Sarah Paine

So that's why the 19th century is a lost century of all of that going on.

So it's...

It's hard.

And then there's another piece that's hard for the Chinese.

If you've been such a successful civilization in Asia the way they had been, they were the center of everything culturally, science, governmental institutions.

You name the name, the area of human achievement and the Chinese were at the top of it all in Asia.

With that kind of success, it's pretty hard to reform yourself.

And so they also fed themselves the Kool-Aid that the Chinese never absorbed foreign ideas.

It was always foreigners absorbed their ideas.

And of course, that's nonsense because they were conquered by Manchus and actually absorbed a lot of Manchu institutions.

But that's not the story they're telling.

Whereas the Japanese are well aware they're absorbing Kool-Aid.

Chinese institutions originally, Western institutions later.

And so that isn't antithetical to who the Japanese are.

Yeah, that's hard.

Well, also because the way they define civilization, there's only one.

Everybody else are barbarians.

People come and kowtow to China.

Okay, great.

But this doesn't set you up to learn from others.