One of the participants in book club passed along an article in Law & Liberty by David Goldman ("Spengler") on the origins of Chinese governance.
China’s unique geographic conditions required from antiquity a centralized tax system to fund infrastructure and a centralized bureaucracy to administer it. It never persuaded the peoples it absorbed into the Chinese empire to speak a common language or to confess the same religion. Ethnicity has no role in Chinese statehood.
The book club member, who lives in Silicon Valley and whose wife is from China, says he agrees with about half of the article. He didn't say which half.
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