China Proves the Point By E. Duncan, Wikimedia Commons The East India Company steamship Nemesis (right background) destroying Chinese war junks during the Second Battle of Chuenpi in the First Opium War, January 7, 1841 February 8, 2021
“The founding of the People’s Republic of China marked the end of the humiliation and misery the country has suffered.” Chinese President Xi Jinping
Most people who advocate pacifism do so out of revulsion against the horrors of war, certainly an understandable, if utopian, position.
But China’s Neo-Confucians adopted their anti-military stance mainly for a bizarre reason: they believed that Chinese culture was so superior to all other cultures that no nation would try to destroy China. Instead, belligerent nations would simply recognize the superiority of China and would aspire to transition their own culture peacefully to that of the Chinese. A strong military
An eleventh-century Chinese coin unearthed in Hampshire provides new evidence of a bustling trade in luxury goods from the Far East more than 700 years ago.
The copper coin, which was found by a detectorist at Buriton, Hampshire, around nine miles from the coast, weighs 0.12 ounces (3.6g) and has a diameter of just under an inch (25mm).
Researchers believe it was minted between 1008 and 1016, during the reign of Emperor Zhenzong of the Northern Song dynasty, and arrived in Britain around the 13th or 14th century, when luxury Chinese pottery was being widely imported.
The coin has the inscription Xiangfu yuanbao (祥符元寶) in traditional Chinese characters on one side and a central square hole, allowing multiple coins of its type to be strung together.