Good essay, Notch. I just wonder how many people in China understand the mistakes they made during the boxer rebellion. Desperate people turn to unreasonable options, but some of what the boxers did to persuade the population to join them leaves a lot of questions. They told the population that they, the boxers, were immune to western weapons, and used blanks to prove it. They spread rumors about having members with supernatural powers to help them. In the end, they only harmed their people, making a bad situation worse. I hope the people in China have learned from this.

Their actions, I think, were justifiable at the time, but in retrospect some of their claims are just silly. "Let the various Foreign Devils all be killed. May the whole Elegant Empire of the Great Qing Dynasty be ever prosperous!" Sounds a lot like a strong rallying cry to me, and I think many in China at this time probably felt this way towards the emerging imperial European powers that were present in China. I think this rebellion taught China a strong lesson in that they were an emasculated world power (can't think of another description, maybe there is something more effective here), powerless to remove the English whom they greatly outnumbered. I suspect this strongly influenced their actions in the years to come to reform their nation and identity.

A now forgotten man, hunchback Homer Lea, 1876-1912, led a Chinese Republican contingent at the battle and was the only caucasian present at the inauguration of Sun Yat-Sen. His Valor of Ignorance pub. 1908 predicting war between U.S. Jaopan and Day of the Saxon pub. 1912 prediciting war between Great britain and Germany were widely read by generals and politicians of the day. He died before completing The Swarming of the Slav prediciting the great battle between the Saxon nations and Russia.His great wish was for China to become a republic with U.S. style democracy.

His great wish was for China to become a republic with U.S. style democracy.

With all my respects, this is a kind of pious wish ...From my experience, not in China but in Vietnam, communism has only replaced labels on a pre-existing and still existing feudal system.Between our Western philosophies about democracy and Asian philosophies(Confucianism and Communism), the gap isn't about to be filled or even meet. TMHO

I agree. Nevertheless, with growing globalization, the economic ties between China and the west, and the influence that the actions of China are having on the world, there will have to be more consensus between China and the west. The clash of philosophies is just the start of the obstacles. China's determination to sensor information within its population while still raking in the economic benefits of foreign markets can only go one of two ways. Either China releases the grip on the flow of information, or the west refrains from speaking out as much. China will be forced to deal with the population crisis they're creating. They will not have enough working people to support their elderly in the coming generation, yet they seem very reluctant to look at immigration as a means of dealing with this. They have too many men and not enough women for them to marry, and I believe they know the answer to that problem but don't want to face it. They need to bring women from other parts of the world in, and South East Asia can only supply so many. Only impoverished countries will have women willing to immigrate to rural China, so they need to look to African nations for this. It will be interesting to see where this leads to.