Junk history indeed —

Menzies, an elderly Englishman with an easy charm, has written a thick best-selling volume called “1421 – The Year China Discovered the World”. It’s an alternative history of world discovery centred on Zheng He, a celebrated Chinese mariner. Zheng He was real and remarkable – but perhaps not as remarkable as Menzies claims, for he suggests that the fifteenth century eunuch admiral and his captains set out on an enormous undocumented voyage. Menzies tells us that Zheng He’s giant junks circumnavigated the world , discovering Australia, New Zealand, the Americas, and Antarctica. His fleets supposedly left settlers and artefacts wherever they made landfall. If true this makes Zheng He and his sailors greater explorers than Columbus, Cook and Magellan combined.

Not surprisingly Menzies’ book appeals to Chinese pride. In 2003 Chinese President Hu Jintao, addressing a joint sitting of the Australian Parliament, repeated the claim that the Chinese had discovered and settled Australia three centuries before Captain Cook.

“1421” has sold over a million copies. Last year it was the second largest selling history title in Australia. Gavin Menzies has lectured at Melbourne University and is invited to attend conferences around the world.

Unfortunately, reporter Quentin McDermott points out, his book has a credibility problem. Professional historians label it naïve scholarship or worse, straight-out fabrication. Menzies writes, amongst other things, that New Zealand Maori are not Polynesians but a cross breed of Chinese concubines and Melanesians. The evidence for this, and many similar claims, is tissue thin.

Link: https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/junk-history/8953466

It is ironic that for the Chinese to win all they need do is concede to Trump everything he’s asking for – follow WTO rules, stop IP theft etc – but they can’t. Instead they arrest innocent businessmen in China and jail them with capital charges, a reaction that couldn’t play into Trump’s hands more neatly to encourage the diversion of capital investment from China to other countries less likely to arrest executives and steal technology.

A few more years of this and China will become mired permanently in the middle income trap. Perhaps they already are.

Another tragic aspect to this conflict with China is that the left gets worked up over imagined issues here while China does pretty much anything and gets little to no notice from our enlightened elite. China invaded Tibet in the 40’s and continues genocide there. They enforce capital punishment by the thousands annually to feed an organ transplant industry – the execution can be scheduled for the day of operation – so convenient. And if you want to see some real Muslim oppression look no further than the Uighurs and the massive concentration camps reordering minds to order in a very real Brave New World. And the Hong Kong people are being brought to heal regardless of agreements signed. And our Hollywood virtue signalers look the other way.

In fact, there is a law, PL95-223, The International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, signed into law by Jimmy Carter, which gives the President the power, in a declared National Emergency, to essentially cut off U.S. trade with a foreign nation, and, in essence, to compel U.S. companies to go along with his order.

The Manchu Dynasty turned inward and stopped exploring. Many things that had existed in China, like iron foundries, disappeared. When Europeans came in the 1700s, China had lost many cultural traditions like iron fabrication.

Add to that new opportunities within the Anglosphere after Brexit and you have a setup for interesting positive developments. Can Ireland be pried away from the EU into the growing Anglosphere? Very likely.

Just saw an article about non-stop flights to Australia. With twitter it has become easy and interesting for me to follow Australian and UK happenings, probably true for many others also.

An Anglosphere with a renewed focus on the values described so well by Hannan is what the world needs IMHO. We may be seeing the beginning of the second act of the Rise of the West.