China and the West

Jack London : allgemein.
Quellen :
Hearn, Lafcadio. Japan : an attempt at interpretation. (1904).
Hearn, Lafcadio. Kokoro : hints and echoes of Japanese inner life. (1896).
Hearn, Lafcadio. Glimpses of unfamiliar Japan.
Bird, Isabella. Korea and her neighbors.

1893 Jack London visited Japan. He joined the crew of the Sophia Southerland.
1904 Jack London went to the Far East as war correspondent and photographer for the Russo-Japanese war, for the San Francisco Examiner, Collier's, the New York Herald and Harper's Magazine.
He arrived in Tokyo aboard the SS. Siberia and traveled through Korea and Manchuria.

Daniel A. Métraux : London was critical of Japanese officials and censors during the Russo- Japanese War, but his correspondence on Japanese soldiers and Chinese and Korean civilians was very sympathetic.
After his return from Manchuria in 1904, and until his death in 1916, London's writings show increasing concern and admiration for the people of Asia and the South Pacific. He very accurately predicted that Asia was in the process of waking up, and that countries like Japan and China would emerge as major economic powers with the capacity to com-pete with the West as the twentieth century progressed. London also declared that West-erners must make concerted efforts to meet with Japanese and Chinese, so that they could begin to understand each other better as equals.
During and after his time in Korea and Manchuria, London developed a thesis that postulated the rise, first of Japan and then of China, as major twentieth century economic and industrial powers. London suggested that Japan would not be satisfied with its seizure of Korea in the Russo-Japanese War, that it would in due course take over Manchuria, and would then seize control of China with the goal of using the Chinese with their huge pool of labor and their valuable resources for its own benefit. Once awakened by Japan, however, the Chinese would oust the Japanese and rise as a major industrial power whose economic prowess would cause the West so much distress, by the mid-1970s they would launch a violent attack on China to remove them as economic threats.
He warned that the West was living in a bubble—that its incredible power and wealth, and its tenacious hold on Asia, would burst in due course, and that the center of world power would shift to East Asia. London predicted that initially the transition would be peaceful, because Asia’s rise would be primarily economic, but in the end, war between East and West would be inevitable. London predicted that Western nations, terrified of China's rising power, would unite and together do its utmost to savagely wipe out Chinese civilization.
One of the major problems facing the West, London surmised, was that Westerners, living in their self-contained, ignorant bliss, had no understanding of Asian cultures and were far too confident of their superiority to realize that their days of world power were numbered. In dispatches from Korea and Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese War, and in several postwar essays, London analyzed the potential of the three major cultures he encountered, and predicted which ones would rise to world dominance. For London, and for other writers of the time, Russia’s defeat by Japan was a critically important turning point in the way the American press represented Asians; journalists began to challenge the long-held belief in the innate superiority of the white race.
London made a clear distinction between the Chinese and the Japanese. He labeled the Chinese as the Yellow Peril and the Japanese as the Brown Peril. Even though Japan was on the ascent in 1904-1905, while China was moribund, London was confident that in the end, Japan lacked both the size and the spirit to lead an Asian renaissance. That task would devolve to China. He predicted that Japan would launch a crusade crying 'Asia for the Asiatics,' but that their contribution would be to act as a catalyst that would awaken the Chinese.
London pointed out that the entire white population of Europa and North America was still outnumbered by Chinese and Japanese.
Critics questioned how it would be possible to awaken China. The West had been trying to do just that for many decades and had failed. Then, how could the Japanese succeed? London's rather sophisticated response was that the Japanese better understood the Chinese because they had built their country on an imported foundation of Chinese culture.
London also had considerable admiration for Chinese civilization and predicted that when its people "woke up," it would become a world superpower, becoming so powerful by 1976 that the nations of the West would rally together to curtail China's dominance. He found the Chinese to be intelligent, clever, pragmatic and extremely hard-working. Tragically, however, China had been held back by a conservative governing elite who feared innovation and who looked to the glories of their nation's past and shunned chances to learn from the technologically superior West or from the recent achievements of the Japanese. London believed that the only hope for the Chinese is a revolution from below, because the lethargic literati who governed China did so with an iron hand. The rulers would make no concessions to modernize
China, for to do so would cause them to lose their power and wealth. The real tragedy, notes London, is that so little had changed in China for centuries because "government was in the hands of the learned classes, and that these governing scholars found their salvation lay in suppressing all progressive ideas."
London predicted that the Chinese Revolution and future ascendancy would be triggered by a Japanese invasion of China. Looking to the future in 1905, London conjectured that Japan would never be satisfied with control over Korea. Just above Korea lay Manchuria, with its huge deposits of coal and iron, the very ingredients that Japan would need to expand its industrial empire. South of Manchuria lay 400 million highly disciplined workers who, if harnessed by the Japanese, could become the factory workers and miners who would make Japan a truly great world power.
London predicted that Japan would go to war with China to maintain its status as a great power, but ultimately the Japanese met defeat and lost their empire in Taiwan, Korea and Manchuria. Japan then became a peaceful nation no longer interested in remaining as a major military power. But to everybody's surprise, China too was not war-like—her strength lay "in the fecundity of her loins" and by 1970 the country's population stood at a half billion and was spilling over its boundaries. In 1970, when France made a stand for Indo-China, China sent down an army of a million men and "The French force was brushed aside like a fly." France then landed a punitive expedition of 250,000 men and watched as it was "swallowed up in China's cavernous maw. . . ." Then as China expanded Siam fell, the southern boundary of Siberia was pressed hard and all other border areas from India to Central Asia were absorbed, as well as Burma and what is now Malaysia.
The Great Powers of Europe came together and decided that the Chinese threat must be eradicated. They sent a great military and naval force towards China which in turn mobilized all of its forces. But although the great armies approached each other, there was no invasion. Instead, on May 1st, 1976, an airship flew over Peking dropping tubes of fragile glass that fell on the city and shattered. In due course all of China was bombarded with the glass tubes filled with microbes and bacilli. Within six weeks most of Peking's 11 million people were dead of plagues and every virulent form of infectious disease: smallpox, scarlet fever, yellow fever, cholera, bubonic plague. Before long much of the rest of China experienced the same catastrophe and much of the country became an empty wilderness. London concludes his story commenting on the downfall of China with its billion citizens.
It is highly ironic that London so clearly foresaw Japan's eventual seizure of Korea and Manchuria, and its long, difficult invasion of China. Most importantly, he saw that Japan would not be satisfied with the mere defeat of Russia and the seizure of Korea and small parts of southern Manchuria. He foresaw that the Japanese would want to become the powerhouse of Asia and that they would come to realize that they would benefit if they could employ the power of four hun¬dred million Chinese working on their behalf. History tells us that Japan did indeed invade Manchuria for its fertile land and rich natural resources in 1931 and that it invaded China later in the 1930s and 1940s to force the Chinese to accept Japanese supremacy there. A number of Japanese industrialists did indeed build profitable factories in several Chinese cities employing cheap Chinese labor and the Japanese military even installed its own puppet Chinese government in China. London correctly predicted that Japan's incursion into China would so enrage the Chinese that they would rise up and expel the Japanese. This awakening of the "sleeping dragon" of China which in turn would lead to that nation's emergence as a major world power.
London penetrates the hearts and souls of non-white people who have suffered deeply from the exploitation of the Anglo-Saxon, but there is very little that is moralistic or didactic in his style. While London shows sympathy for many of his non-white characters, he is above all an artist who attempts to develop the full personalities of the key people in his stories.
London was more than a mere chronicler of the twentieth century. He had read exentsively about Japanese and Chinese history before starting his mission as a journalist and had a keen eye for regional history and culture. London, while in Korea demonstrated little respect for Koreans and wrote about them in very negative terms. Only later in his career did he develop genuine respect for Koreans and their culture. He had little faith in the ability of Koreans to save their nation, but was full of praise for the Japanese and Chinese whose rise he predicted in his early writings.

Joe Lockard : London repeatedly claims that ther is no true common language between China and the West, that ther exists and unbridgeable divide between these polarized human cultures. As argument, London relates language and writing systems of dunamental opposition between an adaptive but static East and an active, intentive West. The capacity to alter history lies in flexible inventiveness manifested in Europa and the United States whereas China remains in history's cocoon, trapped by its hieroglyphic literacy that reveals an inferior mentality. When London encounters language difference in Asia he posits a hierarchy of human expressive capacity. London's racial attitudes were doubtless complex, shifting, and filtered through his wide variety of experience with human difference.
While his critical repuation in China has plunged drastically, the number of new London translations continues to rise and translation introductions remain silen on racism in London's work.