Historian RG Collingwood once wrote that “We study history in order to see more clearly into the situation in which we are called upon to act.” Few people see US-China relations with greater clarity than Cheng Li, who worked as a physician during the Cultural Revolution before earning his PhD in Political Science at Princeton. In his new book Middle Class Shanghai, Li uses the history and culture of the city and its denizens to illustrate how China’s internal dynamism and diversity should inform US policy.
Author: James Herndon
In 2015, the Paris Climate Agreement hinged on a recalcitrant India. Prime Minister Modi knew that restricting coal could imperil the promises he’d made to the 300 million Indians still living without electricity. Nonetheless, he assented to the Agreement after a meeting with US President Barack Obama. Modi wasn’t won over with arguments over climate models, green energy, or ethics. Rather, Obama offered Modi a narrative that tied his personal experience to India’s colonial history: “Look, you know, I get it. I’m black, I’m African American. I know what it’s like to be in an unfair system where a bunch of people got rich on your back… but I also have to live in the world that I’m in, and if I just made decisions based on that resentment, then I actually would never catch up.”
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