rather that they show Chinese authorities are committed to intellectual property protection and building up a viable patent regime.
But, besides the obvious racism about the lack of Asian originality, the neoliberal set of assumptions that I referred to above tend to reinforce the idea that China’s political and economic systems can’t innovate and so must go on stealing. That is also related to what American historian Richard Hofstadter has called “the paranoid style” in US politics. Its most infamous manifestation was the anti-communist McCarthyism. Its most recent example is the FBI’s China Initiative, which targeted ethnic Chinese researchers, especially those in US universities.
China’s chip output shrinks as Covid-19 lockdowns paralyse industries
16 May 2022
The Silicon Valley folklore is that of a lone maverick who has a great idea and pushes it to fruition, and in the process, creates a multibillion-dollar industry. That cannot be further from the assumption behind Japanese-Korean-Chinese state industrial policy, according to which innovation is a collective enterprise, not one of individual genius or charisma. It’s all about the sustained commitment of public resources and collective talent between the state and the private sector.
It’s a common criticism that such a policy is wasteful; it often backs the wrong technologies and industries. That’s true. However, the Silicon Valley model is also prone to periodic market euphoria, mania, panic and crashes, from the dotcom implosion to the current ongoing crypto-crashes. I will leave it to economic historians and econometricians to determine whether the state or non-state model is more wasteful or destructive.
Conclusions
Belatedly, the Biden administration is slowly realising that whether it’s containment against China or competition with it, the horse has bolted out of the barn already. That is why despite its hostile rhetoric, it has no coherent policy on how to deter or delay China’s technological drive for mastery or supremacy. This conflict cuts to the very ideological self-beliefs of the two countries. Only time will tell how it will turn out.
However, restricting or banning technological transfer will not work. The great British historian Arnold Toynbee famously wrote that it was usually countries or civilisations confronted with great or even mortal challenges that prevailed and prospered in history, not those that were well-endowed with rich resources. Denying China access to vital technologies at this late stage will simply force it to develop its own domestic capabilities. That won’t make it weaker, only stronger and more self-reliant.
For years, American policymakers and pundits have believed China’s search for technological mastery or supremacy is doomed to fail or at least be consigned forever to mediocrity and also-ran status. This belief lies behind the strategy, first put forward by the Donald Trump administration, and now followed by Joe Biden’s White House, to restrict or ban the transfer of crucial technologies, notably the most advanced semiconductors and their production methods.
And yet, paradoxically, China is bound to succeed, despite the inevitable hiccups and setbacks, because it is essentially replicating the actual history of the economics and policies that led the United States to technological dominance, rather than the ideological history of what many Americans believe lies behind their success.
They have applied their own ideological models to predict China’s supposedly “inevitable” failure, instead of using their own actual history of American technology and science, and economic policy, to analyse China’s development and acquisition of key technologies in the 21st century.
Alex
Lo has been a Post columnist since 2012, covering major issues affecting Hong Kong and the rest of China. A journalist for 25 years, he has worked for various publications in Hong Kong and Toronto as a news reporter and editor. He has also lectured in journalism at the University of Hong Kong.
The Art of War is the most influential treatise on war ever written, consisting of 13 chapters each of which is devoted to one aspect of warfare, it has shaped the way in which conflicts have been fought for thousands of years from the Japanese samurai to the Napoleonic war. Not only has the book influenced military commanders and generals all over the world, it has had resounding effects on politics, sports and business to this day.
In this video, we give key examples of Sun Tzu's most influential philosophies and strategies. These range from the Vietnam War to the coasts of Normandy in 1944.
The Art of War by Sun Tzu: Entire Unabridged Audiobook (Powerful Narration)
The Art of War is an ancient guide on military strategy. Written by Sun Tzu a Chinese general and philosopher in the 5th Century B.C. It was created after he helped successfully defend the Chinese province of Wu against the province Chu.
The strategies in this book have been used for hundreds of years in military campaigns, business and sports. It is the ultimate guide on how to defeat an opposing force in whatever form that might take. Contrary to what we might expect, The Art of War actually advises to avoid fighting as much as possible by only striking targets that are weak and using manipulation to subdue the enemy.
Ultimately Sun Tzu teaches us how to have the advantage in conflict giving us the best possible chance of success. My hope for this production was to provide an exciting and digestible rendition of this ancient text that can help people learn these strategies for years to come.
Putin maybe using Sun Tzu and The Art of War strategy
Since the American engineered coup in 2014 that brought Zelensky to power, the American and NATO have been quietly setting up the command centre for NATO operation against the Russians under the Azovstal steel plant. 3 major goals were achieved in the last 8 years, a command centre, a major biochem weapon station and a regiment of neo Nazi soldiers. All these were done stealthily, top secret military stuff. And they executed these so successfully under the nose of the Russians...without the Russians knowing?
With so many top generals and scientists shuffling in and out of the secretive underground fortress, with so many soldiers, and with so many logistics, biochemical weapons in the facility, it was a very well kept secret!
Putin was not appointed to head the KGB as a political appointee. He earned his spurs as an intelligent secret service officers. To be appointed as head of KGB, unlike the head of CIA, the latter a political appointment, meaning any idiot or clown could also be offered the job, it meant that Putin was the best of the best in KGB/Russia. Can't imagine how sleepy Joe is going to test his wits against the best of the KGB.
Putin and the Russians did not know of the death machine under the Azovstal steel plant? His original plan was to take Kiev? All his tanks and heavy military vehicles were lined up on the roads to Kiev, clearly visible by satellite images. No need guessing. The Americans and Ukrainians knew exactly what Putin was going to do. He is going to attack Kiev. The people in the Azovtal stronghold too thought they were very safe, very secure, unknown and undetected by the Russians. And their daily activities continued unchanged.
Everything was normal in Mariupol. In fact, the Americans and NATO must have felt very safe and no one left the fortress. If only they knew what Putin was up to. If only they knew that they have been exposed, all the big fish would have fled. Was it American and NATO arrogance, or was it Putin's brilliance, the attack on Kiev was expected but fizzled out quickly. By then, the Russian troops have all encircled the Azovstal fortress. Too late to run. No one is going to escape the dragnet of Putin.
Did any of the very clever American analysts and intelligence officers saw this coming? How could they missed the signs, the decoy, the diversionary strategy of Putin, look West and strike East? Putin's deception was as perfect as you can get from the point of military strategy. Of course the arrogance and stupidity of the Americans and NATO helped, making it so easy for Putin to round them up in one move. Now, as the Chinese strategists like to call it, Putin is hauling in the net, with all the big fish and crocodiles inside.
Putin is as good a military genius as he is expected. And he did not fail his believers with this war of deception in Ukraine. Now the Americans is pulling every string they could find to get in touch with Putin to release the big fish and crocodiles in the Azovstal fortress. The UN Sec Gen Antonio Guterres, and the Pope Francis had to make personal trips to Moscow to see Putin.
After all the hard work plotting to capture the Azovstal fortress, including the big fish and crocodiles and all the biochemical weapons inside, it would not be so easy to appease and persuade Putin to give up his prized catches so easily. Now the Americans and NATO are at the mercy of Putin.
Do not be surprised if the desperate Americans and NATO would do a last ditch assault in Mariupol to free their valued generals and scientists. When Lt Trevor Cadieu is only in charge of a biochem weapon unit, one can easily imagine how many more generals would out rank him in the fortress. Then there would be the commanding officer of this top secret facility and his deputies. The Brits French, Germans and many other NATO top brass are likely to be in the same hole under the steel plant.
These are early Christmas presents for Putin, though they came with a lot of planning and effort. For the slightest indication that the fortress' existence had been exposed, or Putin's game plan was to capture the fortress and all the top brass and biochemical weapons in them, all the top brass would have scooted long before the war started, and all the biochemical weapons would have be transferred elsewhere. Now they would be top exhibits in Putin's case against the Americans and NATO, to be shown to the whole wide world.
Never had the Americans and NATO been in such a dire strait, with their balls being squeezed by Putin and they could not do anything about it short of an outright military confrontation, an assault on the Azovstal steel plant with the full force of American and NATO forces.
No amount of propaganda can distract the success of Putin in his set up to capture the Azovstal fortress lock, stock and barrel. These would now become very expensive chips in the pocket of Putin, and the Americans and NATO would have to pay a very heavy price for their return.
How many generals or military strategists today could claim such a success against the American Empire and NATO? And to think of it, the Americans and NATO still did not have any clue what was Putin up to. Still guessing and spreading nonsense about the intent of Putin, and still claiming fake victories against Putin everyday.
Comprehending the complexity of countries is a monumental contribution to deep thinking about countries as complex and dynamic systems.
The Silicon Valley folklore is that of a lone maverick who has a great idea and pushes it to fruition, and in the process, creates a multibillion-dollar industry. That cannot be further from the assumption behind Japanese-Korean-Chinese state industrial policy, according to which innovation is a collective enterprise, not one of individual genius or charisma. It’s all about the sustained commitment of public resources and collective talent between the state and the private sector.
It’s a common criticism that such a policy is wasteful; it often backs the wrong technologies and industries. That’s true. However, the Silicon Valley model is also prone to periodic market euphoria, mania, panic and crashes, from the dotcom implosion to the current ongoing crypto-crashes. I will leave it to economic historians and econometricians to determine whether the state or non-state model is more wasteful or destructive.
Conclusions
Belatedly, the Biden administration is slowly realising that whether it’s containment against China or competition with it, the horse has bolted out of the barn already. That is why despite its hostile rhetoric, it has no coherent policy on how to deter or delay China’s technological drive for mastery or supremacy. This conflict cuts to the very ideological self-beliefs of the two countries. Only time will tell how it will turn out.
However, restricting or banning technological transfer will not work. The great British historian Arnold Toynbee famously wrote that it was usually countries or civilisations confronted with great or even mortal challenges that prevailed and prospered in history, not those that were well-endowed with rich resources. Denying China access to vital technologies at this late stage will simply force it to develop its own domestic capabilities. That won’t make it weaker, only stronger and more self-reliant.
For years, American policymakers and pundits have believed China’s search for technological mastery or supremacy is doomed to fail or at least be consigned forever to mediocrity and also-ran status. This belief lies behind the strategy, first put forward by the Donald Trump administration, and now followed by Joe Biden’s White House, to restrict or ban the transfer of crucial technologies, notably the most advanced semiconductors and their production methods.
And yet, paradoxically, China is bound to succeed, despite the inevitable hiccups and setbacks, because it is essentially replicating the actual history of the economics and policies that led the United States to technological dominance, rather than the ideological history of what many Americans believe lies behind their success.
