This girl has been thinking and writing big but I haven't scrutinized her yet.
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Tolerant, We Stand
Diversity lifted up empires and intolerance brought them down.
Reviewed by James F. Hoge Jr.
Sunday, January 6, 2008; BW05
DAY OF EMPIRE
How Hyperpowers Rise To Global Dominance -- And Why They Fall
By Amy Chua
Doubleday. 396 pp. $27.95
Call 'em the Magnificent Seven. There have been many great powers in history but only seven that Amy Chua describes in Day of Empire as hyperpowers, those that have dominated not only their immediate surroundings but all the known world of their time: Persia, Rome, China, the Mongols, the Dutch, the British and the United States.
Chua finds they all achieved dominance by similar means, then succumbed to similar ills. The lone exception to this pattern of decline has been America, and that may be only a matter of time. Chua, a Yale law professor, worries that America may now be slipping off the top perch for the same reasons that its predecessors did: Once "a magnet for the world's most energetic and enterprising" people "of all ethnicities and backgrounds," she says, the United States seems to be tipping toward intolerance and "xenophobic backlash."
Of course, a hyperpower has to rise before it can topple. For starters, an ambitious climber must amass formidable military capabilities. However, might alone will not do. The coercive resources of a single state have never been enough to dominate the known worlds of ancient history or the larger ones of the modern era. To prevail over time, Chua argues, a hyperpower must add to its capabilities the strengths and talents of those it conquers, much as illiterate Mongol rulers embraced Chinese art, music and drama in the 13th century, and as the Dutch Republic took in refugees from religious persecution across Europe from 1492 to 1715.
Mind you, tolerance did not fully supplant coercion in any of the past hyperpowers. Brutality accompanied conquest and stood in ready reserve to suppress those who were immune to enticements. But in Chua's view the key resource for reaching hyperpower status has been human capital. The Magnificent Seven all obtained the acquiescence, even the support, of diverse peoples stretched over vast territories through what Chua calls "strategic tolerance." They accepted the customs and religious practices of the defeated; they recruited the best and the brightest of their new subjects for government and military service, sharing the riches and other benefits of empire.
This co-opting of human resources is what, to Chua, separates true hyperpowers from other imperial entities, such as the Ming and Mughal empires and medieval Spain. In one small but illuminating example, she notes that at the zenith of China's Tang dynasty in 713 -- "the most magnificent cultural flowering that China would ever see" -- the emperor received a delegation of Arab ambassadors and waived the requirement for them to perform a ceremonial kowtow. Roughly 1,000 years later, by contrast, China's Manchu rulers made the opposite decision, turning away an English envoy because he refused to prostrate himself. The Manchus were less tolerant than the Tang, and far less successful as a result.
Chua charts each hyperpower's decline from the point when its leaders stopped embracing diversity and started repressing part of the population in the name of racial purity or religious orthodoxy. At that moment, she says, the crucial "glue" of an overarching political identity disappeared, and otherwise manageable disputes became mortal.
"If the history of hyperpowers has shown anything, it is the danger of xenophobic backlash," she writes. "Time and again, past world-dominant powers have fallen precisely when their core groups turned intolerant, reasserting their 'true' or 'pure' identity and adopting exclusionary policies toward 'unassimilable' groups. From this point of view, attempts to demonize immigrants or to attribute America's success to 'Anglo-Protestant' virtues is not only misleading (neither the atomic bomb nor Silicon Valley was particularly 'Anglo-Protestant' in origin) but dangerous."
Chua acknowledges, however, that American predominance differs in some respects from traditional empires that gobbled up territory. The hegemony of the United States, emanating from victories in World War II and the Cold War, has depended on devising an international system that benefits others as well as itself. At this time in history, American leadership is needed to make the system work. But Chua sees that leadership crippled by the rise of protectionism and nativism in the United States, along with an over-reliance on military responses to danger. Rather than depending on force of arms, she contends, America needs to strengthen its "soft power" appeal; otherwise, fear of U.S. intentions will only grow from what is already a worrisome base of anti-Americanism.
Day of Empire follows Chua's bestselling World on Fire, which maintained that the export of democracy does not initially bring international nonviolence but instead excites ethnic hostility and regional instability. In her new book, she notes that, inside its borders, the United States "has over time proven uniquely successful in creating an ethnically and religiously neutral political identity capable of uniting as Americans individuals of all backgrounds from every corner of the world." But outside its borders, she says, "there is no political glue binding the United States to the billions of people who live under its shadow."
One might argue that Chua relies too heavily on "strategic tolerance" to explain the rise and fall of hyperpowers. Military and administrative excellence are key to the complex processes of creation and destruction, as is the growth over time of corruption. So, too, are the ambitions of those conquered -- not all of which are generated by the behavior of their rulers.
But the thesis of Day of Empire, like the thrust of her previous book, is provocative. Chua's lively writing makes her case studies interesting in themselves. And her convincing presentation of their relevance to the contemporary scene adds meaning to this timely warning. *
James F. Hoge Jr. is editor of Foreign Affairs.
- posted on 01/06/2008
Man, isn't she juicy? ;) Zhang Ziyi with a brain?
http://www.law.yale.edu/faculty/AChua.htm
Amy Chua
John M. Duff, Jr. Professor of Law (on leave: spring term)
Amy Chua is the John M. Duff, Jr. Professor of Law at Yale Law School. She came to Yale in 2001 after teaching at Duke and serving as a visiting professor at Columbia, Stanford, and NYU. Her expertise is in international business transactions, law and development, ethnic conflict, and globalization and the law. Her recent books include Day of Empire and World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability. Professor Chua has an A.B. and a J.D. from Harvard University.
Education
J.D., Harvard, 1987
A.B., Harvard, 1984
Courses Taught
Contracts
International Business Transactions
- posted on 01/06/2008
图教授也很娱乐啊。 一个专家因为是美眉,你加分不少哈。:)
不过说章美女不是很有脑我不赞同。由于专业领域不同,脑的表现形式当有所不同。
其实我一直很相信, 只要是在数千万甚至数亿竞争者中脱颖而出的通过市场机制走红的人, 其脑往往都有过人之处。比如最可能被人们认为没脑子的超女李宇春,仔细体会她的言行,其实是很有脑子的。
再比如学术超男易中天,其实是真有学术水平的。 只是他没有发表学术论文,或没有用学术的语言而是用通俗的语言表达去表达深奥的东西。
特别感谢图教授介绍了两篇好文章,推荐了两本好书。 在21世纪面临中国崛起的时候,这种有学术含量的书,对中国的政治小资而言,确实是很好的书。
我也很赞同美女教授Amy Chua,兼容性是大国强盛的核心因素。 其实做人也是如此,宽容是做人成功的必要条件,所谓有容乃大。
不仅是二战或冷战给兼容的美国以十分特殊的历史机遇,吸收了大批世界各地的精英知识分子。 其实,即使在全球化的今天,美国的兼容性也给美国带来了莫大的利益。 美国政府其实是默许在中餐馆打工的中国黑工和在农场干活的墨西哥黑工的。 中墨两国黑工为美国在全球化的今天保持旺盛的竞争力具有不可磨灭的贡献。:)
touche wrote:
Man, isn't she juicy? ;) Zhang Ziyi with a brain?
- Re: Amy Chua: A Rising Academic Starposted on 01/07/2008
I remember to have read her "World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability " (2003 ?? ), quite interesting. - Re: Amy Chua: A Rising Academic Starposted on 01/07/2008
鹿希 wrote:
I remember to have read her "World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability " (2003 ?? ), quite interesting.
鹿希不简单,挺前沿的。
这个女孩确实不错。当法学教授还研究历史现实,论史论政,不钻象牙塔。我对人类前景的瞻望又rosier一点了。;)
- posted on 01/08/2008
touche wrote:
鹿希不简单,挺前沿的。
这个女孩确实不错。当法学教授还研究历史现实,论史论政,不钻象牙塔。我对人类前景的瞻望又rosier一点了。;)
照图扯的一贯风格理解,您这是损我吧?:-)我哪只是前沿,整个是发现‘新秀’‘新星’倪~~~ 还想请这蔡MM喝杯咖啡,可惜她太忙了。:)
这书是当时有人推荐的,因为想找点有用的货,所以看得仓促,没细嚼。如果没记错的话,记得作者讲的案例说的是光市场经济,自由市场是不够的,只会肥了对市场经商有道外加谙熟行贿腐败的少数人,加上少数人若正好是外来人,不能参与当地的政治民主的话,天长日久会引起群族矛盾。俺觉得她说得有些道理,但忘了她理论上如何论证的,或她没说。
她的确不钻象牙塔,因为案例之一便是她所熟悉的菲律宾华商。 - posted on 01/08/2008
鹿希:你要告诉蔡教授touche是她的粉丝,她就会来喝咖啡了:-)
鹿希 wrote:
touche wrote:照图扯的一贯风格理解,您这是损我吧?:-)我哪只是前沿,整个是发现‘新秀’‘新星’倪~~~ 还想请这蔡MM喝杯咖啡,可惜她太忙了。:)
鹿希不简单,挺前沿的。
这个女孩确实不错。当法学教授还研究历史现实,论史论政,不钻象牙塔。我对人类前景的瞻望又rosier一点了。;)
这书是当时有人推荐的,因为想找点有用的货,所以看得仓促,没细嚼。如果没记错的话,记得作者讲的案例说的是光市场经济,自由市场是不够的,只会肥了对市场经商有道外加谙熟行贿腐败的少数人,加上少数人若正好是外来人,不能参与当地的政治民主的话,天长日久会引起群族矛盾。俺觉得她说得有些道理,但忘了她理论上如何论证的,或她没说。
她的确不钻象牙塔,因为案例之一便是她所熟悉的菲律宾华商。 - Re: Amy Chua: A Rising Academic Starposted on 01/09/2008
July wrote:
鹿希:你要告诉蔡教授touche是她的粉丝,她就会来喝咖啡了:-)
回头等认识了/蔡教授MM一定转告!:-)
FB 完了?你父亲保重!俺也一样,不能多尽孝心,难过!真的! - Re: Amy Chua: A Rising Academic Starposted on 01/09/2008
is her last name realy 蔡?
it does not sound like Chinese last name. - Re: Amy Chua: A Rising Academic Starposted on 01/09/2008
LM wrote:
is her last name realy 蔡?
it does not sound like Chinese last name.
I don't know, will have to check with her when I get to know her and you will be the first to be informed. :) - posted on 01/09/2008
Amy L. Chua (simplified Chinese: 蔡美儿, born 1962 in Champaign, Illinois) is the John M. Duff, Jr. Professor of Law at Yale Law School. She joined the Yale faculty in 2001 after teaching at Duke Law School. Prior to starting her teaching career, she was a corporate law associate at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. She specializes in the study of international business transactions, law and development, ethnic conflict, and globalization and the law.
Chua has also written 2 books, Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance - and Why They Fall (2007) and the New York Times bestseller, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (2003), which explores the ethnic conflict caused in many societies by disproportionate economic and political influence of "market dominant minorities" and the resulting resentment in the less affluent majority. World on Fire examines how globalization and democratization since 1989 have affected the relationship between market dominant minorities and the wider population.
Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Higher education
3 Personal life
4 See also
5 Notes
6 External links
[edit] Early life
Amy Chua's parents were academics and members of the entrepreunerial and economically successful Chinese minority in the Philippines before emigrating to the United States. Amy's father, Leon O. Chua, is an Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences professor at the University of California, Berkeley and is known as the father of nonlinear circuit theory and cellular neural networks, having created Chua's circuit which exhibits chaos theory behavior. Amy was born in 1962 in Champaign, Illinois and lived in West Lafayette, Indiana. When she was eight years old, her family moved to Berkeley, California. She graduated first in her class of 384 students as valedictorian at El Cerrito High School in El Cerrito, California.[1]
[edit] Higher education
Chua graduated magna cum laude with an A.B. in Economics from Harvard College in 1984. She obtained her J.D. cum laude in 1987 from Harvard Law School, where she was Executive Editor of the Harvard Law Review.[2]
[edit] Personal life
Chua lives in New Haven, Connecticut and is married to Yale Law School professor Jed Rubenfeld. She has two daughters, Sophia and Louisa, and three younger sisters.
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(c) 2010 Maya Chilam Foundation