Joel Kotkin: The Rise of the Tribes
[Joel Kotkin is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and an adjunct fellow at the Legatum Institute in London. He is author of The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050 and Tribes: How Race, Religion and Identity Determine Success in the Global Economy.]
When Chinese President Hu Jintao comes to Washington this week, there aren't likely to be many surprises: Hu and Barack Obama will probably keep their conversation to a fairly regulated script, focusing on trade and North Korea and offering the expected viewpoints on both. But seen from a different angle, everything in that conversation could be predicted, not from current events but from longstanding tribal patterns.
With China's new prominence in global affairs, the Han race, which constitutes 90 percent of the Chinese population, is suddenly the most dominant cohesive ethnic group in the world -- and it is seeking to remain that way through strategic alliances, aggressive trade policy, and attacks on racial minorities within the country's boundaries. The less tribally cohesive, more fragmented West is, meanwhile, losing out.
Almost 20 years ago, I wrote a book called Tribes that sought to trace the role of ethnicity, race, and religion in economic and geopolitical affairs. At the time, there was some skepticism about the continuing influence of ethnicity; some considered the work, frankly, regressive and racist. Now, however, my thesis from 1992 has really come to fruition. We are living in the age of tribes -- and China is just the start....
This has only become more evident as our world becomes more multipolar. During the 19th and much of the 20th century, the world was dominated by a European capitalist mindset that glossed over many of the ethnic and racial differences simmering under the surface in the regions under its rule. Particular groups, including Chinese, Muslims, or Hindu Indians, might have harbored a sense of unique identity but, for the most part, either melded into the Euro-American mold, or, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, into the alternative Soviet one.
Today this has changed dramatically, as once suppressed racial and ethnic groups express their power on a global level. The rise of Chinese national identity, increasingly stripped of its socialist clothing, must be seen as the driving force behind the new tribalism. The country's re-emergence as a great world power expresses the cultural ascendency not so much of Marxism or Maoism but of the Han race, which in only a few decades could control the world's largest economy....
Read entire article at Foreign Policy
When Chinese President Hu Jintao comes to Washington this week, there aren't likely to be many surprises: Hu and Barack Obama will probably keep their conversation to a fairly regulated script, focusing on trade and North Korea and offering the expected viewpoints on both. But seen from a different angle, everything in that conversation could be predicted, not from current events but from longstanding tribal patterns.
With China's new prominence in global affairs, the Han race, which constitutes 90 percent of the Chinese population, is suddenly the most dominant cohesive ethnic group in the world -- and it is seeking to remain that way through strategic alliances, aggressive trade policy, and attacks on racial minorities within the country's boundaries. The less tribally cohesive, more fragmented West is, meanwhile, losing out.
Almost 20 years ago, I wrote a book called Tribes that sought to trace the role of ethnicity, race, and religion in economic and geopolitical affairs. At the time, there was some skepticism about the continuing influence of ethnicity; some considered the work, frankly, regressive and racist. Now, however, my thesis from 1992 has really come to fruition. We are living in the age of tribes -- and China is just the start....
This has only become more evident as our world becomes more multipolar. During the 19th and much of the 20th century, the world was dominated by a European capitalist mindset that glossed over many of the ethnic and racial differences simmering under the surface in the regions under its rule. Particular groups, including Chinese, Muslims, or Hindu Indians, might have harbored a sense of unique identity but, for the most part, either melded into the Euro-American mold, or, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, into the alternative Soviet one.
Today this has changed dramatically, as once suppressed racial and ethnic groups express their power on a global level. The rise of Chinese national identity, increasingly stripped of its socialist clothing, must be seen as the driving force behind the new tribalism. The country's re-emergence as a great world power expresses the cultural ascendency not so much of Marxism or Maoism but of the Han race, which in only a few decades could control the world's largest economy....