East -West Issues

The US-China Relationship in the 21st Century

and the Spectres of 1776 (1)
by Terry Boardman

The world's future in the first half of the 21st century will be profoundly affected by the
relationship of the Atlantean giants, China [1] and America .

This essay - the first of a pair on the subject - was first published in New View magazine Winter (1st Quarter -
2006/07)

The eagle has landed in Shanghai? The city's new commercial centre - Pudong

We can all surely recognise that human beings do not always act in their own best interests;
they do not always act rationally. An international bestseller in 1909 was " Europe's Optical
Illusion"[2]. Using the very latest techniques of economic analysis, its author, British journalist
Norman Angell, argued that the economies of modern nations such as Britain and Germany
were so inter-connected that war between such countries would be futile; both parties would
lose out too much. Five short years later, the political leaders of those two countries
contradicted him and opted for war nevertheless; the mutual economic interests of Britain
and Germany did not prevent war in 1914. The Norman Angells of today and many other
media pundits claim that the US and Chinese economies are so interdependent already that a
war between China and the US would be economic suicide: the USA needs Chinese savings (to
purchase US government debt, thus helping the US to run its military machine) while the
Chinese need US consumers to purchase Chinese products and keep China's 'miraculous' march
to national prosperity going.

The scaremongers....
And yet, just as Anglo-American elites and their media instruments[3] were identifying
Germany as Britain's enemy for the coming 20th century already more than 10 years before the
outbreak of war in 1914, so a century on, American think tanks and their media instruments
have already identified China as the main enemy for the 21st century - 'The War on Islamist
Terror' and Sino-U.S. economic interdependency notwithstanding – and are considering the
options for war. Some examples: Samuel Huntington, originator of the infamous 'Clash of
Civilisations' thesis (1996)[4] discussed the Chinese challenge in Foreign Affairs, the journal of
the hugely influential foreign policy think-tank Council on Foreign Affairs, in an article entitled
The Erosion of American National Interest (Foreign Affairs 76 (1997). Also in Foreign
Affairs in 1997 (the year Hong Kong was returned from British rule to China), Richard
Bernstein and Ross Munro wrote The Coming Conflict with America : China will be the
United States ’ next major adversary (Foreign Affairs 76:2 March/April 1997). Huntington's
friend and former long-term foreign editor of The Economist, Brian Beedham, discussed a
possible Chinese threat in The Atlantic Community in 2012: Three Scenarios (May 1-3,
[5]
1998) for the right-wing American Enterprise Institute . In August 2001 Charles R. Smith
wrote the scaremongering War with China for the even more right-wing Newsmax.com,
whose chairman then was William Rees-Mogg, former editor of The Times. That year saw the
opening shots in a cyberwar between American and Chinese computer nerds and hackers
following the killing of a Chinese pilot by the Americans. In March 2003 CNN Senior China
Analyst Willy Wo-Lap Lam wrote in his article China readies for future U.S. fight: "The Iraqi
war has convinced the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership that some form of
confrontation with the U.S. could come earlier than expected". In July 2004 Chalmers Johnson
observed in the Los Angeles Times that : "Quietly and with minimal coverage in the U.S.
press, the Navy announced that from mid-July through August it would hold exercises dubbed
Operation Summer Pulse '04 in waters off the China coast near Taiwan. This will be the first
time in U.S. naval history that seven of our 12 carrier strike groups deploy in one place at the
same time. It will look like the peacetime equivalent of the Normandy landings"[6]. China
responded in August 2005 with "Peace Mission 2005" – a massive and unprecedented series of
joint military manoeuvres with the Russian military under the aegis of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organisation, of which both are members, but the USA is not.[7]

Two months earlier, the Washington Times, a

newspaper owned by the Korean Unification Church
(its leader is Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a close friend of
the Bush family) claimed that 'a senior defence
official' said that : "We may be seeing in China the
first true fascist society on the model of Nazi
Germany, where you have this incredible resource
base in a commercial economy with strong
nationalism, which the military was able to reach
into and ramp up incredible production." Richard
Fisher , vice president of the International
Assessment and Strategy Centre, was quoted as
saying: "Let's all wake up. The post-Cold War peace
is over. We are now in an arms race with a new
superpower whose goal is to contain and overtake
the United States." In the latest of such rattling of
st
21 century sabres, the neo-conservative Robert D. Kaplan went into military details in How
We Would Fight China[8] (Atlantic Monthly, June 2005) claiming that "the Middle East is just
a blip. The American military contest with China in the Pacific will define the twenty-first
century. And China will be a more formidable adversary than Russia ever was". All this
warmongering was exactly the kind of thing the British media were awash with a century ago
in regard to Germany.

...and their opponents

Just as the major media scaremongers in 1906 were opposed by antiwar, progressive and
socialist media writers, albeit fewer in number, so today the hawkish media are critiqued by
their opponents, who, while they are many more in number than their Edwardian forebears,
still do not enjoy mass exposure. In China vs. Globalization - the Final War and the Dark
Millennium, Richard K. Moore (New Dawn magazine 8 June 1997) saw parallels not so much
with the pre-World War One scenario as with the interwar years when he wrote:

What, in fact, America...seems to be doing with China is to consciously replay

 the interwar scenario: profit maximally from trade and investments in China,
encourage US public opinion to maintain a simmering hostility toward what may
become a future enemy, tacitly facilitate China's military development, closely
monitor developments - and most important - be sure that the US, together with
its projected allies, maintains strategic dominance militarily.

Opposed to the scaremongers are the traditional socialist and marxist arguments of such as
Ted Grant and Alan Woods, writing for Marxist.com (China, America and the Pacific). They
argue, like Norman Angell in 1909, that mutual economic interests will work against the
danger of war:

For the big US monopolies, the prospect of developing the China market
presents an alluring perspective of profits. They represent the China lobby in
Washington, which is anxious to prevent a deterioration of US-China relations
which would endanger their interests. For its part, China wants to develop its
economy and technology as quickly as possible. This is a matter of life or death
for a country that needs to achieve a rate of growth of at least eight percent
each year to prevent the growth of unemployment. Therefore, neither
Washington nor Beijing wishes to bring matters to an open break. At every step,
China 's vital interests in Asia clash with those of the United States . The
contradictions have been manifested in a series of incidents that have hampered
the establishment of normal relations between the two countries. …But given the
balance of forces, they will not lead to open war between China and the USA. In
such an eventuality, the USA could not defeat China, and China could not defeat
the USA. Therefore, each crisis will end in a compromise.

Indeed, the United States national debt is currently around $8.6 trillion, about $850 billion of
which (approx. 10%) is owed to China. China's economy has been growing at a phenomenal
rate since the end of the Cold War when western, Japanese and overseas Chinese investors
began piling in their millions. China's GDP is estimated to 'decline' from 10.5% in 2006 to 9.6%
[9]
in 2007 and 9.3% in 2008. Needless to say, these are enormous figures, and ought to send
shivers down all our backs, because the USA with 4% of global population consumes 25% of
resources, and continues to do so. If China, with 25% of the world's population, is striving for a
lifestyle even a quarter as affluent as that of the USA, then the outlook for the global
environment is bleak indeed. And yet, despite the fact that western corporations and banks
have been shovelling money into the Chinese economy these past 20 years, their allies in the
western mass media only seem to have woken up to the danger to the global environment
posed by such phenomenal economic growth in China – not to mention India and Brazil! – in
the last two or three years.

The struggle for energy supplies

Inevitably bound up with the eco-crises (ecological and economical) is the issue of nuclear
power as a putative solution that will enable a consumption-addicted culture to have 'clean
energy' while continuing with steady economic growth. "'We will certainly build more than one
[nuclear] reactor per year,' said Zhou Dadi, director of the [Chinese] government's Energy
Research Institute, which has strongly supported the country's nuclear program. By 2010,
planners predict a quadrupling of nuclear output to 16 billion kilowatt-hours and a doubling
of that figure by 2015. And with commercial nuclear energy programs dead or stagnant in the
United States and most of Europe, Western and other developers of nuclear plant technology
are lining up to sell reactors and other equipment to the Chinese, whose purchasing decisions
alone will determine in many instances who survives in the business." [10]

A very insightful essay bringing together energy and geopolitical issues in the Sino-US
[11]
relationship is The United States vs China: the war for oil by Paul Rogers , who argues
that the "United States's focus on the middle east, al-Qaida and terrorism is...a surrogate for
long-term strategic competition with China for the world's oil resources." Commentators noted
that President Hu Jintao's focus in his recent globetrotting trip (April 2006) that took in the
USA , the Middle East and Africa was actually....energy supplies. In Latin America and Africa
the Chinese have developed a soft and subtle strategy of outflanking their rival the USA in a
move redolent of the traditional Chinese game of Go. Instead of focusing overwhelming force
by military might (a chess-like tactic) on a specific location such as Iraq, they are 'surrounding'
and mopping up 'energy spaces' around the globe through aid, assistance and attractive deals,
effectively denying space to the Americans – all this despite the fact that American think-
tanks and business circles have for years now been aware of Chinese tactics based on the
game of Go and China's great book of strategy The Art of War by classical writer Sun Tzu.
Most notably, the Chinese have pulled off a huge oil and gas deal with Iran involving a 30 year
contract worth $70 billion. This oil will have to come to central and northern China via the
Taiwan Strait and will further tempt China to expand its already sizeable navy to defend its
oil 'lifelines'. Observers noted that the Sino-Russian joint manoeuvres of 2004 included an
amphibious invasion of the Shandong Peninsula, midway between Korea and Taiwan.

The Canadian Defence Associations Institute believes it sees something sinister in all this:

... China is preparing to challenge the United States and its allies, Asian or
otherwise, for mastery of Asia-Pacific. ... China has expanded its national
security objectives; China has changed its patterns in the use of military force;
China is developing a modern war machine and sea control capability and; China
is attempting to build an anti-American and anti-West alliance. There can only be
one reason for these activities. These are not moves directed at local opponents
or guided by the principles of self-defence. This is a move aimed at the world's
sole remaining superpower, the United States. American superpowership rests on
the fact that it is master of the North and South American continent, the oceans
that surround that land mass, and a forward presence in strategically important
regions of the world such as, Western Europe, the Persian Gulf, and Asia. If
China and the PLA can marginalize the United States in Asia , then they can
challenge the United States' mantle as the world's only superpower.[12]

As was the case a century ago, there are groups in the West today who have a particular vision
or model of the coming century and seek to bring that about[13], and these groups often see
parallels in the geopolitics of the Edwardian era, the era when geopolitics was effectively
'invented'.[14]

“Major shifts of power between states, not to mention regions, occur infrequently and are
rarely peaceful. In the early twentieth century, the imperial order and the aspiring states
of Germany and Japan failed to adjust to each other. The conflict that resulted devastated
large parts of the globe. Today, the transformation of the international system will be even
bigger and will require the assimilation of markedly different political and cultural
traditions. This time, the populous states of Asia are the aspirants seeking to play a greater
role. Like Japan and Germany back then, these rising powers are nationalistic, seek redress
of past grievances, and want to claim their place in the sun. Asia's growing economic power
is translating into greater political and military power, thus increasing the potential
[15]
damage of conflicts.”

Envisioning the future

Then there are those biblical fundamentalists who see parallels even further back, such as
American tele-evangelist Garner Ted Armstrong[16] who proclaimed, “The prophecies show
that the 'men of the east' will be drawn into a gigantic conflict in the Middle East – in modern-
day Israel!” Invariably, such views are based on literalist interpretations of the prophecies of
Daniel, notably Daniel 11: 40-44, which speaks of a Beast power descending into the Middle
East with mighty armies and conquering many nations: “But tidings out of the east and out of
the north shall trouble him: therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly
to make away many.” (Dan. 11:44). Interestingly, the British Israel movement, which claimed
that the English-speaking peoples were now the 'chosen people' of God's Covenant and not the
modern Jews, emerged in the same decade, the 1840s, as The Economist magazine, that
very secular champion these days of 'Anglo-saxon values'. Since the early 1990s, The
Economist has been insinuating into the public mind a geopolitical scenario not a million miles
removed from that of Garner Ted Armstrong. For example, in its New year double issue 1992-
3 The Economist outlined a future scenario in which China would reunify with Taiwan in 2007,
creating a gigantic authoritarian market economy. In 2009 China would bully Japan into
vassal-dependence in the "China-Japan Cooperation Sphere". A key year in this Armageddon-
like scenario was said to be 2011, when the Saudi monarchy would be overthrown in a
colonel's coup that would lead to the establishment of an Islamist superstate, which the
article calls 'Islamistan'. This just happens to be - returning now to the present situation -
only a year before countless people around the globe today (2006), influenced by New Age-
oriented ideas and half-comprehended information about the ancient Mayan Calendar, are in
fact expecting a major global event that will affect the whole Earth, whether it be an
ecological catastrophe due to a magnetic pole shift – perhaps the end of the world or at least
of civilisation as we know it or, less apocalyptically, the completion of an historical epoch
that will presage a gentler shift in global consciousness and usher in 'a rise to a higher
dimension of harmony and understanding'. In other words, people are being directed in
countless ways to 'expect that something enormous will happen' around 2012. The Economist
article also imagined that eventually China would ally with this new superpower of Islamistan
- in a massive attack on the "decaying corpse" of Russia. In this terrible war, Russia would
lose all of Siberia and its borders would be pushed back to the Urals (2011-2050); Turkey
and the Balkans would also be lost to 'Islamistan'.

This was before Samuel Huntington's book The Clash of Civilisations was at all widely known
and well before the western public were aware of Osama Bin Laden or the American neo-
conservatives.[17] In The Economist's scenario, Russia would become a purely 'European' state
in geographical terms, as she was in the 16th century before the expansions of Ivan the
Terrible. This chimed in with the ideas of Halford Mackinder (left, 1861-1947), the well-
connected British geographer who developed the theory of
geopolitics, and argued in 1904 that as long as Russia retains
Siberia and all her lands east of the Urals, she dominates 'the
heartland' of Eurasia. The goal was then how to prevent this. But
as long as Russia does control this vast territory, she forms a
bridge - a bridge with a nominally Christian culture - between
the cultures of Europe and those of central and eastern Asia.
Russia is therefore the middle element in what Mackinder called
the ' World Island ' of Eurasia, just as the germanic region is
the middle element within Europe itself. Due to their long
experience of dealing with the Asiatic peoples – far longer than
that of the British – the Russians are suited to play that bridging
role, that 'brotherly' role within Eurasia, which is exactly why we can expect that forces in
both West and East – in America and in China – will be interested to see that role erased.
China will be interested to gain access to and even control over Russian natural resources to
support the ever-growing conspicuous consumption of its vast population – as long as that
population's mind is fed by western concepts of economic development – while the USA will
want to see Russia as part of a Europe that is firmly allied to American interests. Eurasia
will thus be endangered by a new bipolarity, a new East-West split between Euro-America in
the West and China and its allies in the East. Is this what we want for the 21st century world
of our children and grandchildren?

China's challenge
It would be a world of a titanic struggle between on the one hand, the so-called 'New
Atlantis', as James I's Chancellor Francis Bacon (1561-1626) intended the British North
American colonies to become : a society ruled over by an oligarchical elite of scientist-
philosophers, that would today comprise academics, businesspeople, and lawyers, devoted to
materialism and utility. On the other hand would be the culture of 'Old Atlantis' - a society
ruled over by an oligarchy of priest-politicians who guard the ancient Wall protecting ethnic
Chinese consciousness, believing deep down that their culture is not the World Itself but the
centre, the Hub of the World, around which all other peoples must orbit and to which they
must ultimately pay tribute for maintaining cosmic order. Both of these 'Atlantean societies'
would operate similar economic systems (drawn from the same self-serving 18th century
basic axioms of economist Adam Smith) but in differing ways: the Americans in such a way
that would lead their system to be choked by individual greed and by abstract laws, contracts
and regulations, and the Chinese in a way that would lead their system over time to be

choked by the greed of families and of nepotism and corruption. The USA will seek to

subsume Latin America, Europe, Russia and Australasia into its own sphere; China will seek

to subsume all of East Asia (and perhaps Russian Siberia) into its own sphere. Africa, the

Muslim world and India will be the testing grounds for the two titans. These developments
are already clearly underway, as we see, for example, in East Africa. Humanity and the Earth
Mother herself will be caught between these two titans unless history does one of its
remarkable and by no means unusual rabbit-out-of-the-hat tricks.

In this article I have considered various doom-laden scenarios, but consider the following
'green' perspective:

"As China, with its much larger population, attempts to replicate the consumer economy
pioneered in the United States , it becomes clear that the U.S. model is not environmentally
sustainable. Ironically, it may be China that finally forces the United States to come to
terms with the environmental unsustainability of its own economic system...The bottom
line is that China, with its vast population, simply will not be able to follow for long any of
the development paths blazed to date. It will be forced to chart a new course. The country
that invented paper and gunpowder now has the opportunity to leapfrog the West and show
how to build an environmentally sustainable economy. If it does, China could become a
shining example for the rest of the world to admire and emulate. If it fails, we will all pay
the price."[18]

That was written in 1996. Unlike the mainstream media, the Green movement was already
awake to the potential dangers and challenges of Chinese economic growth already in the mid
1990s. Yet a careful consideration of what is written there may reveal both a real intuition
and a failure of imagination. American capitalists have wanted to profit from the vast Chinese
market ever since the Boston opium traders broke into Britain's monopoly in the early
1800s[19], and their successors have indeed profited handsomely from the investments with
which they have helped stimulate China's pell-mell growth in the 1990s, but the irony is that
China may indeed - despite itself - show the world that the capitalist system as we have
known it for the last 100 years cannot continue; China will force us to re-evaluate the relation
between morality and economic order. Thus far, the Green argument above makes sense, but
then it then suddenly stops doing so. This is because like the current Mayor of London, Ken
Livingstone, it promptly assumes that the West, which has been creating this economic and
ecological mess at home and abroad for some 200 years now, can expect China, a country
with a mere 20 years or so of modern capitalist development, to get us out of the mess. Ken
Livingstone said on a visit to Shanghai in April 2006 (see photo below, Livingstone in centre):
"global warming was created in the West, but it is increasingly to the East to which we look
 for a solution."
Commenting on
the same
dramatic plans
to build an 'eco-
city' at
Dongtan, near
Shanghai, The
Guardian
bubbled that
Dongtan was
"the biggest
single
development
anywhere in the
world, bigger
even than the
Beijing
Olympics" and
went on:

"If it all comes together, the Dongtan project will show that the heirs of
chairman Mao can produce a genuine synthesis of economic development,
environmental responsibility and financial profitability....Dongtan will be the
turning point in China's frenetic urban growth, incorporating all the economic,
social and environmental principles, to reduce the impact on nature and provide
a model for future development across China and East Asia... The Dongtan
project has a long way to go, but the meeting of Marxism and mammon on
the mudflats of the Yangtse could yet be the start of a global eco-revolution.

This is the kind of paradoxical scenario some media people really enjoy, especially if it
involves alliteration: the meeting of Marxism and Mammon on mudflats mmm.....

But Ken could be seen as being disingenuous, because in fact it is the Chinese who are looking
West for a solution, not the other way round, which is why the Shanghai Industrial Investment
Corporation (SIIC) have engaged Arup Associates, the British-based engineering consultancy
founded by Danish 'total' architect, Ove Arup, to design 'the world's first sustainable city'. The
mammoth project is the brainchild of the firm's director Peter head, who has also been
helping the Chinese with work for the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Says Head: 'An industrial
revolution, on the scale we saw in Britain 200 years ago, is not sustainable in China, and the
Chinese realise it. They can see the socio-economic problems that follow huge economic
growth rates, and realise they have to overcome them'. Only one problem with that: the
socio-economic and ecological problems have already arrived in China on a massive scale that
is as bad as, if not worse than, anything seen in Britain during the Industrial Revolution with
the possible exception of British child labour in the mines. The Chinese oligarchy do realise
the problem and they also realise that China cannot solve it with the resources of its own
people; it has had to turn to westerners to help get it out of the mess that the western
capitalists and industrialists created in the first place, and that is not to mention the 50 years
of materialist communism which the Chinese also learned from 'the West'.

The spirits and spectres of 1776

This brings us back then to the problem of the West. China 's contribution is that it mirrors
this problem to the world on such a suitably colossal scale that the problem can no longer be
ignored. Capitalism was thought to have defeated communism in 1989-91, and the Russian
Marxists may indeed have capitulated, but the typically ironic trick played by Clio, the
Greek muse of history, is that the Communists have ultimately triumphed in a way because
Marxist China is showing us that the economic values of conspicuous consumption - leading to
a private-greed-is-goodness doctrine, which the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald
Reagan have trumpeted, must lead to a dead end: "the United States [will be forced] to come
to terms with the environmental unsustainability of its own economic system". Until the
Chinese giant woke up from her 'napoleonic'[20] slumber, the western world managed to avoid
this conclusion. This is no longer possible. We failed in the West these last 200 years – and
especially since the end of the First World War - to realise this by ourselves; so now we are
having to be forced to realise it by the sacrifices of the Chinese people. However, sustainably
efficient token eco-cities like Dongtan will not solve the problems created by our western
economic system until the fundamental thinking behind that system is addressed – by the
West itself.

Rudolf Steiner 's doctoral thesis, published as Truth and Science (1892) begins with the
words: "Present-day philosophy suffers from an unhealthy faith in Kant ". This points us back
to the late 18th century, and today, it could indeed be said that "present day society suffers
from an unhealthy faith in the spirit of 1776". That year saw not only the American
Declaration of Independence, which Kant welcomed, but also a number of events that have
since been linked with the USA and its values.

Edward Gibbon (left) published the first volume of his History of the
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in that year, and it both reflected
and further stimulated a yearning for all things Roman , especially among
the upper classes. First the British and then latterly the US elites have
tended to regard themselves as masters of a new Roman Empire,
destined to bring order and prosperity to the world; as with Rome,
however, the rest of the world tend to take a different view. The debate
about the New World Order and globalisation is intertwined with the
image of Rome and the idea that a dominant superpower can bring order,
peace and prosperity (not to mention freedom and democracy) if everyone
will only accept its values. At the root of American confidence is the notion that America is
the world's future; that America is in fact the world. The Americans still today glory in the
values and icons of their Revolutionary era and refer to them often, at home and abroad. The
leaders of the young United States in that era self-consciously saw their state as the beginning
of a Novus Ordo Seclorum[21] (New Order of the Ages) because Roman was the fashionable
style in the late 18th century.[22] Rome also featured in another event of 1776: the
establishment on 1st May that year in staunchly Catholic Bavaria of the secret Order of the
Illuminati. Their founder, Adam Weishaupt (right), had been trained
by the Jesuits, whom he later rejected. The Order was led by a
secretive elite which sought to overthrow all established order and
became something of a model for many subsequent 19th century
revolutionary groups. It sparked off the concerns about dangerous
conspiratorial groups that gave rise to the phenomenon of conspiracy
theory, the most fertile soil for which is still found in ....the USA. All
the Illuminati leaders had codenames, many Roman in origin;
Weishaupt's was Spartacus.

Time cover 14. July 1975

Also in 1776, a highly revolutionary book was published, The

Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith (left) , which has arguably
had far greater influence than Weishaupt's Illuminati. The
concepts of free market economics advocated by Smith's book
has dominated western economic thinking ever since with its
assertion that economic life needs to be based realistically on
human selfishness and the idea that if we all seek profit for
ourselves, then society will eventually become rich. The
economic life was thus to be informed by a spirit of personal
liberty, unhampered by external forces such as the state.
Smith's free market capitalism led to great wealth for some but
also to appalling social inequities and environmental destruction
and also to inevitable opposition and resistance that eventually
took the form of socialism and communism. In 1793 Britain 's will
to economic power took the first British trade mission to China
under Lord Macartney. It met with a humiliating rebuff; the Chinese declared they did not
need Britain's business. The British tried again (1816) as soon as the wars with Napoleon were
over; by this time they had realised the enormous profitability of the opium trade. Again
they were sent packing. The third time they returned with steam-driven warships, and the
First Opium War (1839-42) began, as Britain chose to force its ideas of 'free trade' and
'modern civilisation' on the Chinese.

The end of the Cold War in 1989-91 also signified the end of an era that had begun in the late
18th century with the growth of the Industrial Revolution, the publication of the works of the
leading philosopher of the free market[23], the foundation of the ideological crusading state
that would later do most to realise his ideas, and the establishment of the revolutionary
group that would be a model for violent revolutionaries who wished to fight those ideas and
their consequences. Mao Ze Dong was one such revolutionary. A direct line connects the
western thinking of 1776 with current Chinese business practice, the degradation of China's
environment, and the potential ecological catastrophe threatened by China's frenetic adoption
of western 'economic liberty'. Until those spirits of 1776 and the late 18th century – Smith,
Gibbon, Weishaupt and American pretensions to being the world utopia - are laid to rest,
then the West's Frankenstein monster, which consists essentially of habits of economic
thought dressed up in the vestments of 'freedom and democracy', will go on devouring us all,
human beings, animals, plants, minerals. The ideas that burst forth in Britain and America in
the 1770s were the result of three centuries of European development that had begun with
the growing self-assertion of the individual in the early 15th century. We are now in a different
era with different needs, and the ideas of the 1770s will no longer suffice.

So much for the mighty and troubling storm that may be gathering in Sino-American relations.
I have considered it mainly from western perspectives because they are the ones for which
we in the West are primarily responsible and can hope to do something about. Based on the
work of Rudolf Steiner, the second part of this article will present some ideas about the
deeper aspects of the relationship between the two cultures. Are they doomed to clash or can
the rest of us help the two titans to cooperate?

NOTES

[1] The name ' China ' comes from 'Sina', the Roman pronunciation of the name of the state of
Qin (chin) that unified and ruled China 221-206 BC. The earliest word used by the Chinese to
refer to themselves is hua, which means 'flowery' and comes from the Yellow River valley
region. The modern Chinese word for their country zhongguo means 'middle country' or 'middle
countries' (there is no distinction between singular and plural nouns in Chinese). This signified
their notion of themselves as civilised states surrounded by barbarians.

[2] Published as "The Great Illusion" in the USA (1910), From 1902-1912 Angell was the Paris
editor of The Daily Mail

[3] By this is meant media organs such as The Daily Mail for the masses and The Times, The
National Review, The Nineteenth Century and Saturday Reveiw for the elite.

[4] In that book he already introduced the comparison of China with Wilhelmine Germany
before World War 1 and in terms of schoolboy playground behaviour, postulated a major
remilitarisation of Japan to assist American containment of China . (see ch. 9)

[5] http://www.aei.org/research/nai/events/pageID.400,projectID.11/default.asp

[6] http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0715-04.htm Sailing Toward a Storm in

China : U.S. Maneuvers Could Spark a War

[7] The SCO consists of China and Russia plus the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan ,
Kyrgyzstan , Tajikstan, Turkmenstan and Uzbekstan. "At the last summit meeting of the SCO,
the two countries urged their Central Asian partners to get rid of American bases on their soil."

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/757/in1.htm

[8] Atlantic Monthly June 2005, Volume 295, No. 5; 49-64 .

See
http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/challenges/competitors/2005/june05fightchina.htm

[9] http://www.economist.com/countries/China/profile.cfm?folder=Profile-Forecast. The

Chinese government expects the economy to grow at an annual rate of 8 per cent during the
period of the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10).
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-03/21/content_426718.htm
 [10] China Promotes Another Boom: Nuclear Power New York Times, 15.1.2005

[11]
http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict/war_for_oil_3646.jsp

[12] Second Annual Graduate Student Symposium 12-13 November 1999

[13] Such western cliques c.1902-1914 were The Coefficients, The Pilgrims, The Round Table
Group a.k.a. the Milner kindergarten, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the
Committee for Imperial Defence

[14] Notably by Harold S. Mackinder (1861-1947) in his 1904 paper The Geographical Pivot of
History before the Royal Geographical Society. Mackinder himself did not use the term
'geopolitics' but his paper is generally regarded as the beginning of geopolitics. He put
forward 'the Heartland Theory' which was summed up by the motto: 'Who rules East Europe
commands the Heartland [from the Volga to the Yangtse]; who rules the Heartland commands
the world-island [Eurasia]; who rules the world-island controls the world' - a view still
espoused by Anglo-American cliques to the present day cf. Zbigniew Brzezinski in The Grand
Chessboard - American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives (1997) (Basic Books
paperback, 1997 p.38. Brzezinski 's entire book could be said to be based on Mackinder 's
motto.

[15]
Foreign Policy.org editorial by James Hoge , Jr., A Global Power Shift in the Making

[16] Garner Ted Armstrong (1930-2003), son of Herbert W. Armstrong (1892-1986), who
founded the Worldwide Church of God and Plain Truth magazine and subscribed to a British
Israelite view of world affairs.

[17] The scenario did, however, follow on naturally from The Economist's pre-Huntington vision
of a new 'culturally delineated ' world order in the 21st century that would follow the era of
the Cold War (1-9 Sept, 1990; article: A New Flag: Defence and the Democracies)

[18] http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1599

[19] From the 1830s onwards, many of these East Coast opium traders were connected to the
Yale University secret society Skull and Bones, to which both Presidents Bush and John Kerry
belong. See, for example R.A.Kris Mullegan, The Boodle Boys
(http://www.ctrl.org/boodleboys/boddlesboys2.htm)

[20] Napoleon is supposed to have said: "Let China sleep, for when she awakes she will shake
the world."

[21] This Latin motto was inscribed on the Great Seal of the United States in 1782

[22] Both mottoes on the Great Seal of the United States are taken from the Roman poet Virgil
(1st cent. BC) Novus Ordo Seclorum (from Eclogue IV) refers to the Sibyl who prophesies the
happy fate of the Roman republic, and Annuit Coeptis . (from The Georgics). The
conventional translation of Annuit Coeptis is ' Providence favours (our) undertakings', but a
more accurate translation is 'he favours (our) undertakings', because the poem was referring
to Julius Caesar. A similar phrase occurs in Book IX, line 625 of Virgil 's Aeneid, which refers to
the foundation of Rome. Both phrase were selected by Charles Thomson in 1782; Virgil was a
favourite poet of his.

[23] Strictly speaking, it is not correct to describe Adam Smith as a philosopher of

'industrialism'; his main concerns were the economics of commerce and trade. Nevertheless, it
was in the 19th cent. age of industrialism that his free trade ideas were most energetically
taken up and promoted by the British. Britain 's global hegemony was based on industrialism
and the doctrine of free trade.

© Terry Boardman

Top | Homepage | East-West Issues | Third Millennium: Third Way? | New World Order |
Kaspar Hauser |

This page was created on 3rd Jan. 2007

Last updated 27.1.2010

 East -West Issues

The US-China Relationship in

the 21st Century
and the Spectres of 1776 (2)
This article first appeared in New View magazine 2nd Quarter Spring 2007

The year 1776 saw four developments of crucial

importance which are all in a sense related: the American
Declaration of Independence from Britain, the publications
of Adam Smith's book The Wealth of Nations and the first
part of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire and the foundation of by Adam Weishaupt (1748-
1830) of his conspiratorial group, the Order of the
Illuminati, dedicated to the revolutionary overthrow by
stealth of all traditional social order. 18 years later came
the utter failure of Lord Macartney 's official mission to
China to open up that country to British trade.

Today, the USA is, effectively, the new Roman Empire ; its
power is built on its economic strength, which in turn is
based on two things – possession of productive land and the
application of an economic ideology. In the Louisiana
Purchase of 1803 the vast territory between the Mississippi
and the Rockies was bought from Napoleon, who was
himself something of an Asiatic despot in his dealings. The
lands of the Southwest and the Far West were then seized in
war from Mexico . The ideology was essentially the
economic liberalism of Adam Smith : a successful economy
is one in which the individual is assumed to be self-centred
and therefore needs liberty in his economic life to enable
him to create growth and profit; the state should therefore
involve itself as little as possible in the economy. [1]

Weishaupt's revolutionary Illuminati established something

of a template for countless revolutionary groups throughout
the world, including the Chinese Communist Party. Its
structure was strictly hierarchical and cellular; subordinates
were not to know their superiors' views or policies. It
resorted to all possible means of infiltration and
accommodation to gain its objectives, just as communists
were to do in the 20th century. The aim was totalitarian
governance of the people by a self-appointed cadre of
superiors. Here was the germ both of Bolshevism and of
western think tanks allied to conservative elites. The people
were not deemed fit to govern themselves. 200 years after
the failure of Macartney's mission, China is still being
governed in accordance with these principles. 200 years
after the publication of the books of Gibbon and Smith, the
USA – its administration constantly advised by and infiltrated
by think tanks – has become the New Rome, seeking to
spread Smith's message of economic liberty for the
individual throughout the world.

In the first part of this article (New View Winter 2006/7), I

considered the prospects for war some time later this
century between the two 'Atlantean' powers: China , proud
of being the world's oldest continuous civilisation, and the
USA , with its universalist claim to being the world's self-
styled model for the present and future. Is such a dreadful
clash between these two titans inevitable? What hidden
forces may lie behind such a drive to conflict? How could it
be avoided? This article will consider the more 'esoteric'
aspects to these questions.

The Descent of Man

Rudolf Steiner pointed out that history is not a linear chain

of events in which C is caused by B, which is caused by A.
Rather, historical events can be seen as 'symptoms' of
deeper underlying changes in human consciousness, which
constitute the process of spiritual evolution. Steiner
described a process in which, together with the Earth and
the entire solar system, mankind has descended from a
spiritual non-corporeal condition into material bodies.[2]
During the earlier stages of this process, mankind was aware
of the existence of spiritual beings, because they were
directly perceptible, but with the ever deepening descent
into matter, these beings withdrew. If they had not,
mankind would never have been able to develop its own
freedom, which was the whole purpose of the process. After
the withdrawal of spiritual beings from human company,
contact with them was maintained through the
establishment of mystery centres where pupils were trained
by initiates to develop capacities no longer possessed by the
majority of their fellows. Cultures were guided from these
centres. In time, such centres also faded until,
approximately 2000 years ago, mankind reached a critical
stage in its evolution in physical terms. At this point,
without a major intervention from the spiritual world,
humanity would have fallen into complete physical
degeneracy. The growing human ego was not yet strong
enough to prevent human passions from damaging the life
forces of the human organism to the point where the
physical body would no longer be able to function as an
effective nexus of sense organs for the individual's ego on
the material plane.

At this point, the being known in the West as the Christ

intervened in human evolution and through His
Resurrection, provided the impulse for the crucial turn-
round in human development.[3] This is why Steiner always
maintained that it was not Jesus ' teachings that were so
important (others before Him such as the Buddha had taught
of love and compassion); rather, it was Christ 's deeds that
were and are the key to understanding Christianity. Having
descended from the spiritual sphere of the Sun, Christ saved
the human physical body for mankind - all mankind,
whether they knew of Him or not - and thus enabled human
consciousness to continue to develop on Earth. That single
physical intervention by Christ was the only physical
intervention He needed to make in human evolution; it
occurred at a fulcrum point in our whole history on Earth.
Steiner showed how Christ has accompanied mankind
through all the stages of human evolution and, since the
Resurrection, mankind and the Earth itself have been on the
path of re-ascent, gradual re-spiritualisation, a process
through which the Christ Being also accompanies us, but
now from that region of the spiritual world that is closest to
the physical. This region is termed in spiritual science 'the
etheric world'; its physical correlate is what these days we
call the Earth's biosphere, which, according to Steiner 's
spiritual research, extends from the Earth's atmosphere up
to the orbit of the Moon. The spiritual world no longer
guides mankind; it is now up to us to find our own way
back, in freedom, to our divine origins and to bear the
fruits of what we have learned through many lives on the
material plane back to the spiritual world.

The stages of mankind's journey, the unfolding of different

aspects of our being, are cosmically regulated by the
passage of the Spring point (vernal equinox) through the
Zodiac: it takes 72 years to move through one degree, and
2160 years for 30 degrees. With each passage through a
Zodiac sign the human organism has developed new
capacities. Each major epoch of development has 7 phases,
called cultural epochs. There are 7 of these epochs (15,120
years) in a Great Epoch and we are currently in the fifth of
7 Great Epochs of the physical material condition of the
Earth.[4] Before and after this condition, the Earth exists in
a less physical state. The Great Epoch immediately before
our own ended some 10,000 years ago c.8000 BC and is
known as the Atlantean Epoch. Numerous cultures around
the world have memories of the great

Flood which gradually brought Atlantis to an end. As Atlantis

declined, many of its population emigrated to West and
East. The people of its southern region, who were oriented
to the cult of Saturn[5], left
Atlantis first and settled in what is
now
North

America and subsequently, Central and South America

where the later Olmec, Toltec, Mayan, Aztec and Inca
civilisations developed. The people of the other planetary
cults headed East in two broad streams on either side of the
Mediterranean Sea , dropping off groups as they went.
Eventually, they reached East Asia ,

Yin-Yang Hunab Ku [7]

where one of the two streams, members of the northern

group, later merged with older

indigenous pre-Atlantean peoples to form the Chinese

people.[6] In their art and art and philosophy, social forms
and general approach to life, the Chinese have preserved
until today the memory and habits of Atlantis more than any
other people, seeing "beauty in the order and harmony of
the universe, not in the expression of individual wishes,
opinions or experiences"[8] – only in the last decades has
this now begun to change to any substantial degree.

Two Polarities

Two other concepts of spiritual science must be briefly

outlined that help elucidate our present situation. The
Christ is that Being Who supports our deepest humanity, our
sense of Self, the Sun in each one of us. This gives us our
psychological balance, but freedom would not be possible
only with the Christ . To be free, we must have choice and
the possibility of imbalance, excess and error. There are
two spiritual beings (and their hosts of attendants) who
represent this polarity to us: too much levity (expansion,
inflation, hysteria, excess of heat) or too much gravity
(contraction, deflation, depression, excess of cold). By the
time Taoist teachings were written down a few centuries
before Christ, these two polar imbalances were known in
China as Yin and Yang. Rudolf Steiner recognised such
forces as spiritual beings and named them Lucifer (the
expansive) and Ahriman (the contractive). Lucifer would
hold us back in the past, away from the material and wish to
draw us into his own world of spirit, while Ahriman seeks to
press us down ever deeper into matter and even below
matter so that we forget the spirit entirely. Steiner
recognised that there comes a point in time in human
history and also a point in space when these two beings,
like the Christ , incarnate once at crucial periods in our
development. In 1919 Rudolf Steiner described how the
being Lucifer incarnated in China c.3000 BC.[9] He went on
to make the remarkable observation that the human being
in whom Lucifer (Light-bearer) dwelt was extremely
brilliant, in fact the first human being who really thought
for himself. He was so brilliant in fact that he inspired ​all
the subsequent knowledge that spread from Asia right across
to Greece . The Chinese, as might be expected, seem to
have retained a memory of this remarkable being, the best
candidate for whom is Huang Di (August God-king), the
Yellow Emperor (supposedly reigned in the 27th century
BC). They regard him as the ancestor of all Han Chinese;
much traditional medicine, musical instruments, silk-
making, the compass, the calendar, and writing are
attributed to him.[10]

With Christ's own

incarnation in
Palestine 3000 years
after Lucifer, the
luciferic influence
over mankind as a
whole began to
weaken, and the
balance began to
shift to the other
side. Ahriman
became an
increasingly greater
source of imbalance
and will remain so
until the end of
Earth evolution, but
he too will spend a period united with a single human being
on the Earth. In 1919 Steiner indicated that this incarnation
would take place "before only a part of the 3rd millennium
has elapsed" and it would be "in the West".[11] For various
reasons a number of people have indicated that it will be in
the 21st century and in North America , most likely the USA .
Both Lucifer and Ahriman bring gifts to humanity but of a
very one-sided nature. As with Lucifer, the coming
incarnation of Ahriman will present a huge challenge

Ahriman and Lucifer

to mankind, which we are already beginning to sense.

Ahriman's gifts will help us to develop our technical and
intellectual culture, but if we fail to recognise his one-
sidedness then we will fall for his temptation, which is
intended to make us forget the spirit completely so that the
Earth will become a giant machine culture.

There have been innumerable examples in recent decades

of mankind's intuition of this approaching danger, from
Charlie Chaplin 's Modern Times and Alduous Huxley 's Brave
New World to Tolkien 's The Lord of the Rings and the
movie The Matrix. The growing spirit of Ahriman, a
rigidifying total control, can be felt everywhere – in the
media, in music, politics, the all-pervading growth of
systems thinking, religious literalism, computers and the
Internet, the domination of the global economy by mega-
corporations, virtual reality, and in the rise of the new
Romans, Romulus and Remus[12], the imperial ambitions of
the USA and the EU – in short, in everything which projects
and fixes will-to-power without corresponding reflection
and heart.

The Real Destiny of the USA ?

Rome was the cultural fashion in the 1770s and late 18th
century when the USA was founded. Today, the USA has
taken on the mantle of Rome 's claim to determine the
future of human culture itself. The 'soft power' of its
cultural allure is all-pervasive, even as its legions have over
750 military installations and bases projecting 'hard power'
in over 50 countries around the world; its planes, civil and
military, dominate the skies, and its navy rules the waves;
its submarines prowl the oceans with their nuclear missiles
(9,960 apparently available for use in 2002)[13]; American
satellites spy on the world from space; its super computers
investigate all electronic communications; the global
Internet is centred in the US and a complete alternative
cyber reality, Second Life, devised in the US, has been
spreading over the Internet since 2003.[14] The power of
the USA is unique in world history; not since Atlantis, and
maybe not even then has there been anything like its all-
encompassing global reach. Furthermore, the magnetic N.
Pole is situated in North America ; subterranean magnetism
is the most concentrated in the north-south mountain ranges
of the Rockies and the Andes . Such magnetism, according
to Rudolf Steiner , is what strengthens the power of the
psychological Double, an ahrimanic being which
accompanies each of us, indwelling our very bio-electrical
physiology – the electricity in our bodies that functions
alongside the nervous system and is registered on ECG and
EEG scans.[15]Materialism, contraction, involution,
sclerosis, hardening, rigidification, fixed positions in
thought, gravity – these are the forces with which Ahriman
works. He is determined to force humanity into a premature
and excessively mechanised future of total control in which
free choice will be an impossibility, and any notion of the
spirit will simply not occur to people, for it will have
become the norm to think of human beings as either animals
or cyborgs. Whereas Lucifer, in his incarnation, was
unknown outside of China , and Jesus Christ hardly known
outside of Palestine , Ahriman will make himself known all
over the world through technology. Furthermore, his self-
representation will be a consummate Lie. The name Steiner
chose for him is that of the ancient Persian god of darkness,
who the Zoroastrian prophet Zarathustra always referred to
as the Lie. Ahriman will try to pass himself off as something
he is not; he will in fact try to pass himself off as a kind of
saviour, or Jesus Christ .

It ought to be made clear that all this implies no

demonisation of the American people. They will have to
provide the cultural stage on which Ahriman is likely to
appear, and they will do that for all of us, for without
Ahriman we have no possibility of real choice and thus
ultimately, no freedom. Similarly for the Chinese with
Lucifer when they provided the stage for him, and also for
the Jews with Christ . We should ever be grateful to these
peoples, the Chinese, the Jews, and the Americans. What
they have had to do is a great sacrifice for all three
peoples, for in each case, their cultures have had to
prepare for centuries to bear the burden of the incarnations
of these great beings, who are so mighty that the effect
they have on the three peoples throughout their subsequent
history is such that it hardly fades; it is a profound
engraving. The tragedy of Israel and Palestine is intimately
bound up with what happened there 2000 years ago. The
Chinese people have retained social habits that ultimately
reach back to Atlantis because Lucifer was there amongst
them 5000 years ago and sounded such a cultural note that it
still echoes on today in China 's national pride and the
political authoritarianism of its current rulers.

Ahriman's increasing influence in North America can be

especially experienced is in the west of the continent, and
it is here, in California and the American South West, that
we can see the influence of Mexico and the ancient
Mesoamerican cultures, which had a strong Ahrimanic
colouring also stemming from Atlantis. Stephen Clarke, who
lives in New Mexico, has written illuminatingly on the
relation of the American imperial National Security State
and the development of the A-Bomb (Manhattan Project) at
Los Alamos, New Mexico, as "a recapitulation of the spiritual
and political history of Mesoamerica: the history of great
religious-militaristic empires - and one which is in
syncopated counterpoint to the legacy of Rome in
Europe."[16]

By 1325... the Mexi'ca had begun to build their

double-headed capital city of Mexi'co-
Tenochtitlan and Mexi'co-Tlatelolco.... Ironically
in many ways, (politically, economically, and
psychologically), the Mexi'ca were the spiritual
ancestors of the United States of America . The
Mexi'ca bled their subjugated vassals of
economic, and cultural vitality. According to the
"officially approved" history of the ruling class of
Tenochtitlan, the Mexi'ca were the centre of the
universe, and were entrusted with keeping it
alive. In their eyes, they were the greatest
nation to have ever existed. They were the
chosen ones, blessed as God's righteous and
sacred people. This has many echoes in today's
nationalistic, evangelical, supremacist rhetoric
from the dominant powers of today's U.S.A. and
Europe .[17]

In the 1830s the farsighted Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville

already identified sinister and unexpected aspects of the
new power arising across the Atlantic :

"I seek to trace the novel features under which

despotism may appear in the world. The first
thing that strikes the observation is an
innumerable multitude of men, all equal and
alike, incessantly endeavouring to procure the
petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut
their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a
stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children
and his private friends constitute to him the
whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow
citizens, he is close to them, but does not see
them; he touches them, but he does not feel
them; he exists only in himself and for himself
alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he
may be said at any rate to have lost his country.
Above this race of men stands an immense and
tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to
secure their gratifications and to watch over
 their fate. That power is absolute, minute,
regular, provident, and mild. It would be like
the authority of a parent if, like that authority,
its object was to prepare men for manhood; but
it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in
perpetual childhood; it is well content that the
people should rejoice, provided they think of
nothing but rejoicing". [18]

Most educated Americans of that time, as John O'Sullivan

and Hermann Melville declared, would have claimed their
republic as the model of individual freedom, of universal
enfranchisement..... the ark of the liberties of the world.
This, they felt, was America 's 'high destiny', its 'express
dispensation'. Many in the New Age movement have claimed
that the USA was founded by 'Aquarian' or 'Rosicrucian'
initiates as just such a philadelphic model for humanity. But
we should ask ourselves rather, whether the USA was not
intended to bear a cross of its own in the burden of bearing
the presence of Ahriman. Living in America as Ahriman has
prepared his incarnation and then experiencing that
incarnation in the future when it occurs - this is what has
made and will make the people of the USA - of all
ethnicities and colours - heroic. More than any other nation,
they have to deal with the most powerful forces of evil, the
most powerful manifestation of the Lie. While George Bush
points ever and again to the evil outside America , he seems
blind to what is looming in his own country. Since 1776,
Americans
have told
themselves
and the
world
repeatedly
that their
country is
formed by
their

individualistic and freedom-loving character, but this was

largely a dream, more or less conscious, which they brought
with them from a painful past in Europe, hoping to realise
the dream in the opportunity offered in the great open land
over the ocean. But in the 20th century, and especially since
1945 and the Trinity Test (the official name given to the
first test explosion of the A-bomb near Alamogordo, New
Mexico) that culminated on 16 July that year, more and
more people in America and abroad have become aware of
something else in the American character that stems not
from the old thoughts of Europe and Asia but rises up, as it
were, from below, from the land itself, especially in the
West, where the subterranean magnetism is strongest:

If I had ever been here before I would probably know just

what to do

Don't you? If I had ever been here before,

On another time around the wheel,

I would probably know just how to deal with all of you.

And I feel .....like I've been here before

Feel like I've been here before

And you know

It makes me wonder....what's going on... under the

ground

Do you know? Don't you wonder? What's going on down

under you?

We have all been here before ...We have all been here
before.....

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Deja Vu,

1970

Since the Spanish first arrived there, Europe has felt

America 's Midas touch which, according to Steiner , "tends
to mechanise and naturalise" all it comes across. 700 years
ago, in the 13th century the Mongols represented the
opposite danger for Europe - namely, being dragged back
to earlier stages of development - when they destroyed a
great pan-European army at the Battle of Liegnitz in 1241
and all Europe was theirs for the taking. The danger
receded as mysteriously as it had approached, Russia paying
the long and heavy price for absorbing for the rest of
Europe the remaining Mongol pressure. Then, by an equally
mysterious process, we see how the Far East actually led
Europe to America, for it is now known that a heavily
annotated copy of Marco Polo's account of his travels to
China was in the possession of .... Christopher Columbus .
Europe sought a New World in China , but found it in
America. As Steiner puts it, the luciferic element needed to
be balanced by the ahrimanic, and Europeans had to be
kept away from both China and America until they were at
least partly ready to cope with the powerful forces of the
two realms without being utterly overwhelmed by either.

A certain quarter", said Rudolf Steiner, "wishes

to remove the impulse of the Mystery of
Golgotha by bringing in another impulse from
the West, a kind of Antichrist. More than
anything else, that quarter will strive to make
use of electricity, especially the earth's
magnetism to spread effects all over the
earth….It will be an American secret to use the
earth's magnetism in its duality, the northern
and southern magnetism, in order to send
controlling forces across the whole earth, forces
that work spiritually....If Europeans remain
blind to the power of such geographical forces,
their continent "would become Greece to the US
Rome; European culture would be
extinguished.[19]

Lucifer in the past of China - his influence continuing the

past in the present - and Ahriman in the future of the USA -
his influence always seeking to accelerate development
and propel the present prematurely into the future: these
are what stand behind the symptoms of a possible US-China
clash over, for example, the controversial island of Taiwan,
whose capital lies at the same latitude 25°N as Mexico City
(the former Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan). Ahriman's own
incarnation is also imminent and it stands to 'spiritual
reason' that whereas the rest of us need to draw what we
can from the event while defending ourselves from its
excesses, the Chinese will tend to oppose the USA, the
stage of Ahriman's incarnation, most strongly, because the
effects of the luciferic incarnation still live so strongly
within their own culture.[20]
Estimated Time of Arrival

So much then, for Lucifer and Ahriman in space; what of

time? The Sino-American clash is looming now, in the 21st
century, because the 20th to 23rd centuries are the most
important period in history since the Christ united Himself
with the etheric organism of the earth at the Ascension.
Why is this?

It may help to look at some of the profound rhythms that

work into the human condition. In the Far East , adulthood
was traditionally celebrated at 20, that is, in the 21st year of
life. In the West it has traditionally been 21, only recently
reduced to 18. 20-21 is the time when the human ego,
which has been gradually uniting itself with its body's
material organism, enters fully in and takes charge, much as
an owner takes possession of a house. The house still has to
be made into 'a home'; it still has to be decorated and fully
furnished, but at 20-21, the owner has taken full possession.
In Dec. 1917 Rudolf Steiner spoke of a historical law
operative since Christ left the material plane in 33 AD: all
social impulses - 'good' or 'bad' - that arise in a 33-year
period go through a transformation over the next 33 years
and are resurrected, so to speak, in the third 33 year
period.[21] What is planted in, say, 1900-1933 grows through
1933-1966 and then returns as fruit in 1966-1999. This means
that 3 x 33 years (or approximately one century) constitute a
specific period of social and cultural growth. This historical
principle can also be related to the life of the individual
i.e. a year in the life of the growing child corresponds to a
century in the life of mankind. A study of the events that
occurred in, for example, the 4th, 7th, 9th, 14th and 19th
centuries, irrespective of culture, can show clearly how
they correlate to the 4th, 7th, 9th, 14th and 19th year in the
growth of
the
individual,

irrespective of the culture they come from. Around the 4th

year the ego usually connects with the organism, and the
child begins to say "I". In the 7th year comes the change of
teeth, the sign of independence from the body of the
mother; in the 9th year, however, the first signs of the
bodily death process set in as brain cells begin to die; in the
14th year puberty takes hold, and in the 19th year, the first
Moon Node takes place.[22] Events on the global and
national scale that correlate with these processes in
individual biographies can be observed in the course of
human history since Christ . The 21st century is therefore
no mere arbitrary date for the events described here to
take place. It is the very special time when the ego of
mankind as a whole - since Christ came for all of mankind –
takes possession of the house of mankind just as it was a
very special moment when the young adult used to be given
the key of the door and was recognised socially as an adult.
In this 21st century we shall have such global self-
consciousness as never before. Precisely in this century
then, the luciferic and ahrimanic forces can be expected to
make their greatest strike against the human ego and the
ego of mankind that seeks for freedom. Precisely in this
century, we see the USA and China, the two cultures of the
incarnations of Lucifer and Ahriman respectively that most
resonate with the spirit of ancient Atlantis, begin to square
up against each other. Between their compulsive forces is
the Ego of Man. The destruction of the Twin Towers as the
21st century began was surely an awesome symbol of the
dual nature of the assault on mankind that the forces of
opposition are planning for mankind in this critical century.
The Twin Towers were both annihilated, nearly 3000
people sacrificed, and what was left was pain, loss,
heroism, and the love and sympathy of so many of the
people of the world for the people of America. This became
tempered when until the White House began to act so
strongly abroad.

Three Ways to a Solution

Finally, what can prevent China and the US from clashing?

What can prevent the Ego of Man from being destroyed by
their clash? We can look for wholesome answers in three
directions – in the cultural, economic and political spheres.
Both Taoism and Buddhism counsel against attachment, but
the Chinese are deeply attached to their national religion,
which is 'being Chinese', and are perhaps prepared to
summon a dragon for its sake:

In the five thousand years of outstanding

civilisation, our country has commanded a
predominant position in the whole world.
....However, as long as Taiwan has not returned
to the motherland, the unified image will
remain incomplete, which is not only an
emotional trauma for the Chinese people, but
an issue involving the dignity of our country;
....The Taiwan issue directly affects the
solidarity of different nationalities within our
country and constitutes the most serious hidden
problem that could endanger the very existence
of the Chinese nation.[23]

Yet the Tao says:

 Whenever you advise a ruler in the way of Tao,
counsel him not to use force to conquer the
universe. For this would only cause resistance...
Lean years follow in the wake of war...Never
take advantage of power…Force is followed by
loss of strength. This is not the way of Tao. That
which goes against the Tao comes to an early
end. (verse 30. tr. Gia Fu Feng)

The root cause of modern warfare is almost always the

disease of atheism, a reliance on materialism as one's
philosophy of life; this is spiritual ignorance. George Bush
may speak of God, democracy, and freedom, but we only
have to look at a map to see where the US bases are in
order to understand the economic motives behind US
actions.

The Tao of heaven is to take from those who

have too much and give to those who do not
have enough. Man’s way is different. He takes
from those who do not have enough to give to
those who already have too much. (verse 77. Tr.
Gia Fu Feng)

More than anything, a knowledge of the spirit, a spiritual

science that brought a concrete understanding of
reincarnation would actually serve the most to avoid war
between the USA and China and bring peace in this critical
21st century by creating a sense of spiritual brotherhood
that goes beyond nationality and genetics. This would not
only work against the Roman ghost of western neo-
imperialism, it would help Chinese people to see that one
has a spiritual heredity as well as an earthly genetic one and
that in their previous lives they may have been Europeans
or Africans and may therefore be Japanese or Americans in
their next lives. It would help draw American Christian
fundamentalists away from reliance on the letter of the
Bible and towards a spiritual understanding, as revealed in
the Bible, of the evolution of consciousness and its relation
to reincarnation; they too may realise that they could be
Chinese in their next lives. Rudolf Steiner certainly did
more than anyone to substantiate reincarnation from a
spiritual perspective, as the eight volumes of his Karmic
Relationships (1924) attest.[24]

Another crucial task that needs to be accomplished is to

overcome the liberal economics heritage of Adam Smith .
Individual liberty works destructively when applied to the
economic realm, where it does not belong.[25] The self-
centred freedom to exploit workers and the natural world in
order to maximise profit, to manufacture whatever one
desires, the emphasis on liberty in all realms, was the
intellectual product of mankind's 18th century - which is
reflected in an individual's 18th year. For we can see that
the later teenage years in individual biographies are often
marked by exactly this self-assertive striving that can fail to
take account of the needs of others, so great is the drive of
the individual personality to assert itself in or even against
its environment. But mankind is now in its 21st 'year', and
our needs are different. Slowly, we are beginning to realise
that the self-aggrandising capitalist free market ethos of the
18th century, based on Adam Smith 's insights that arose
naturally at that time, threatens now to overwhelm the
balance of Earth's ecology and exhaust its forces.

Thirdly, we have not yet solved the problem of political

parties, groupings that seek power based on programmes
devised by small oligarchies and committees, sometimes
secretively. "We have to realise that in a democracy we
have to have political parties" said Hazel Blears, UK Cabinet
Minister on BBC Radio ( 15 March 2007 ), arguing for
compulsory public funding of political parties. But this too
is a spectre from the late 18th century that needs laying to
rest. The 21st century must be one of the individual ego that
recognises and respects other individual egos and builds
community on that basis, and not on the basis of political
tribalism disciplined by threats and bribes by political party
bully boys. The teenage years are, and 'the teenage
centuries' were, a time of tension between a growing self-
consciousness and the receding group consciousness of
childhood. Thus the 18th century could produce the writings
both of an Adam Smith and an Adam Weishaupt – writings for
the thrusting individual looking for profit and also for the
forger of secretive cabals. The politics of cabals and parties
must now be replaced by a new politics of individuals and
freely chosen associative communities.[26] The best
'candidates' for this task would perhaps be Britain, France
and the USA, the three societies most associated not only
with the modern party system but also with the grandfather
of secret societies - Freemasonry. This would end the
empty, rich man's charade of the American see-saw party
system and provide a different, more contemporary model
for the Chinese, whose old-fashioned Bolshevik hierarchy
Adam Weishaupt would still recognise.

The Way gave birth to unity,

Unity gave birth to duality,

Duality gave birth to trinity,

Trinity gave birth to the myriad creatures.

(Tao Te Ching chap. 42)

NOTES

[1] This concept of relatively untrammelled liberty for

entrepreneurs would also lead directly to the Opium Wars
with China 1839-42 and 1858-1860, in which, incidentally,
American traders (e.g. Warren Delano, ancestor of President
F.D.Roosevelt) played no small part. Today, drugs trade is
one of the worst scourges of the modern world.

[2] For spiritual researchers like Steiner, this process is an

observable fact; for the rest of us, until it can be verified
spiritually, it must remain hypothetical, but it can
nevertheless be compared with what we know of studies of
history, mythology and anthropology to ascertain its
plausibility.

[3] See Rudolf Steiner's lectures on the Gospels.

[4] See Steiner's lectures on The Apocalypse of St John

(June 1908) where he describes how the Earth goes through
7 conditions of Consciousness, each of which has 7
conditions of Life (sometimes known as Rounds) and these
in turn each have 7 Conditions of Form (also known as
Globes). Currently, we are in the 4th (Earth) condition of
Consciousness, the 4th (Mineral) condition of Life and the
4th (Physical) condition of Form. Within the physical
condition of the Mineral Earth, there are 7 evolutionary
epochs, of which the Atlantean was the 4th, and ours is the
5th, the Post-Atlantean. Finally, our 5th epoch also has 7
cultural ages (determined by the precession of the
equinoxes), of which again, ours is the 5th post-Atlantean
age (1413-3573). Our 'grand address' in Time is thus
3.3.3.4.4. (in terms of the epochs we have completed)

[5] The peoples of Atlantis were grouped around cults,

mysteries or oracles relating to the different planetary
spheres: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus , Mercury,
Vulcan. See R. Steiner, Cosmic Memory (Rudolf Steiner
Press, 2006)

[6] The Chinese usually see themselves as consisting of two

broad groups – the northern Han and the southern Man.

[7] Hunab Ku – symbol of Mayans' supreme God, formless and

transcendent. Correlate of Aztec Taotl.

[8] J.Blatchford , China – Ancient Inspiration and New

Directions (Rudolf Steiner College Publications 1989) p.142

[9] R.Steiner, The Influence of Lucifer and Ahriman,

Anthroposophic Press, 1993, lecture 3

[10] All Chinese emperors since the time of Qin Shi Huang
(221-210 BC), the first historical emperor and builder of the
Great Wall were called Huang Di.

[11] See n. 9, lecture 1

[12] Twin mythological founders of Rome, abandoned and

raised from infancy by a female wolf.

[13] Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen.' U.S. nuclear

forces, 2006', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 61:1
(January/February 2005), pp. 68-71

[14] As of Dec 2005, 10 of the world's 13 Internet root

servers were then operated from the United States and one
each from Amsterdam, Stockholm, and Tokyo, and the US
insists on retaining control of ICANN, the international body
that supervises the administration of the Internet K.N.
Cukier, Who Will Control the Internet?, 'Foreign Affairs'
November/December 2005.
Second Life is an Internet-based multi-player virtual world,
available to the public since 2003. "Residents can explore,
meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual
and group activities, create and trade items (virtual
property) and services from one another."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life

[15] ECG: electrocardiograph (records the electrical

activity of the heart over time) EEG: electroencephalogram
(measurement of the electrical activity of the brain)

[16] http://southerncrossreview.org/22/mex-mystery-
2b.htm

[17] http://www.aguila-blanca.com/history.html

[18] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, (1835 &

1840) Ch.6 Bk IV This is not the picture one usually
associates with de Tocqueville 's often eulogistic appraisal
of the young Republic.

[19] R. Steiner, lecture of 25.11.1917, Secret Brotherhoods

and the Mystery of the Human Double (Rudolf Steiner Press,
2004)

[20] This is not to say that Ahriman has not made his own
inroads into China nor that there are not many Chinese who
will successfully in their own souls defend themselves from
both the excesses of the luciferic element in their own
culture and the ahrimanic from the West. Equally, one only
has to listen to some of the inflationary and self-glorifying
"God-Bless-America" claims of George Bush and the
rightwing America Right or Wrong lobby to know that lucifer
is active in the USA too. The point is that despite this, the
two cultures represent the physical stages of the planetary
yin and yang, as it were. The power elite in the USA know
that China represents the toughest nut for them to crack,
far tougher than the world of Islam, which is why they are
surreptitiously making plans for action against China once
the much-hyped War on Terror against the Islamists is over.
(see the first part of this article, New View, Winter 2006/7)

[21] R. Steiner, lecture of 23rd December 1917, Basel

[22] Moon Nodes – the two points on the Moon's path around
Earth where the Moon rises above and later dips below the
Earth's ecliptic. These positions are constantly shifting but
 after 18.7 years they return to the same place. When the
individual reaches about 18! that is the first Moon node in
an individual's biography; the second is at age 37 and so on.
At these nodes a 'window' opens for a short while in the
biography where the individual has an opportunity to
reconnect with his/her pre-birth intentions that s/he forgot
when descending from the Moon sphere to birth.

[23] "Watching Closely for Changes in the Relationships with

Taiwan and Enhancing the Awareness by Military Leadership
of the Current Situation," Office of the Central Military
Commission of the Communist Party of China August 10,
1999

[24] The man who perhaps did more than anyone in recent
decades to substantiate an understanding of reincarnation
by doing exhaustive research on the earthly plane was the
Canadian, Prof. Ian Stevenson M.D. (University of Virginia),
who died on 8 Feb. 2007. See his Twenty Cases Suggestive
of Reincarnation (2nd revised and enlarged edition,
University of Virginia Press, 1974)

[25] Individual liberty and freedom belong in the cultural

sphere where competition is justified. The political sphere
of rights calls for equality, while the principle of the
economic sphere should be fraternity; to transform the
fruits of the Earth requires brotherhood. See R. Steiner,
Towards Social Renewal (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1999)

[26] By associative communities is meant political

communities the individual chooses to join rather than
those s/he is 'born into' as a result of class or ethnicity.

Terry Boardman 2007

This page was created 20.9.2008 Last updated 27.1.2010

Top | Homepage | East-West Issues