Music and China's rising hegemony

[Photo by Mark Dadswell/Getty]

Spengler, writing for the Asia Times, suggests that musical study in China is indicative of China's rising hegemony in the world.

While the U.S. spend six times the amount of money on defense as does China, China "holds a six-to-one advantage over the United States" in another "strategic dimension" -- the study of piano. "Thirty-six million Chinese children study piano today, compared to only 6 million in the United States. The numbers understate the difference, for musical study in China is more demanding."

Musical study, then, metaphorically represents China's future.

"It must be a conspiracy," says Spengler. "Chinese parents are selling plasma-screen TVs to America, and saving their wages to buy their kids pianos - making American kids stupider and Chinese kids smarter. Watch out, Americans - a generation from now, your kid is going to fetch coffee for a Chinese boss. ... Americans really don't have a clue what is coming down the pike. The present shift in intellectual capital in favor of the East has no precedent in world history. ...

"The world's largest country is well along the way to forming an intellectual elite on a scale that the world has never seen, and against which nothing in today's world - surely not the inbred products of the Ivy League puppy mills - can compete. Few of its piano students will earn a living at the keyboard, to be sure, but many of the 36 million will become much better scientists, engineers, physicians, businessmen and military officers."


Spengler bases his predictions on the fact that the study of music, in particular classical music, "produces better minds, and promotes success in other fields." He cites academic studies which "show that music lessons raise the IQs of six-year-olds."

While "Any activity that requires discipline and deferred gratification benefits children ... classical music does more than sports or crafts. Playing tennis at a high level requires great concentration, but nothing like the concentration required to perform the major repertoire of classical music."

So watch out. There's more here than meets the eye. "China has embraced the least Chinese, and the most explicitly Western, of all art forms." Couple that with the fact that "[t]he Chinese, in some ways the most arrogant of peoples, can elicit a deadly kind of humility in matters of learning. Their eclecticism befits an empire that is determined to succeed, as opposed to a mere nation that needs to console itself by sticking to its supposed cultural roots. Great empires transcend national culture and naturalize the culture they require."

China is on the rise. And, says Spengler, Americans don't get the picture. "That is what makes America's music gap with China so difficult to remedy. Except in a vague way, one cannot explain the uniqueness of Western classical music to non-musicians, and America is governed not by musicians, but by sports fans."

Further complicating the matter is the fact that "American musical education remains the best in the world" and "the best Asian musicians come to America to study." And America is where they hone their skills, soon out-performing their American counterparts. "According to the head of one conservatory, Americans simply don't have the discipline to practice eight hours a day."


It all comes down to this. American policy-makers have tended to think of the Chinese, not as originators, but as imitators. "China has had little incentive to innovate; an emerging economy does not have to re-invent the wheel, or the Volkswagen, for that matter."

But, and here's the crunch: China has a long history of innovation. "China invented the clock, the magnetic compass, the printing press, geared machines, gunpowder, and the other technologies that began the industrial revolution, long before the West. When it comes time to develop the next generation of anti-missile radar, or electric car batteries, Chinese originality may assert itself once again. Chinese who have mastered the most elevated as well as the most characteristically Western forms of high culture [e.g. classical music] will also think with originality."

And didn't the Beijing Olympics give us a hint? And isn't China entering the space age with fine-fettled force? And in the last twenty years which country went from manufacturing crap to manufacturing excellence?


Don't say we weren't warned.


Spengler has much more to say and you can read it all here.