The World According to Beijing

What does China want? Is it about Beijing’s bid to become the world’s foremost technological powerhouse? Is it about economic development and trade? Is it about ensuring that the relative weight of China’s influence within the existing international system is adequately represented? Or is it about recasting the norms and values of the current global order to align more closely with its political system?

While it is difficult to fathom Beijing’s aims, what we do observe is China President Xi Jinping’s exhortation for “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” and building leverage in realms such as territorial claims, cyberspace, global supply chains, and international organizations like the UN.

Last month (October 2022), emerging from the ruling Communist Party’s 20th Congress with a norm-breaking third five-year term, Xi amassed more power than ever. The seven-person Politburo Standing Committee, the apex of China’s power elite, was stacked with Xi’s staunch allies. To an extent unseen in decades, China’s trajectory could be shaped by the vision and ambition of one man. What Xi and his loyalist inner circle decide to do – and how they go about doing it – will profoundly impact regional security, economic and technological competition, and world order.

Given these stakes, a deeper understanding of “what Beijing envisions the world to be like” – the underlying strategic objectives that motivate Xi and the Chinese Communist Party’s global ambitions – is a matter of great relevance. This is where this SDG comes in: to understand the fundamental aims motivating China’s pursuits in the Xi Jinping era.

To embark on this endeavor, we will use Bates Gill’s timely new book, “Daring to Struggle: China’s Global Ambitions under Xi Jinping” (2022), released 6-weeks ago. By examining official Chinese discourse and China’s wide-ranging undertaking, Gill offers insights into the motivations driving China’s changing and risk-taking approach to the world under Xi. Gill, a distinguished scholar of China, has spent over 40 years watching Beijing while based at Australia’s Macquarie University and at think tanks around the world. He has been recently appointed as Executive Director of the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.

In addition to using “Daring to Struggle” as our core book, up-to-date scholarly articles from journals and think tanks will also be supplemented by the Coordinator.

The Gershwin Brothers: Their Lives and Their Music

“Rhapsody in Blue,” “An American in Paris,” “Porgy and Bess,” were some of over 500 compositions created by George Gershwin (1896 – 1937) during his very brief life. What was his path from New York city song plugger to Hollywood composer of film scores? His older brother Ira (1896 – 1983) collaborated with him to write the lyrics for songs like, “I Got Rhythm, “Embraceable You,” and “Someone to Watch Over Me.” The last song they wrote together, "Our Love is Here to Stay," is perhaps symbolic of their partnership. Ira continued his lyricist journey after the death of his brother with composers like Jerome Kern and Harold Arlen. What motivated two Brooklyn born brothers with Russian Jewish heritage to compose such innovative music? The core book, The Gershwin Years: George and Ira, is both the definitive biography of the Gershwin brothers and a lavishly illustrated chronicle of the American era their music and lyrics embodied. With the help of YouTube, we will be enjoying many of their musical works each week.

Cuba: An American History

This SDG seeks to examine the history of Cuba and its relationship to the United States. The core book is Ada Ferrer's Cuba: An American History which was awarded the  Pulitzer Prize for History and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History. Ada Ferrer is the  Julius Silver Professor of History and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University. She was born in Cuba and raised in the United States. The  book provides a sweeping account of Cuba over 500 years from before Columbus arrived to after the death of Fidel Castro. This history details conquest, colonization, slavery, freedom, independence, and revolutions made and unmade. It  is more than a history of Cuba but also a history of Cuba in relation to the United States, a history of the sometimes intimate, sometimes explosive, always uneven relationship between the two countries. Ferrer  spent decades researching Cuba and draws on her own family’s history, allowing readers to see their own country refracted through the eyes of another. She delivers a stunning and monumental account. 

The Last Time I Saw Paris

Paris in the 1920’s and 30’s attained mythic stature.  We will look at this period  through the memories and writings of five American writers who lived in Paris in the 1920’s and 30’s and three Americans who were in Paris’ worlds of entertainment,  jazz and music.   Of the writers, 2 are novelists (Gertrude Stein/Alice B Toklas and Ernest Hemingway), 2 are journalists (Janet Flanner and Waverley Root) and 1 is a bookseller and publisher (Sylvia Beach).  The Americans in the world of Paris Jazz  or entertainment are Josephine Baker, Ada “Bricktop” Smith and George Gershwin (Baker and Bricktop performed, settled and operated nightclubs in Paris and Gershwin composed “An American In Paris” in Paris in 1928).  Together and individually, they deliver humorous, nostalgic and unique personal memories of life in Paris in the 1920’s and 30’s - a palimpsest of a period and a place.

Edison: Spirit of Electricity and Lighting America's Homes

Ever since visiting Greenfield Village in  Dearborn, MIchigan years ago, I have wondered how a genius like Edison changed America forever.  After visiting Edison's transplanted replica laboratory, I wondered in visiting the facilities how many experiments Edison must have conducted to find the right filament.  Later, I found out he achieved 1,093 patents.  He showed America you never give up as an inventor and scientist.  Edison could work up to 18 hours a day.  

It is more than time to consider his contributions to America and his battles with Tesla.  Can you imagine we even have a boardgame on Edison and Tesla and a game just on Edison'?  Companies like Edison and Ford created an America that came into the 19th and 20th Century.  Electricity was the key, and Edison knew what the people wanted.

As I remember, Edison started working his experiments out on the railroads.  He, eventually, built his own laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey.  We will, however, approach Edison who was willing to build on the work of others.  Certainly, he was the developer of the phonograph, the modifier of the telegraph, unified stock ticker, the miner's safety lamp, world's first motion picture studio, and the refiner of motion picture cameras,  I also remember him as the possible inventor of the dictating machine.  We do need to ask ourselves:  should Edison receive credit for all these inventions?  How much did Thomas Alva Edison build on the work of others?  Our core book will read like a modern day novel about the life of a genius.  Did you realize Thomas was deaf from the age of 12 and could not even hear a bird sing?

Did Edison invent the electric chair?  Why was it necessary for the prison system to have such an instrument?  Why did the public tend to accept alternating current of Tesla instead of Edison's direct current?  Why was there such a feud between the two men?  How did Edison intend to light entire parts of New York City (First District of lower Manhattan)?  It was no doubt that Edison lived in controversial times.  

Edison is also known for his adventures into science fiction.  He was supposed to have speculated we would find a lost race of Mongolians when Antarctic is sufficiently explored.  Thomas Alva Edison even experimented with manmade rubber (including goldenrod) and working with Harvey Firestone.  Edison's mind went everywhere for the ultimate value to mankind.  William Sumner, an early biographer of Edison, in expressing our debt to Edison talked about Darwin:  If Thomas Edison had not existed, Charles Darwin would have had to invent him. The Wizard of Menlo Park will be remembered every time we flick the light switch.   Edison would have phrased his contribution somewhat differently in defining invention:  To invent all you need is imagination and a pile of junk.  

The Very Best of The Best of The Best Modern Science Writing by Scientists

The Best of The Best of The Best Modern Science Writing by Scientists

 New Scientist:  "if you could only ever read one science book, this should probably be it".

There is writing by scientists. There is good writing by scientists. And then there is the best writing by scientists.

 For this SDG, we have as our core book, a collection of the very best of the best of the best.

Oxford University Press has published a collection of the absolute best of writings by scientists of the last century. This collection, edited by Richard Dawkins, is uplifting, witty, thought- provoking, amusing, cogent, elegant writing

 The 84 interesting and thought-provoking short excerpts give Insight both into science and the scientists who wrote them. But significantly, they are not only informative and thought-provoking, but without exception, are truly exceptional writing

 From the perspective of a Plato member, they collectively comprise an ideal collection for an SDG, since each of the short excerpts give us a lot to think and speculate about.

As an aside benefit, most of the short selections are excerpts from books written by the various scientists -- so one of the additional benefits of this SDG is that it may inspire you to read some of the books from which these excerpts are taken.

This sparkling collection of writing reveals how many of the best scientists have displayed as much imagination and skill with words as they have with equations or experiments. Included are the writings by D’Arcy Thompson, Sir Arthur Eddington, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Stephen Jay Gould, j. B. S. Haldane, g. H. Hardy, Lauren Eisley, Rachel Carson, Stephen Hawking, Primo Levi, Peter Medawar, Rodger Penrose, Steven Pinker, Martin Rees, Erwin Schrodinger, Alan Turing, and Francis Crick, among many others.

The 84 short selections, each on one topic, average about 5 pages each, The topics include a huge variety of subjects in mathematics, genetics, physics, chemistry, biology, geology, etc. including topics as varied as  like: are there many possible universes,  Darwin and worms, the science of sand piles and wet towels, thermodynamics, the uniqueness of being human, and many, many more.

Together they capture the allure of understanding the world through science, give a taste of the imagination and ideas, the constant striving, and the discoveries and reflections that have ever driven science. They also reflect the lasting value of fine, clear, often literary science writing in a world rapidly changing through science and its applications

Best of all the selections are understandable by those with little or no science background and very thought provoking for those with a scientific background.

If you are like me, after reading thee excerpts you will probably want to go out and read many of the books these selections are taken from.

Oxford University Press describes the Core book as follows: By terms uplifting, witty, thought-provoking, amusing; speculative, cogently argued or skillfully explained; passionate or Coulee elegant, this is a richly varied collection of excerpts, some from classic Works, others now rarely seen, to treasure and returned to again and again.

Used copies of our core book are available very inexpensively online, -- and the entire book is available free on the internet as public domain in full size print for those who prefer to do their reading on their computer.

Come join me as we share and discuss some of the clearest most well written insights of some of the best scientist of the century.

Destiny Disrupted, a History of the World Through Islamic Eyes

What most of our generation learned of the history of civilization, is either about, or at least framed in relation to so-called Western civilization. We certainly didn’t learn much about the evolution of the Muslim community, even though that history interacts with and is very influential on the political and cultural history of Europe. Even now, we perhaps focus more on the origins of Islam and the bases for the internal doctrinal differences which are still manifest in their struggles today.

Our perspective is from the West. We learn of Muslim success or failure in their clashes with the outposts of Christian civilization, as it influences European history. We also learn how they preserved science and art in the Dark Ages, but not much about their substantive contributions to those disciplines and their political history. In short but we really can’t understand World history without a firm grasp of the great civilization created by them, and its influence on the West, as well as its slow-motion collapse.

In Destiny Disrupted, Tamim Ansary captures in a colorful and understandable style the rich story of world history as it looks from the perspective of evolution of the Muslim community. His story moves from the lifetime of Mohammed through a succession of far-flung empires, to the tangle of modern conflicts that culminated in the events of 9/11 and inform history since that time. He introduces the key people, events, ideas, legends, religious disputes, and turning points of world history, imparting not only what happened but how it is understood from the Muslim perspective.

The author grew up in Muslim Afghanistan and is now a writer here in the U.S. He has seen both sides and is well positioned to speak about the intersection, about misunderstandings about both and by both sides. That intersection is, of course, where the conflicts come.

Ansary clarifies why two great civilizations grew up oblivious to each other, what happened when they intersected, and how the Islamic world was ultimately affected by its slow recognition that Europe-a place it long properly perceived as primitive-had somehow hijacked destiny.  As he writes in his conclusion, "The conflict wracking the modern world is not, I think, best understood as a 'clash of civilizations.' … it's better understood as the friction generated by two mismatched world histories intersecting."

A People's History of the United States

"He changed the conscience of a generation" (Norm Chomsky). From its initial 1980 publication of The Peoples' History of the United States , through its 5th edition in 2003, and the 35th anniversary edition in 2015, following his death, Howard Zinn's work captured an audience of students of history, scholars, politicians and activists. He told the "story" of American history focusing on ordinary Americans--women, factory workers, African and Native Americans, the working poor and immigrant laborers.

Covering Columbus' arrival through President Clinton's 1st term, A People's History..., offers an insightful and unabashed ideological analysis of critical events in American History. Zinn posits than many of our country's great battles-- the fight for fair wages, an 8 hour workday, child labor laws, universal suffrage, womens' and minorities' rights, and racial equality--emanated at the grassroots level and were fought against bloody resistance. Today, almost 40 years after its initial impact, A People's History.. still resonates, is still widely read, supported and criticized.

This SDG will cover Zinn's analysis, commentaries and criticisms, Zinn's legacy, and how America's history of its ordinary 'people' may be told in the future. In the process,

participants will reflect on what factors have driven American history, whether those factors are still active today, and the similarities and differences between the past and present.

Prisoners of Geography

All leaders of nations are constrained by geography. Their choices are limited by mountains, river, seas, and concrete. In this book by longtime journalist Tim Marshall, a leading authority on foreign affairs, the author examines “Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World.” His discussion of both geography (physical realities) and history makes this book as relevant for today’s current events as for historical events. In highly readable prose, the author explains the complex geopolitical strategies of 10 key parts of the globe, considering such additional factors as climate, demographics, cultural regions, and access to natural resources. In this SDG we’ll address such questions as: Why will American never be invaded? What does it mean that Russia must have a navy but also has frozen ports 6 months a year? How is China’s future curbed by its geography? Why will Europe never be united? The answers are geopolitical, but also require some basic understanding of history, which this book provides. The chapter on Russia provides useful background for understanding the current war in Ukraine. The chapter on the Arctic discusses the melting ice and oil drilling. All chapters provide useful material for discussion of current conflicts over land and resources.