Yonder

Embracing China

By Andrej Mrevlje | May 15, 2024 10:00 am

Image from Michelangelo Antonioni's documentary Chong Kuo.

The transaction happened at the Central train station in Beijing. Our train from Irkutsk stopped at Platform Number One: two students from Yugoslavia got out of the empty first-class car. Received by two Chinese officials, I had yet to learn about their rank or function. They were dressed in blue maoist uniforms like the rest of the people in China – all children of Mao Zedong. In my mind, the few months after the death of the great helmsman seemed an eternity, yet, on the surface, the country continued to look egalitarian. But bit by bit, things were changing. And so it was with our arrival: the Chinese were receiving two casually dressed students from Yugoslavia – me, traveling with an American military duffle bag, who, only two months earlier, were marked as revisionists. Now, they showed us honor and respect, a subtle indication that China was about to make a turn. Not an immediate change, not on that grey November day in 1976 when I arrived. However, when Mao was still alive and the” Gang of Four,” the extreme left group, was in power, this kind of reception would not have been imaginable. The two of us were seated in the comfortable armchairs of the VIP reception hall reserved for high-level guests at the central railway station in the capital of China.

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China

China Before the Age of Yonder

By Andrej Mrevlje | March 30, 2024 10:00 am

More than forty years after its initial publication, Fanshen remains the essential volume for anyone fascinated by China’s revolutionary rural reform process. In the years since the Chinese Communist Party first came to power, tradition and modernity have had a complementary relationship

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Russia and China

Putin’s Bomb Under the Negotiation Table

By Andrej Mrevlje | March 18, 2024 10:00 am

Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin in Moscow 1949

In my last Yonder, I mentioned the gigantic yet inelegant Nanjing Bridge, finished in 1968, at the peak of Maoism in China and abroad. Regardless of its remarkable 1576m length, the double-deck truss bridge was a political construction. Paradoxically, without the Soviet-China split in the late fifties, the Nanjing Bridge would have been built much later without a railway deck. This, at least, was what we were told by our Chinese mentors when, in the early autumn of 1977, we, the group of international students, were loaded on the bus and driven to the ramp of the bridge where we were to be illuminated about the first authentic Chinese construction. As of today, the words of our Chinese 负责人 (“fuzeren”person in charge) were prophetic: they were telling us that the bridge we were admiring was the first sight of a China that, half a century later, may lead the world. Mao’s calligraphy on the right side of the bridge (see the photo in the previous posting) was even more visionary and direct; it was a request for the Chinese people to catch up and surpass the most developed countries. In Mao’s mind, the Soviet Union was undoubtedly the one to catch up to. Our guides and teachers were in tune with the same Mao thought. It was over a year since the great helmsman was deposited in the newly built mausoleum on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. But Mao thought he was still very much alive. The Chinese believed now that they had built the double-sized bridge without the help of the Soviets, they were capable of doing more wonders. I remember that period of transition when the mindset of the Deng Xiaoping reforms started to prevail across the country. It was one Sunday, sometime in 1977, that People’s Daily published a drawing over the entire back page illustrating the future appearance of Beijing, packed with skyscrapers, helicopters, airplanes, bridges, and highways; in short, it was a vision that became carved in every Chinese mind. The drawing looked surreal, as a child’s hand would draw an imaginary Blade Runner megalopolis.

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China

Nanjing Bridge to the World

By Andrej Mrevlje | March 12, 2024 9:53 am

Nanjing Bridge was opened in 1968, eight years after the Soviet-China split. It is considered the first authentically Chinese project. The writing is Mao Zedong's urge to the Chinese to do more: "The Chinese people are ambitious and capable. We must catch up with the developed world and soon surpass them, becoming the world's most advanced level." Mao Zedong

1977, I packed my things and prepared for my second year in China. I was excited to move from Beijing, the capital of communist China, to Nanjing, the postimperial Kuomintang capital. I did not prefer nationalists to maoist; I did not have a political mind then. But when I learned that Nanjing University (Nanda) was located in the heart of the city, and yes, for God’s sake, it had the most liberal dean of China’s existing academic universe, I was good to go. As I learned later, Kuang Yaming, the dean of Nanda, was a pal of Deng Xiaoping, perhaps why he turned Nanda into a helm of educational reforms, an important center of the national political debate that became the cornerstone of economic reforms in the coming decades. Kuan was an openhearted man who let us – the cohort of international students in Nanjing – travel freely around the country, which, in most cases, was still closed to foreigners. In this way, we explored the cities along the Yangtze Valley, which, in Chinese culture, is the cradle of Chinese civilization.

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America

Two Old Men and the Sea

By Andrej Mrevlje | March 3, 2024 10:00 am

I never believed that it would happen again, that during my extended sojourn in the United States, I would have to witness the political resurrection of Donald J. Trump. Approximately a year ago, when he started threatening another run for the presidency, he reappeared in his usual uniform: the deep blue suit, the too bright red tie – that he constantly caresses- and the obligatory white shirt. All the colors of the American flag, just in case the audience forgets that Trump is America’s boy, the MAGA hat proclaiming his ideology, with a license to spread unlimited lies.

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America

The Spectre is Haunting America

By Andrej Mrevlje | December 30, 2023 10:00 am

L’Aquila earthquake in April 2009

Gaza after the recent bombings

I traveled to Europe recently, where right-wing movements and governments are allegedly on the rise. I visited two countries where I vote and exercise my rights as a citizen. Neither Slovenia nor Italy are known as authoritarian states in the way Hungary currently represents the right-wing nation in Europe. As far as I know, the Hungarian regime does not(yet)resemble early Hitler’s Germany, with the paramilitary groups marching the streets, destroying Jewish shops. But the phobia against immigrants is growing parallel to the accruing of power by the little dictator, Victor Orban. The right-wing forces, first in Hungary and later in Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, started to show their appetite for authoritarianism during the COVID-19 pandemic by implementing draconic measures. In Slovenia, the lockdown at 10 pm lasted six months, except for walking the dogs. As my Slovenian friends told me, the population of dogs grew faster than humans, who, for long months, were chained to their counties by strictly implemented bans on traveling.

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U.S.- China Relations

Biden against Xi, 1:1

By Andrej Mrevlje | November 18, 2023 10:00 am

The heavy Red Flag, a Chinese presidential armored limo, drove slowly on the gravel driveway towards the entrance of the early 20th century Filoli Historic House. A villa with 56 rooms and 16 acres of gardens, built in 1917, 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of San Francisco, served as the leisure home of William Bowers Bourn II, son of the early American capitalist who ran and controlled an empire of gold mines, plus the San Francisco Gas Company. Under the arcade of the entrance to the Villa stood Joe Biden, the 46th president of the U.S., now the host of the prestigious villa donated in 1975 to the public.

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Russia

Russia and I

By Andrej Mrevlje | June 4, 2022 9:30 am

Putin’s brutal attack on Ukraine has made the Coronavirus pandemic disappear from the headlines. The invisible virus’ silent killings have been replaced by bombs, missiles, tanks, and the new devastating and deadly weapons that Russia is testing out on the courageous Ukrainian soldiers. Many Ukrainian cities already remind me of Aleppo and the mass graves of Srebrenica. This personal dispatch is about the Russians and the Slavs. (I am the latter.)

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Ukraine

Is Putin China’s Trojan Horse?

By Andrej Mrevlje | March 17, 2022 9:30 am

While discussing the new nuclear age with Christopher Lydon on the Open Source podcast, Joseph Cirincione, a distinguished fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said something obvious but very accurate: “All our deterrence theory is based on the idea of rational actors. That is why we see so much reference to the game theory in these things. What is the logical thing someone would do when confronting this situation?… Do we know if Putin is logical, is he stable?” We may not know the answer until Putin goes completely overboard, but it may be too late even then. The Russian president had no apparent reason to start the murderous war in Ukraine, and I see nothing that could stop him from turning the war into a nuclear disaster. As he announced after the first week of his criminal attack on Ukraine, he has put his atomic weapons into special combat readiness. In other words, he took the safety off of his nuclear weapons and is ready to launch them at any moment.

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Geopolitics

The Biggest Geopolitical Game Ever

By Andrej Mrevlje | February 9, 2022 9:30 am

Shuttle Diplomacy: Vladimir Putin and Emmanuel Macron in Moscow.

What impressed me the most about the 2022 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony in Beijing was the image of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. The first images of the Russian president showed him dozing off, his head sinking deep into his shoulders. He looked disinterested and bored. Who wouldn’t be, you might say. The parade of national teams was tedious and never-ending. Of course, if something similar had happened during the Winter Olympics in Sochi or during one of the military parades on the Red Square in Moscow, Russian cameras would not have shown the dictator in the position of a mere mortal. But, this year’s Olympics is not Putin’s show. It’s Xi Jinping’s game now. And Russia could never participate in any of China’s strategic moves. It is inconceivable that China would let Russia assist in the presumed invasion of Taiwan or defend the strategic economic and military zone in the South China Sea. Nobody can. China is forging its own exclusive path.

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Connecting global events into a new narrative. by Andrej Mrevlje

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Connecting global events into
a new narrative. by Andrej Mrevlje