I don’t think it helps that much on a larger level.
To take your example of religious persecution, I don’t think there’s a meaningful historical trend there. The most infamous religious persecution in Chinese history was Daoist persecution of Buddhists, but China’s relationship with Buddhism was complex; several emperors were predominantly Buddhist, and Tibetan Buddhism in particular held huge sway over the court at times (also over steppe peoples). This doesn’t really map cleanly to modern treatment of Tibet’s religious institutions in my view, besides the general desire of every government to control religious sources of power. (see: Church of England, Oda Nobunaga vs. Enryaku-ji, Saudis and Mecca, etc.)
There was a degree of Christian persecution as well, esp. later on when it became identified as a tool of Western power, and there’s a degree of Christian persecution today as well. But is this a meaningful continuity? Consider three culturally similar countries: China, Korea, Japan. All three historically persecuted Christians for basically the same reasons. Can we extrapolate the same modern behavior for all three? Of course not, the actual outcome was heavily dependent on what path the country followed into modernity. South Korea is ~30% Christian, Japan is ~1% but not persecuted, North Korea is negligible and strongly persecuted, China is ~3% (officially anyway) and somewhat persecuted.
Fair enough, I’m also realising that I probably can’t prove and that I probably shouldn’t rely on my intuition in this case unless I start doing some forecasting stuff for china and my brier score turns out to be good for future actions.
So I think you’re right in that it is a general tendencies for governments who want more power and governments who are newcomers and want to break from the past traditions are more likely to do this.
You also look at the idea of a chinese resurrection after their perceived decline from 1850-1950 and see that you want a break from the past but what is then that past identity that they want from it? I think it partly has to do with their close knit relationship to buddhism and similar as it is one of the beliefs that aren’t instrumental to power (whilst something like confucian beliefs are more instrumental to power).
Now, of course things like game theory, like the general change that modernisation implies, things like the economics of AGI are going to be big and important factors for any type of strategic thinking. I think culture is also a predictor and it helps to understand the basis for values and interpretations in a society and knowing chinese history is getting a deeper understanding for the forces that shaped their culture. I think in the light of that it is easier to see something like a break from the past happening specifically with religious persecution as it is the opposite of what has been the culture before since they had to break up with their past identity (of losing) to one of unity and strength.
This might just be me retrofitting my narrative and so I should stop talking until I prove some degree of predictive accuracy or at least I have evidence to show someone doing this and improving their predictive accuracy. The feeling I got was one of being less scared and more understnding but that might be wrong.
Edit: Also thanks for being concrete and going to an example, I like that.
I don’t think it helps that much on a larger level.
To take your example of religious persecution, I don’t think there’s a meaningful historical trend there. The most infamous religious persecution in Chinese history was Daoist persecution of Buddhists, but China’s relationship with Buddhism was complex; several emperors were predominantly Buddhist, and Tibetan Buddhism in particular held huge sway over the court at times (also over steppe peoples). This doesn’t really map cleanly to modern treatment of Tibet’s religious institutions in my view, besides the general desire of every government to control religious sources of power. (see: Church of England, Oda Nobunaga vs. Enryaku-ji, Saudis and Mecca, etc.)
There was a degree of Christian persecution as well, esp. later on when it became identified as a tool of Western power, and there’s a degree of Christian persecution today as well. But is this a meaningful continuity? Consider three culturally similar countries: China, Korea, Japan. All three historically persecuted Christians for basically the same reasons. Can we extrapolate the same modern behavior for all three? Of course not, the actual outcome was heavily dependent on what path the country followed into modernity. South Korea is ~30% Christian, Japan is ~1% but not persecuted, North Korea is negligible and strongly persecuted, China is ~3% (officially anyway) and somewhat persecuted.
Fair enough, I’m also realising that I probably can’t prove and that I probably shouldn’t rely on my intuition in this case unless I start doing some forecasting stuff for china and my brier score turns out to be good for future actions.
So I think you’re right in that it is a general tendencies for governments who want more power and governments who are newcomers and want to break from the past traditions are more likely to do this.
You also look at the idea of a chinese resurrection after their perceived decline from 1850-1950 and see that you want a break from the past but what is then that past identity that they want from it? I think it partly has to do with their close knit relationship to buddhism and similar as it is one of the beliefs that aren’t instrumental to power (whilst something like confucian beliefs are more instrumental to power).
Now, of course things like game theory, like the general change that modernisation implies, things like the economics of AGI are going to be big and important factors for any type of strategic thinking. I think culture is also a predictor and it helps to understand the basis for values and interpretations in a society and knowing chinese history is getting a deeper understanding for the forces that shaped their culture. I think in the light of that it is easier to see something like a break from the past happening specifically with religious persecution as it is the opposite of what has been the culture before since they had to break up with their past identity (of losing) to one of unity and strength.
This might just be me retrofitting my narrative and so I should stop talking until I prove some degree of predictive accuracy or at least I have evidence to show someone doing this and improving their predictive accuracy. The feeling I got was one of being less scared and more understnding but that might be wrong.
Edit: Also thanks for being concrete and going to an example, I like that.