Long years ago, in their remarkable little book meant for the American public who were fighting the Second World War, titled The Making of Modern China, W.W.Norton, 1944, Owen and Eleanor Lattimore, an American couple, said a number of things on China which are still of interest today.
As to where China is located, they said, 'Peiping(Beijing) stands almost exactly on latitude forty north while New York stands just a little above it. From Peiping to China's westernmost frontiers is about as far as it is from New York to Oregon.'
On what kind of people they are, the Owens said, 'they are much more like us than we have been led to suppose, certainly much more like us than the Japanese'. They also said, 'The typical Chinese is honest.'. This was the time when 'More than eighty per cent of the Chinese people are farmers.'
They also pointed out,'Men who laugh at the same things are not apt to misunderstand each other. The typical Chinese has a very keen sense of humor and one much nearer to the American sense of humor than that of many other peoples.', and 'The typical Chinese is naturally democratic, and in this he is as much like most Americans as he is unlike most Japanese.'
The next is rather long but maybe crucial in understanding the relation of China, Taiwan and overseas Chinese. 'There is no other group in the world that combines, as the Chinese do, vast numbers and a high degree of both physical and cultural uniformity. This is explained by a Chinese attitude for which Confucius found a formula many centuries ago: "Let those who wear the costume of the barbarians be barbarians; those who wear the costume of the Chinese, be Chinese."
The revised edition of the book, titled China:A Short History, was out in 1947 from the same publishers. The above quotations are from the first edition as I am not in a position to consult the new one. We have, however, a Japanese translation of the revised, and judging from it the portions quoted have been in tact in the revised edition as well.
Owen Lattimore(1900-89) was a scholar of long experience with China, who proposed the concept of 'Inner Asia', and reconstructed the whole history of China from the point of view of perpetual interaction between the 'China proper' and the 'Inner Asia' or China's frontiers. I think that, though China has been very much urbanized by now, as was discussed in the previous column, what the Lattimores said about the Chinese and Americans being similar and not apt to misunderstand each other has not lost its meaning altogether.
If so, there is every reason why these two countries should cooperate to dispel the misunderstanding that has been mounting for several decades by now, which has been politically formed in the process called the Cold War.
If the US looks at China as a hypothetical enemy, it will inevitably have enormous impact on Japan, which has suffered a lot because of the triple disaster in 2011, on top of being in a state of depression for more than 20 years, and about which it is becoming common to talk about the lost decade(s).
If Japan is more independent-minded, as many Japanese strongly wish, she will be able to do a lot to bring China and the US closer. Normalizing relations with DPRK, making relations with the US less military-oriented, assisting the emerging countries on the grass-roots level instead of large-scale engineering level, drastically cutting the warming gas emission combined with persuading the two powers to come and join the global framework are some of the possible measures in that direction.
For the immediate future, however, we will make more of a tool in the new US Military Review. China's, or for that matter also DPRK's, possible military adventurism, shown, for example, in China's construction of the carrier fleet, will unfortunately help this way.
We will further discuss the problem of the US Marines at Okinawa islands in a little more depth.
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