In what has become an annual tradition, Bruce Sterling is conducting a world-readable discussion on one of the WELL's public discussion boards. Watching Bruce hold forth on design, geopolitics and science fiction is exhilarating and exhausting, and a must-read.
[W]hat if the Chinese
just
go about their own booming business? Do they HAVE to buy or bury
anybody? And even if they do, isn't Siberia just sort of sitting
there?Maybe they buy or bury South Korea. Check out this NYT piece
on the huge Chinese appetite for South Korean hiphop.
The fact that there is South Korean hiphop is wack enough,
but imagine a vast China enthralled with Korean hiphop!
Do they have to buy or bury any American hiphop?
Heck no, man. They become the planetary
hiphop majority by force of numbers.They can just sublimely ignore
American hiphop, just like the US government does…When and if people start getting "Sino-ized" rather than
"Westernized,"
that'll be a big deal. I just don't expect to see that happening.
I think we are well past that epoch.We're all in the same global stew now. Koreans exporting
black American music to China? Hey, if you're looking for
Confucian cultural purity, game over.I'm quite the Sinophile. I think what they've done in the past
20 years is a near-miracle. If you'd gone back 20 years ago and
asked American diplomats for their top-end positive China scenario,
it likely would have been something like this situation today.So if we're getting what we want from them, why are we bitching?
Do we miss those glamorous Great Leap Forward days when
starved corpses were floating down their rivers? Have they
failed to brandish enough hydrogen bombs at us lately?
Do we miss the sweet accommodations of the Gang of Four?
