Description
Ways That Are Dark: The Truth About China
By Ralph Townsend. A politically incorrect view of China and the Chinese people as seen through the eyes of an American diplomat in the early 1930s. Hear from a veteran American diplomat who lived side by side with the Chinese in the 1930s. Candid and highly readable.
Find out the truth about the real Chinese people: Their legendary tolerance for pain; the squalor in which they lived; the opium period; how China will never really change; ancient Chinese tortures; the stiff Chinese resistance to outside influences; and much more.
In many ways America’s neocons leaders have been almost as enigmatic as the Chinese. They have flip-flopped back and forth in their attitudes towards the Chinese in recent years.
One moment American business leaders have loved the Chinese as a source of hardworking, technically savvy, ultra-low cost labor, and the next moment they have feared them as an economic rival that holds an increasing percentage of America’s foreign exchange reserves, and who, like the Japanese, have helped to hollow out a significant portion of America’s industrial infrastructure.
China is also growing a potential military rival as well.
But what are the Chinese really like?
If we go by the theory that “the more things change, the more they stay the same,” then we should be profoundly interested in the many elements of Ralph Townsend’s analysis written in 1933 that have survived the test of time.
Townsend masterfully describes and brings together many different dimensions and nuances of the Chinese.
Far from being fragmentary, the book gets deeper and more unifying as one reads further through it.
There is quite a lot of material in this book that was considered brutally too honest back in 1933.
It has become even more that way in the political correctness America of the modern era. If America’s political and business leaders could absorb the insights contained in this book, they would be vastly better equipped to steer a mutually respectful and beneficial course with the Chinese rather than create erratic policy swings or expose America to major vulnerabilities that can eventually invite tragic forms of conflict.
Softcover, 5.5″ × 8.5″, 336 pages
