By Chris Trotter*
Watching the screen in Oamaru’s Majestic picture theatre, I struggled to make sense of Fifty-Five Days At Peking. Yes, it was exciting, but it was also, for a seven year-old, extremely confusing. What war was this? Not the First World War, and certainly not the Second. More to the point, why were the nations I had grown up regarding as enemies – the Germans, the Japanese, and the Russians – all counted among the “goodies” in this movie? Turns out that I was not the only person confused by Fifty-Five Days At Peking. In spite of an all-star cast, including Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, and David Niven, it was not a box-office success.
A well-informed New Zealander in their seventies in 1963 would not, however, have had anything like as much trouble understanding the plot. The blood-curdling “Boxer Rebellion” of 1899-1901; the consequent 55-day siege (20 June-14 August 1900) of the foreign legations in the Chinese capital; and the Eight Nation Alliance that lifted the siege and then proceeded to humiliate and punish the Chinese Empire; that was not an historical sequence any youngster following it in the newspapers was likely to forget. Certainly, it has never been forgotten by the Chinese, whose irreplaceable cultural treasures were destroyed by the armies of the “imperialists”.
Hardly surprising, when one considers how loudly those imperialists boasted of their victory. The intervention of Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Italy, the United States, and Japan, had demonstrated to the whole world, or, at least, to those few remaining parts of it not under the Eight’s complete control, what lay in store for any people who dared to raise their “harmonious fists” against them. The deliberate destruction of the Chinese emperors’ beautiful Summer Palace constituted a pretty big hint.
As always, the German Emperor, Wilhelm II, offered the most memorable quote:
“Just as the Huns under their king Attila created for themselves a thousand years ago a name which men still respect, you should give the name of German such cause to be remembered in China that no Chinaman will dare look a German in the face.”
That was the way the world was in 1900. The German Kaiser merely put into words (the “Huns” reference coming back to haunt him in 1914) what all the other leaders of the great imperial powers were thinking. The nations of Europe (and Japan) dominated the globe. Their cultures, and their technologies, were in every way superior.
Lest any reader assume that all such unabashed imperialist notions, following the horrors of World War II, had been set aside by the “international community”, here’s a memory-jogger from 1990-1991 – the Gulf War.
When Iraq’s Saddam Hussein invaded the oil-rich emirate of Kuwait in 1990, the American President, George H.W. Bush, sternly informed him, and the rest of the world, that “this will not stand”.
He was as good as his word. With China still dealing with the fall-out from Tiananmen Square, and the Soviet Union in the process of disintegration, the United States was able to pull together a “coalition” of 42 nation states to intervene on behalf of the Kuwaiti government and drive the Iraqis back across the border. Dominated, overwhelmingly, by the military resources of the United States, the Coalition made short work of Saddam’s army. It was a stunning demonstration of the USA’s uncontested global hegemony.
Savouring his victory, George H.W. Bush made no reference to the Huns, but he did proclaim the arrival of a “New World Order” – one in which any nation bold and/or foolish enough to flout Washington’s rules of international engagement should expect to pay a very heavy price.
How the events of the last thirty years have changed the world’s geopolitical architecture!
When Bush senior’s “New World Order” still meant something, the idea of a rebel regime in Yemen forcing the world’s shipping companies to abandon the Suez Canal would have been dismissed as absurd.
With the Cold War won, and American hegemony an accomplished fact for most of the 1990s, the idea that the Suez Canal could be closed – as it was for seven years in the wake of the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973 – would not have stood. The impact on global oil prices, and the disruption of the international supply-chains so vital to the world’s increasingly interconnected economy, would have been regarded as unacceptable. The United States, the nations of Western Europe, and many of the Arab oil-states, would have unleashed upon Yemen the same overwhelming force that pummelled Iraq.
After 11 September 2001, however, the global game changed dramatically. Al Qaeda’s attack on the United States (itself an outgrowth of the USA’s co-option of the Saudi Kingdom in 1991) took place in an international setting very different from that which prevailed at the time of the Gulf War.
For a start, Russia and China were back in the game, stronger and more focused than they had been ten years earlier. Much of that strength was born out of both nations’ burgeoning trade with the European Union. Other states, Brazil, India and Iran in particular, were impatient to claim a more equitable share of the global economy. The USA remained strong – but not as strong as it had been at the end of the Cold War. It was an open question, in 2001, as to how many countries would respond to an American summons.
While joining the United States in a Global War on Terror made perfect sense in a world containing terroristic forces on the scale of Al Qaeda, partnering-up with Uncle Sam for what were obviously little more than punitive expeditions intended to slake the American thirst for vengeance after 9/11 was much less appealing. While the American overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan was given a pass (the regime had, after all, provided a base for Al Qaeda) the invasion of Iraq stepped over a line that most of the rest of the world would, ultimately, refuse to cross.
It would take twenty years for the Americans to comprehend, finally, that they were no longer in a position to issue orders to the rest of the world. Nor could they rely on the sort of racial and religious solidarity that prompted the world’s leading imperial powers to join together for yet another demonstration of White Supremacy on Chinese soil.
After the USA’s disastrous retreat from Afghanistan, the Russians and the Chinese must have exchanged knowing glances, and prepared to up-the-ante. The Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine, while demonstrating the astonishing courage and resilience of the Ukrainians, also revealed the vacillation and disunity of the Nato states and, in the aftermath (and facing the possible return) of Donald Trump, of the USA itself.
In Fifty-Five Days At Peking the Chinese were the baddies, and the white imperialists (alongside their plucky Japanese ally) represented the clear moral and technological superiority of Western Civilisation. If, in American, Australian and, increasingly, in New Zealand eyes, the Chinese are still the baddies, the perspective from Beijing, and a large part of the rest of the world, is rather different.
To the Peoples Republic of China, and its friends, the United States of 2024 must remind them of the flailing and failing Chinese Empire of 1900. In their own estimation, however, the Chinese people, once on their knees, have stood up.
And all those great empires that ravaged China in 1900, where are they now? Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, Austria, Japan: all of them have become second-rate powers – at best. Even the United States, the great hegemon, is no longer equal to the task of preserving freedom of navigation along the Suez Canal.
In the words of China’s greatest sage, Confucius: “If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.”
*Chris Trotter has been writing and commenting professionally about New Zealand politics for more than 30 years. He writes a weekly column for interest.co.nz. His work may also be found at http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com.
23 Comments
China really has an axe to grind doesn’t it. Not only this bad episode but the opium wars themselves and the dastardly Britisher who stole the tea plant. Always unforeseen consequences of course and they were really bad. Here the role by Germany saw the concession of land in Tsingtao, a military base. Came WW1 & Japan was coerced into the action and assisted the British forces to capture said base. Japan did more than assist, they did most of the dirty work, so much so during the victory parade the German prisoners turned their backs on the British as they marched past. The upshot though, Japan thus had the foot hold to launch their horrendous genocidal incursion into mainland China in the 1930s and also secured a host of ex German claimed islands in the Sth Pacific that they fortified sufficiently to give the Allies a hell of time capturing in WW2.
China has the same problem the rest of the world has: that there isn't enough of it left to go around.
Yes, the US hegemony is failing - as is the growth narrative that accompanied it (despite DC every morning, avoiding mentioning depletion).
But there isn't enough planet for a displacement of the US, at that rate of resource-consumption (4x the rest of the world, per head, in energy terms), by anyone. Relative superiority yes, but greater than, no.
And it remains to be seen, whether ANY country can get by alone - a global implosion is more likely total that targeted.
Ah, Chris, here we go again with another nostalgic march down the back alleys of imperial guilt. It's an engaging story, I’ll give you that, but what a tale of woe. Your recurring theme—that Western civilization is crumbling while China ascends triumphantly—is so well-worn that I’m surprised you haven’t applied for a patent.
Let's take a breath here. The premise of your argument—that the West has become a hollow shell of its former self while China rises from the ashes of 1900—is as dramatic as it is deeply flawed. Yes, history was brutal, filled with injustices and atrocities. No one’s claiming otherwise. But your takeaway from these events seems to be that the West is essentially doomed and that we should all just bow our heads in shame, and maybe, if we’re lucky, the new overlords will let us watch while they "stand up."
But here's the thing—what you’re really lamenting isn’t the decline of the West. It's your loss of faith in the very people you live among. For all your righteous anger about the past, your current disdain seems mostly reserved for us—those who share your streets, your supermarkets, your freedoms. What happened? Did the rugby results finally get to you?
You see, what you miss in your gloom is this: the West is not a monolith. It changes, it adapts, it evolves. Sure, empires rise and fall, but so too does innovation, culture, and human progress. You paint China as this rising phoenix, but even their leaders would probably be flattered by your unblinking admiration. Perhaps they’re a little embarrassed. After all, a strong nation doesn't need sycophants from the other side of the world nodding along with everything they do. In fact, it often prefers critics. You should try it sometime.
And let’s be real for a second: You cheer on China's ascension with the same tone of inevitability that one might use to describe a natural law. But history shows us that nothing is preordained. Nations are more like people than you'd think—each one susceptible to its own unique vulnerabilities, internal tensions, and shifts in fortune. The West isn't "crumbling" just because it no longer holds the sort of unilateral power it did a century ago. It's evolving—like it always has—through change, through new challenges, and yes, through setbacks.
What’s truly sad, though, is that in your zeal to critique, you overlook the remarkable capacity for reinvention, collaboration, and resilience right here at home. While you wait by the riverbank for the bodies of your enemies to float by, the rest of us are still building bridges.
And speaking of Confucius: “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.” Let’s not pretend that an ascendant China automatically spells the decline of the West. After all, the world is a little bigger, and a lot more complex, than the binary you so desperately wish to impose on it.
So, Chris, instead of waiting for the world to collapse under its own contradictions, why not try having a little faith in us for a change?
The world will collapse - but NOT under its own contradictions. Emotions and anthropocity (if it isn't a word, it should be) are no physics and ecology. The latter are real, and totally ambivalent as to human notional constructs.
You and Chris both fail to address the real Limits to Growth; the real fact of an overshot species on a very finite planet.
What’s truly sad, though, is that in your zeal to critique, you overlook the remarkable capacity for reinvention, collaboration, and resilience right here at home
Where's your evidence.
It's been nearly 50 years since we started shifting industrial function to the developing world (actually longer depending on how you slice it). On the assumption they could do all the menial stuff like make our cars, appliances, computers, even some of our food, and we'd carry the banner forward, developing ever wonderous new items of higher value which we would capitalise from. For we invented and made these things while others were in flax skirts, so clearly, we have an inherent superiority with this stuff, right?
It seems like one of the only forms of invention we've managed since is financial. The West can't even compete at scale on something like electric vehicles.
What can we do here you can't do elsewhere cheaper with less encumbrances, outside of what competitive advantages our environment gives us?
Not to distract from CTs usual eloquent narrative however for clarity the Summer Palace was destroyed in 1860 during the 2nd Opium war (in response to the torture & death of envoys detained while under a flag of truce).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Summer_Palace
It looks like it was sacked twice:
On October 18 1860, Lord Elgin, the British High Commissioner to China, retaliated against the torture of the delegation members by ordering the destruction of the Old Summer Palace. Destroying the Old Summer Palace was also a warning to the Qing Empire not to use kidnapping as a political tactic against Britain. It took 3,500 British troops to set the entire place ablaze, and the massive fire lasted for three days. Unbeknownst to the troops, some 300 remaining eunuchs and palace maids, who concealed themselves from the soldiers in locked rooms, perished when the palace complex was burnt. Only 13 buildings survived intact, most of them in the remote areas or by the lakeside. (The palace would be sacked once again and completely destroyed in 1900 when the forces of the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded Beijing.
If you are to visit the history of any country, there will be cause for shame. NZ is no different. History by it's very nature is a long memory. But there is another unmentioned point to CT's history lesson here. It is that every person who raises themselves to become a national leader inherits the consequences of every past government, and they must have the capability of not just coping with that history, but to respond and act appropriately on behalf of and for the people with respect to it.
Unfortunately too many individuals who style themselves as national leaders are not up to the task. George W was not up to the standard of George H. (CT makes no mention of the question of oil in the rescue of Kuwait in 1991).
China has famously got a reputation for playing a long game, and within that scheme and their history 120 years is not that long. But their own history teaches the lessons of great powers who weaken and crumble in time.
The question we often debate is democracy v dictatorship, and intrinsic within this is the respect for the people. How and what we choose for the future today can have long lasting consequences.
As an aside, in the movie, Heston & Niven were set to jump out of a ditch and run across a field under fire. Niven said to Heston - just go at a trot old chap, you see I have this gammy knee thingy. So on “action,” Niven is out of the ditch and across the field like a startled rabbit with Heston left well behind. Director to Heston, ok let’s do it all again, but this time Charlton do try and keep up, you looked ridiculous lumbering along like that, hell you’re younger than him!
Crikey , Chris : Lost for new ideas ? ... it's getting tiresome and lame this old story about the end of America as a superpower ....
... last week you were repeating a wildly overstated statistic about marchers in Dunedin ... a grossly exaggerated figure presented as if it was fact ... get your facts sorted ...
Either get something new and insightful to write about , or retire !
Prejudiced & far fetched there Comrade X.Money is everyone’s friend, always has been. Heck, Genghis & Kublai Khans were hardly monastic monks were they. They founded the world’s largest empire by sustained violent conquest, not happen chance. That created the fabulously wealthy Yuan Dynasty and that interestingly. just happens to be the CCP’s chosen name for the nations’ currency.
The problem with the narrative of Western collapse is that on whatever axis you view Western problems -- demographic, economic, military, political stability -- the likes of China and Russia are doing worse. The only exception I'd make is educational, where we seem to be destroying our education systems as quickly as possible. Even there, we tend to be ignorant to just how bad - how corrupt - the schooling systems are in places like China and India, even as they pump out millions of smart graduates.
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