Bob Schwartz

Tag: China

April 10, 2025

I Ching about Trump tariffs on China

The I Ching, the venerable Book of Changes, is estimated to have first been composed around 1000 BCE. About 3,000 years ago.

The point is that China and its constituent states have been managing very complex and difficult governmental and social situations for millennia. Those who are leading contemporary China may face a lot of current challenges, as their ancestors have faced so many other challenges. They know their way around difficulties and difficult people. They have managed, starting in 1949, to build the world’s second largest economy. They have done it, by the way, paying close attention the I Ching. The Trump administration would do well to do the same.

Asking the I Ching about Trump tariffs on China it says:

52
Gen • Keeping Still

Mountain above
Mountain below

NAME AND STRUCTURE

The attribute of Mountain is stillness. When Mountain is doubled, it is extremely still.

From the very beginning of Chinese culture, ancient sages emphasized keeping still. Keeping still is not keeping merely the body still but the mind and spirit as well, and is called “sitting in stillness” or “nourishing the spirit.” While sitting still in a lotus posture, one is shaped like a mountain. Sitting in stillness, or in meditation as Westerners call it, is a self-disciplinary training. While doing this, one is able to control the mind and the breath, to be introspective about one’s shortcomings and to cultivate inner strength and virtue. Mencius says, “I am skillful in nourishing my imperishable noble spirit.” When one is in a state of stillness, one is oblivious to one’s surroundings. This is the highest stage of nonattachment. In such a state there is no fault in one’s being. It is believed that when Heaven is about to confer a great mission on a person, it first exercises his or her mind and spirit with discipline. Keeping still is meant to prepare one’s mind and spirit to progress when the time comes.

Commentary on the Decision

Mountain.
It is keeping still.

Keep still when it is time to keep still.
Remain active when it is time to remain active.
When action and resting do not miss their time,
Their way becomes promising and brilliant.

SIGNIFICANCE

Keeping Still expounds the truth of knowing when and where to stop before one’s action goes too far. The key to success is to advance when it is time to advance and to stop when it is time to stop. Every action should accord with the time and situation. Never act subjectively and blindly. Keeping still means to be tranquil and stable. It is a phase of advancement. Advance and stillness complement each other. Keeping still is preparing oneself for a new advance. All the lines of this gua take images of different parts of the body to indicate particular times and situations.

When King Wen abolished slavery and reestablished the Jing land system, people were shocked, as if a thunderstorm had struck. Those who were liberated were happy, but not the slave owners—especially those who were close to the tyrant. Dangerous counterattacks were anticipated. King Wen retreated, sitting in stillness to contemplate the situation and foresee the future. The Duke of Zhou describes King Wen’s different stages and moods of stillness. Eventually his honesty and sincerity brought good fortune.

The Complete I Ching, Master Alfred Huang

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March 13, 2018

China Should Inspire More American Media Eye-Rolling

More media eye-rolling is needed in America. China, another country with cult of personality leadership and canned party-line presentations, shows us the way.

New York Times:

SHANGHAI — It was the eye roll seen across China.

As the annual meeting of the country’s legislature stretched into its second week, the event’s canned political pageantry and obsequious (and often scripted) media questions seemingly proved too much for one journalist on Tuesday.

With a fellow reporter’s fawning question to a Chinese official pushing past the 30-second mark, Liang Xiangyi, of the financial news site Yicai, began scoffing to herself. Then she turned to scrutinize the questioner in disbelief.

Looking her up and down, Ms. Liang rolled her eyes with such concentrated disgust, it seemed only natural that her entire head followed her eyes backward as she looked away in revulsion.

Captured by China’s national news broadcaster, CCTV, the moment spread quickly across Chinese social media….

On Chinese social media, GIFs and other online riffs inspired by Ms. Liang’s epic eye roll quickly proliferated, and by evening they were being deleted by government censors. Ms. Liang’s name became the most-censored term on Weibo, the microblogging platform. On Taobao, the freewheeling online marketplace, vendors began selling T-shirts and cellphone cases bearing her image.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EmYYFWcrUs

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March 1, 2018

Winnie the Pooh Censored in China

China President Xi Jinping wants to change the constitution to remain in power beyond the limit of two terms. China Digital Times  explains:

Chinese state media announced on Sunday a list of proposed amendments to China’s constitution, which are expected to be adopted next month at the National People’s Congress session in Beijing. Among the 21 proposed amendments, the one with perhaps the deepest potential impact on the future of Chinese politics and society deals with paragraph 3 of article 79, which would eradicate the current limit of PRC presidents and vice-presidents to two five-year terms. This would effectively set President Xi Jinping up to maintain his seat as president indefinitely….

Following state media’s announcement, censorship authorities began work to limit online discussion.

As part of that censorship, a growing list of terms have been blocked from being posted on the search engine Weibo. Along with seeming innocent phrases that are protest memes and obvious authors such as George Orwell, for a while the list also included the letter “N”:

N — While the letter “N” was temporarily blocked from being posted, as of 14:27 PST on February 26, it was no longer banned. At Language Log, Victor Mair speculates that this term was blocked “probably out of fear on the part of the government that “N” = “n terms in office”, where possibly n > 2.”

Most ridiculous of all is the blocking of Winnie the Pooh:

Winnie the Pooh (小熊维尼) — Images of Winnie the Pooh have been used to mock Xi Jinping since as early as 2013. The animated bear continues to be sensitive in China. Weibo users shared a post from Disney’s official account that showed Pooh hugging a large pot of honey along with the caption “find the thing you love and stick with it.”

I’ve written before about my high regard for Winnie the Pooh—the books by A.A. Milne, not the Disney version. It is great literature, not least in the character of the sweet, loyal, interesting, but seemingly not very smart bear (as he calls himself, “a bear of very little brain.”) Seemingly, because he may also be a bit of an enigmatic Zen master:

On Monday, when the sun is hot
I wonder to myself a lot:
“Now is it true, or is it not,”
“That what is which and which is what?”

I have never thought of Pooh as a political subversive. And yet, if you are a supreme ruler aiming to become eternally supreme, enemies are everywhere. Even a letter of the alphabet or a simple and adorable bear.

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April 18, 2017

The Trump Plan for North Korea: Gorgo’s Revenge

Mr. Unpredictable and Secretive says he has a plan for dealing with North Korea, China and other international situations, but he can’t say what the plan is (he can’t say or he can’t say?).

In the deep archives of comic book history, I found a clue.

The comic from 1962 is called Gorgo’s Revenge. Gorgo was the monster from a 1961 British movie, in which Gorgo attacks London. The comic book series Gorgo’s Revenge (later called The Return of Gorgo) continues the story, this time in China.

It seems that Gorgo’s return is considered to be a sign to the people of China, oppressed slaves of the Communist regime, that it is time to seek their freedom—by fleeing to Taiwan. (By 1962, the idea of the Nationalists overthrowing Mao on the mainland was no longer considered a reasonable goal.)

Gorgo arrives, emboldens and inspires the Chinese Nationalists, and sets back the nuclear ambitions of the Chinese Communists by years. Good work Gorgo!

It is impossible to know whether the president ever read Gorgo’s Revenge as a kid, or what he read or reads. But it does seem that it might contain just the sort of plan he has in mind. Sort of.

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April 14, 2017

China’s Big Long View: “Swords Drawn and Bows Bent”

In a story about current tensions between the United States and North Korea, this was reported:

“The United States and South Korea and North Korea are engaging in tit for tat, with swords drawn and bows bent, and there have been storm clouds gathering,” China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said in Beijing, according to Xinhua, the state news agency.” (emphasis added)

It is hard to imagine the American President or Secretary of State using such poetic language to describe such a serious situation. But allusions to swords and bows is not just poetic. It reflects the thousands of years that China has had to deal with situations just like this.

In the world, few nations, and none so powerful, are as young as the United States. We tend to equate power with enlightened perspective, but that is silly. Even the European nations can’t compare their histories to the long and hard lessons that many Asian nations have learned.

It is no accident that in the years since the end of a series of modern Asian wars involving the West—World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War—Asian nations have to some degree risen and dominated in various ways. China in particular. These nations have had to ride the wave of history, going back to times when swords and bows were the tools of strategy and subjugation, of victory and defeat.

Many Americans think that the most significant global affairs began a couple of centuries or so ago, when this nation emerged in North America as the perfection of what our European ancestors tried but failed to accomplish. Like all precocious children, we think that it is all about us, especially because of our might and our ability to damage and destroy. Those who have seen it all before are careful not to provoke us, but know that no matter how big our weapons, they are only swords and bows, about which they have much more experience.

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March 12, 2016

Why We Should Teach and Learn Ancient History First

Children in America who attend some sort of religious school, even before going to secular school, may learn some limited sort of ancient history. Ancient in that it concerns purported people and events from millennia ago. Limited in that some number of those people and events, however instructional and enlightening, may be of some historical question.

There is other ancient history worth teaching our kids early, and catching up with ourselves, just in case we missed it in our own education. There are continuous civilizations all around the world that have been ongoing, in the same place, also for millennia.

China, for example. Or India. Or the native populations in the Americas. This is where education should start, before we start talking about admittedly important people arriving on these North American shores and establishing an admittedly important nation just a few centuries ago.

Why? Because it would give us a sense of perspective on what we have, or have not, achieved so far. And because it would give us a missing sense of the scope of history, in that everything comes and goes. Which you could learn from the history of China. Or you could learn from reading the I Ching, the book about things changing, written in China millennia ago. Or if you prefer something more Western and familiar, from reading the Bible itself. A time for every purpose, it says. And so it goes.

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November 24, 2014

Random Beads

Random Beads - Bob Schwartz

Every picture supposedly tells a story. Actually, every picture is a story.

Beading is a glorious craft. In the hands of a talented artist, the results can be beautiful and enlightening.

But like all art, it can be a messy business. In the case of beads, this can mean tiny items underfoot, and with bits of wire, pretty painful ones. Particularly where barefoot is the custom.

A quick post-beading cleanup led to quite a collection of such detritus, like shells on a beach. Tossed in a white bowl, they looked like something. And so the photo above.

If you are a fan of randomness—and we should all be—you will see in this totally spontaneous display any number of things. Gregory Bateson said, “I am going to build a church someday. It will have a holy of holies and a holy of holy of holies, and in that ultimate box will be a random number table.” Exactly.

Here is a beader in her natural habitat, the largest bead store in New York. It is filled with beads mostly from China which, as in most things, is able to provide whatever we want or need in seemingly infinite supply. So it is all together: geopolitics, economics, ancient tradition, minerals, pottery, glass, color, art, craft, and, of course, beauty. Note, however, that in this emporium, the beauty of the beader outshines all of the beads.

Bead Store

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