Raymond Barnett

 

1.  The thinking up to fall 2025

 

Intelligence available to Western sinologists  prior to fall 2025 had established a consensus that China President Xi Jinping's long-cherished ambition was to "reunify" Taiwan with the mainland and thus vault his historical role to an equal level with Mao Tsetung.  His timeline was to accomplish this by 2027, either by negotiations (very unlikely) or by military force.  Chinese military violations of Taiwanese territorial water and airspace have become routine, and were clearly exercises in preparatioin for a military invasion.

 

2.  October 2025:  The Purge of Generals

 

Nine high-ranking generals of China's Central Military Commission (CMC) were relieved of their duties in October of 2025, including CMC vice chair He Weidong, CMC Political Work Department director Miao Hua, and former defense ministers Li Shangfu and Wei Fenghe.  This phenomenon persisted, and reached a dramatic peak in January 2026 with the firing of Generals Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli.  Zhang was the military's most senior officer, vice chair of the CMC.  Liu was the military's top operational commander as chief of staff of the CMC Joint Staff Department. 

 

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) editorials during the October 2025 purges mentioned "job-related crimes involving exceptionally large sums of money."  The explanation for the January 2026 firings charged that Zhang and Liu had "seriously fostered political and corruption problems that undermined the Party's absolute leadership over the military." 

 

Western understanding of the dynamics within the CCP is historically poor and chancy.  So dramatic has the purge of high-ranking generals been, however, that guesses are proferred as to what might be going on.  Since the purges have resulted in either open positions or positions now occupied by dramatically less-experienced personnel, it is suggested that the phenomenon may well have compromised the miltary's equipment, personnel, and training.  This further indicated added risks for Xi Jinping in ordering the military into combat during the current decade.

 

Does all this indicate that Xi's desire to invade Taiwan by 2027 has been abandoned or drastically pushed into the nexty decade?  "Possibly" is as much as we can say.  Other recent developments, below, might shed light on what the purges may signify. 

 

 

3.  November 2025:  Japan Pledges to Interfere

 

In November of 2025 Sanae Takaichi, Japan's new prime minister, declared that were China to attack Taiwan, Japan would activate its self-defense military forces to aid the island.  This out-of-the-blue announcement evidently gobsmacked the Chinese.  They promptly denounced the very idea, cancelled rare earth exports to Japan, curbed Chinese tourism to Japan, and, most pointedly, demanded that the Giant Pandas loaned to Japan be immediate returned.

 

Japan is not a major military power in the East, but the announcement certainly added a new problem that had to be addressed were an invasion to take place, a new challenge to the long-established scenario.

 

4.  Astonishing Reception by Xi Jinping of Taiwan's new KMT Chief

 

Citizens of China awoke on April 10 to an unprecedented sight.  Splashed over every television outlet, Party or not, was the astonishing sight of Xi Jinping shaking hands with the chair of Taiwan's Kuomintang party on a "peace visit" to the mainland. 

 

First of all, China has a director of cross-strait contacts, whose job it is to meet the few visitors from Taiwan.  This one was being met—and shaking hands with--the very President of China, General Secretary of the CCP, and Chairman of the Central Military Comission, Xi himself!  Chi-gwai—very strange, as the Chinese say.

   

The visitor was Cheng Li-wun, a highly-educated lawyer (Masters in law from Pennsylvania's Temple University, Masters in international relations from Cambridge University), and former member of Taiwan's pro-independence Democratic People's Party (DPP).  In 2002 she quit the DPP and joined Taiwan's Kuomintang party (KMT), which currently favors peaceful relations with China. 

 

The televised photo was most intriguing, not least because of Cheng's bold appearance:  a confident 56-year-old with long auburn hair cascading over her shoulders, equally as tall (and striking) as the five-foot-eleven Chairman grasping her hand in his.

 

Cheng claims that Taiwan's DPP creates more risk for Taiwan than her approach.  Her meeting with Xi Jinping shows "the sincerity and determination of the Chinese Communist Party to engage in peaceful dialogue and exchanges across the Taiwan Strait."  That claim may not have been true in the past, but—well, there's the photo, amazing though it may be.  Another factor…

 

5.  Donald Trump

 

Ah.  Perhaps the most important "new factor" in the equation of U.S. war with China over Taiwan—or not. 

 

Xi Jinping doesn't need to have an excellent national intelligence service to realize what he needs to know about President Trump:  his impulsiveness, his readiness to use America's massive military might, his utter unpredictability, his transactional approach even to long-time U.S. allies, his Secretary of State known as a "hawk" with respect to China. 

 

Xi is currently scheduled to host Presidient Trump in Beijing in May (wartime duties in Iran permitting).  Much will depend on that meeting, whenever it occurs, with respect to the prospects of a U.S.-China war over Taiwan.  The preceding factors discussed above will all come into play, delicately and astutely balanced by Xi.  Will Trump be willing to concede Taiwan to China for readier access to China's rare earths?  Is Xi in fact still planniing to forcefully invade Taiwan?  Or do the preceding factors suggest that he is amending his long-held goal by pushing it back a decade or two?  Or abandoning it altogether?  Is he wondering whether a war—perhaps a nuclear war—over Taiwan's status is really worth the risk?

   

6.  So what do all these "new factors in the equation" indicate? 

 

We must keep in mind the West's long history of gauging China's intentions—a history of poor guesses.  This has always been a chancy business.  Each of my readers will make what they will of these new factors. 

 

I end by taking you to China's deep northwest, at the very edge of the Gobi desert.  Jiuquan, one of China's three most important space centers.  Jiuquan was where Yang Lingwei, China's first astronaut, was sent into space in 2003 and became a national hero.  It is still launching Chinese astronauts.  Approaching the town, one must notice a giant billboard, where a message is proclaimed in huge scarlet characters, in both Chinese and English, interestingly.  "Without Haste.  Without fear.  We conquer the World." 

 

China has patience.  It is confident.  Fearless.  The world will belong to it.  No matter what.

 

Or so it claims.

   

 

Live in tumultuous times?  Feel like the world is going to hell? 

 

Welcome to the club.  It seems like forever that humans, West and East, have felt ruination shadowing their lives, their plans, their country, their civilization.  Possibly because theirs is the oldest continuous civilization on earth, the Chinese have a long history of dealing with the world going to hell, their poetry especially returning continually to methods or perspectives to deal with the reality of ruination. 

 

Below are 14 of my favorite Chinese poems in this genre, all from the Common Era.  Eight of them are from the T'ang dynasty of 619 to 907, celebrated as China's golden age of poetry.  Four of them come from the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368), when Kublai Khan's Mongol Empire ruled China.  The remainder are from other periods.  Maybe they'll help us among the tumult of our time?  Enjoy!

 

 

Down Zhongnan Mountain, by Li Po, T'ang dynasty (618 – 907)

 

In the evening I descend the green mountain,

The rising moon traveling along with me.

Looking back, I see the path I followed,

A blue mist covering Zhongnan Mountain. 

 

Passing the farmhouse of a friend,

His children call from a wicket gate,

And lead me through jade bamboos

where wisteria catches my clothes.

I am glad of a chance to rest

And share wine with my friend.

We sing to the tune of the wind in the pines,

finishing our songs as the stars go down.

Being drunk and more than happy,

Between us we forget the world and its troubles.

 

 

 

A Boat in Spring, by Qiwu Qian, T'ang dynasty (618 – 907)

 

With nothing to disturb my quiet thought,

I let chance carry me along.

My boat and I, pushed by the evening breeze,

Pass flowers, and enter Jo-Ya lake,

Sailing at nightfall to a creek in the west.

I watch the Southern Dipper over the mountain

As a mist rises, hovering softly.

The moon casts slanting rays through the trees.

I put away from me every worldly matter,

And become just an old man with a fishing pole.

 

 

 

Mountain Stones, by Han Yu, T'ang dynasty (618 – 907)

(dedicated to Kyle and AJ)

 

Rough are the mountain stones, and narrow the path.

As I reach the temple, bats swoop in the dusk.

At the hall, I sit on steps and drink in rain-washed air

among round gardenia pods and huge banana leaves.

Fine Buddhas are painted on the old wall, says the priest.

Shown them by his light, I say they're wonderful.

He spreads a bed, dusts mats, and prepares my dinner.

Though coarse, the food satisfies my hunger.

At midnight, when even insects have quieted,

The mountain moon's pure light enters my door.

 

I leave at dawn, losing my way in the forest. 

In and out, up and down amidst a heavy mist

Making brook and mountain green and purple,

huge pines and oaks loom to either side.

In swift streams I step barefoot on more mountain stones,

Water gurgling noisily and breezes puffing out my gown.

These are surely the things which make life happy.

Why must duties check us like a horse with a bit?

Well, my two old friends, treasured companions,

Shall we return here to pass our old age?

 

 

 

Turning Seasons: wandering in spring by Tao Qian (365 – 427)

 

Turning seasons spinning wildly

away, morning's majestic calm

unfolds. Out in spring clothes,

I cross the eastern fields. A few

clouds linger, sweeping mountains

clean. Gossamer mist blurs open

skies. Feeling the south wind,

young grain ripples like wings. 

 

Boundless, the lake's immaculate

skin boundless, I rinse myself

clean in a swim. The view all distance,

all distance inciting delight,

I look deep. They say if you're

content you're satisfied easily

enough. Raising this winecup, I

smile, taken by earth's own joy.

 

I'm home day-in day-out, taking

things easy. Herbs and flowers

grow in rows. Trees and bamboo

gather shade.  My lute is tuned

clear, and a half-jar of thick

wine waits. Unable to reach any

Golden age of great rulers,

I inhabit who I am, sad and alone. 

 

 

 

 

Funeral Elegy for Myself, by Tao Qian (365 – 427)

 

        Hu-ooo!  Ai-tsai hu-ooo!

Boundless—this vast heap earth,

this bottomless heaven, how perfectly

boundless. And among the ten thousand

things born of them, to find myself

a person somehow, though a person

fated from the beginning to poverty

alone, to empty cups and bowls,

thin clothes against winter cold.

But even hauling water brought such joy,

and I sang under a load of firewood:

this life in brushwood-gate seclusion

kept my days and nights utterly full.

Spring and autumn following each other

away, there was always garden work:

some weeding here or hoeing there.

What I tended I harvested in plenty,

and to the pleasure of books, lute

strings added harmony and balance.

I'd sun in winter to keep warm,

and summers, bath in cool streams.

Never working more than hard enough,

I kept my heart at ease always,

and whatever came, I rejoiced in all

heaven had made of my span of life.

 

Resolute here in my little tumbledown house,

I swilled wine and scribbled poems.

Seeing what fate brings, our destiny

clear, who can live without concern?

But today, facing this final change,

I can't find anything to resent.

My wife's family came this morning,

And friends hurried over tonight.

They'll take me out into the country,

bury me where the spirit can rest

easy. O dark journey, O desolate

grave, gate opening into the dark unknown.

Build no gravemound, plant no trees—

just let the days and months pass

away. I avoided it my whole life,

so why invite songs of praise now?

Life is deep trouble. And death,

why should death be anything less? 

        Hu-ooo!  Ai-tsai hu-ooo!

 

 

 

Only the Rain, by Jiang Jie (1245 – 1310)

 

Once, when young, I lay and listened

To the spring rain falling on a brothel roof,

Silk and silky flesh gleaming in candlelight.

 

Later, I heard it on the cabin roof of a small boat

As I sailed under low clouds on the Great River,

Wild geese crying out in an autumn storm. 

 

Now, again, I hear it on the monastery roof,

My hair turned white with the passing years.

 

All—the joy, the sorrow, the meeting, the parting—

          All are as though they had never been.

 

Only the rain on the roof, only the rain is the same,

          Falling in streams through the winter night. 

 

 

 

 

 Looking for a Hermit, by Jia Dao, T'ang dynasty (618-907)

 

When asked, the boy under the pine

Says simply, My master's gone to gather herbs

Somewhere high amidst these mountains,

So deep in the clouds I can't tell you where.

 

 

 

 

A Night Mooring, by Meng Hao-jan, T'ang dynasty (618-907)

 

As my little boat sways on its mooring of mist,

And daylight wanes, old memories begin…

How wide the world was then, how close the trees to heaven,

And how clear the moon's reflection in the water…then.

 

 

 

 

Reminding Myself, by Jiao Jr, Yuan dynasty (1271-1368)

 

sit in the clean breeze

sleep in the high white clouds

no one can spit in your face

when you're there

hum a tune and laugh

let the rest of them

yoke themselves to millstones

hide in a hole, with peace and joy

        east? it's within me 

        and west? that too

 

clouds may be thick or thin

windows may be dark or bright

take it easy,

you can break the poor old dragon's jaw

pulling teeth for "meaning".

stumble along, as upright as you can

and don't be avaricious.

who tries to hold what flashes

in the worldly storm, will drown.

flow and you'll fill the forms

stop, and you'll leave a hole

        doing?  within me.

        and hiding?  that too.

 

pretend to be stupid, act like a fool

pretend to be deaf, to be dumb

what can a man make that's lasting?

hum a few phrases, pour out more wine

dream white clouds coiling your green mountain pillow

see everywhere embroidered white with peonies.

        flourishing?  within me.

        and fading?  that too

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Banishment, by Ma Jr-yuan, Yuan dynasty (1271-1368)

 

just got a jug

and bought a fish

eyes full of cloudy mountains

unrolling like a scroll

no way to make poems in this moment

fresh breeze, bright moon

I'm just a lazy rambler

Got nothing to sell

        got to get back

 

far away, by greening cane

among blue pines

bamboo's shade, pine's whisper

there's my hut awaiting me

the empire at peace

within my idle body

I'll tend to the paths

I'll plant five willows like Tao Qian

        got to get back

         

by green mountains there

two acres of good ground, a little house

this idle body leapt

from the earthy soil there

the purple crabs are growing fat

and yellow aster's opening

        got to get back.

 

once lustrous hair falls out

fair features change

I'd be ashamed to show

this muddy face in public

but the garden scene endures

the same there

a field, a house

        got to get back

 

dawn, the mountain bird outside the window

calls the old man up from sleep

again he thinks

        got to get back

 

shadowed by old age

he freezes, realizing suddenly

there's no way there from here

no way back at all

 

        better find a shady spot right here

        sit down on this ground

        be home

 

 

 

 

 

At Ease in the Mountains, by Feng Tzu-chen, Yuan dynasty (1271-1368)

 

I moved to the very peak of T'on-ngo mountain

to become a sharp-witted woodsman

here the trees are rarely in flower

just leaves and branches tossing in the wind and rain

 

my friends all sing of "the return"

why depart in the first place, I ask

here, outside my door, loom mountains without end

this place you cannot buy with blood-smeared cash

 

 

 

 

Answering Vice-prefect Zhang, by Wang Wei, T'ang dynasty (618-907)

 

As the years pass, give me but peace,

Freedom from ten thousand matters.

I ask myself and always acknowledge: 

What better than returning to the old woods?

The wind in the pines blows my sash,

The mountain moon glitters on my lute.

You ask me about good and evil fortune?

Listen!  On the lake there's a fisherman singing. 

 

 

 

 

Green Gulley Stream, by Wang Wei, T'ang dynasty (618-907)

 

To reach Yellow Flower river

Follow Green Gully stream.

Making ten thousand turns through mountains,

It barely covers a hundred li.

 

Rapids whish over heaped rocks;

But along thick pines, in dim light,

Water chestnuts sway in a quiet inlet,

And reeds are lush along the banks.

 

In my deepest heart

I know the purity of this limpid water.

Oh let me sit on some broad, flat rock

And cast a fishing line forever!

 

 

 

 

 

A Crafty Rascal, by Yun-k'an Tzu, Yuan dynasty (1271-1368)

 

my home's in the flowering mountain

my joy is purest idleness

in a rush hut by a blue grotto

at the end of a crazy winding path

at noon I take a simple meal

and when I'm full

I take up my staff

and wander to the mountain top 

and gaze at the spectacle

 

Who envies you

oh high and mighty

all done up in purple

and dangling marks of rank

my heart's at peace

I'm satisfied with me

there aren't many in the world today 

to match this

crafty rascal.

done with the human world

and pure

as darkness

nothing to hold me

nothing to restrain

the old guy here

within the grove

before blue cliffs the

moon's companion

mad and singing

drunk and dancing

smashed, filled by the wine

of endless life

 

In straw sandals

and a belt of hemp

in a rush raincoat

dangling an old gourd ladle

half like a fisherman

half like a woodcutter

my head like a raspberry patch

and my face like a dump

I'll bear

your laughter.

 

laugh at me

I understand

the moon and the wind are my friends

I sleep in the clouds

I play a jade flute

and a taste for these

may be difficult

for you to learn

 

laugh if you want

I understand

so I've used up a fortune…

I've thought it over carefully

and it just doesn't bother me.

Watch me straggle down this road

'til I've danced to some

paradise.

 

 

 

 

Translations

 

          Translations of the T'ang dynasty poems are collaborations (over time and space!) of Witter Bynner/Kiang Kang-hu (The Jade Mountain, 1929), Innes Herdan (300 Tang Poems, 1973), and current author Barnett, to whom the present tense seems more charming in these poems.

 

          Translations of the Tao Qian poems are by David Hinton (The Selected Poems of T'ao Ch'ien, 1993), very lightly edited by current author Barnett, who acknowledges his debt to and admiration for Mr. Hinton. 

           

          All the Yuan dynasty poems were translated by Jerome P. Seaton in The Wine of Endless Life: Taoist drinking songs from the Yuan Dynasty.  While I present those by Ma Jr-yuan and Yun-k'an Tzu as distinct poems, they are actually selection portions of much longer poems by those authors.  Other than pulling out portions of the longer poems, though, I subjected them to no important editing.  My acknowledgments and admiration to Dr. Seaton. 

 

          Translation of the Jiang Jie poem is by current author Barnett.

 

Sitting down to read a book on your Kindle—or, increasingly rare, on your lap—savvy readers understand there's a wealth of drama behind that book, years of heartache and  challenge and triumph involving editors, agents, publishers, and the usual relationship/family turmoil. 

 

What many of us don't realize, though, is that even further back in time, there's very often what I modestly call a "Genesis Moment" that consciously or unconsciously reveals the very existence of the book to the author, a serendipitous, unanticipated, unpredictable occurrence that sIts behind and permits the existence of the book. 

 

I'll give you two examples.  First, the Genesis Moment behind my favorite book series, the 24-volume Science and Civilization in China, by Joseph Needham.  Needham was an up-and-coming biochemical embryologist, who tumbled into a love affair with a Chinese graduate student—and his life was never the same. 

 

Second, I'll recount my own Genesis Moment, as a young history major at Yale, struggling to fill a hole in my schedule for a MWF class which wouldn't require a term paper.  I did; and my life took an abrupt turn, bringing into existence my three books concerned with aspects of China, of all things. 

 

Needham's future was rosy at Cambridge University in 1937, and promising to get even better.  The recent publication of his two-volume Biochemical Embryogeny had made him one of the youngest members of the Royal Society, and his "open marriage" with his fellow-embryologist wife Dorothy (not unusual in that time in British universities) was percolating along. 

 

Enter Lu Gwei-djen, a young Chinese biochemist who had mastered all that the universities in Nanjing, China offered.  Cambridge gladly admitted her, under the mentorship of Dorothy Needham.  Gwei-djen managed to find a ship that dodged Japanese bombers over Nanking, and she escaped the Japanese troops that entered her home city just months later, soon running amok in what has been called "The rape of Nanjing." 

 

Back in Cambridge, Joseph and Dorothy and Gwei-djen were familiar fixtures at campus pubs and movies.  When Dorothy visited relatives, Joseph and Gwei-djen consummated their attraction in his room in Caius College.  As usual, Joseph afterwards produced two Player-brand cigarettes as they relaxed in bed, and idly asked Gwei-djen how cigarettes were named in her language.  She said "fragrant smoke," and traced the two characters on his palm.  He grabbed his diary, and meticulously wrote the characters there.  As Needham biography Simon Winchester relates, "when he did so, a distant door suddenly started to open for him, onto an utterly unfamiliar world." "It was very sudden," Gwei-djen later remembered.  "He said to me: I must learn this language—or bust!"  He did, with astonishing speed and sureness.  Within the year he was well on his way to fluency both written and spoken.   He championed assistance to the Chinese people suffering under Japanese aggression in marches, demonstrations, and letters, with his customary energy and zeal. 

 

Soon the British government sent him to interior China to provide what assistance the beleagured Chinese universities needed in their relocated quarters, pushed into interior China by the relentness Japanese.  Soon books, funnels, microscopes, journals, centrifuges and other necessities were flooding over the Hump airway from India to the Chinese colleges in the interior.  And back in the other direction went a flood of old books and manuscripts relating to the ancient history of science in China.

     

You see, Gwei-djen's father, a noted pharmacologist in China, resented the common judgment at that time that China was a "booby nation," as Ralph Waldo Emerson had earlier labelled it.  Her father was convinced that China had a rich history in science, unknown to the West.  Gwei-djen challenged Needham to investigate this.  Back in Cambridge after the war, Needham did—and how.  He abandoned biochemical embrygeny and  created The East Asian History of Science Library, fund-raised, and soon was a full-time historian of ancient China's scientific achievements—usually, he discovered, made centuries and sometimes millennia before the West. 

 

He worked with furious concentration, himself typing the thousands of sheets of paper two-fingered (including a two-page letter to a young, unknown California professor, who had sent the famous man a letter inquiring about the role of Chinese secret societies in the Kuomintang-Communist civil war.  This letter has been proudly displayed on my office wall for nearly half a century now).  The volumes poured forth, aided by colleagues after his death in 1995 at age 94, reaching the 24 thick volumes today, acclaimed by historians and scientists alike, a monumental achievement resulting from a love affair. 

 

My own Genesis Moment did not arrive smoking cigarettes after the consumation of a love affair.  But mine was nearly as interesting, and certainly added a completely unexpected dimension to enrich my life.

 

I faced a problem late in my sophomore year at Yale.  I had filled up my schedule for next year, but desperately needed a final course that fit into my last available time slot:  MWF at 11 am.  I was a history major at the time, and randomly searched such courses in the catalogue.  Aha; here was one.  And hey; not only the right time, but no term paper required, and the final exam was not cumulative.  Eureka!  I glanced over at the title of the course:  Chinese History, Ancient and Modern. 

 

What the devil?!  Chinese history?  I didn't know or care anything about Chinese history.  But there it was:  MWF, 11 am.  And no term paper.  I'm in. 

 

As I began the course, I realized that not knowing anything about Chinese history made it—well, more interesting.  It was all completely new, and in fact, quite fascinating.  My two professors had been prisoners of the Japanese in Shanghai during WWII, and prominent Sinologists now, being lured away from Stanford to Yale just a decade earlier.  I promptly signed up to study the Chinese language (written as well as spoken), and soon was as taken by the language as Needham had been (though not at his rapid pace).  I particularly liked the sheer kinetic pleasure of writing the Chinese characters (and still do, today).

 

Long story short:  after a year in the U.S. Army in Vietnam at the Surgeon General's office in 1969-1970, I took my PhD at Duke in Biology (evolutionary ecology) and taught biology for 28 years at California's Chico State University (all that is another story altogether).  But I remained fascinated with China throughout all this, traveled there numerous summer breaks, kept up my Chinese language by virtue of those nearly dozen trips, and wrote three books on China topics.  Jade and Fire (historical fiction) was published by Random House in 1987; Relax, You're Already Home (on Taoism) by Penguin/Putnam in 2004;  and The China Ultimatum (future historical fiction, cover shown above) by iUniverse in 2012.

 

 In addition, on my trips I gave lectures (on evolutionary ecology) in Beijing to the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology; and in Hong Kong to Hong Kong University and to The Chinese University of Hong Kong.  I also wrote a short description of a 1984 trip deep into Sichuan with two adventuresome friends:  The Three Stooges in China: Pursuing the Sacred Mountain in 1984.  And spent an amazing evening and several days with Ye Duzhuang, who translated Charles Darwin's works into Chinese throughout an adventure-filled, tragic life in revolutionary China.  (Chapter 23 in my 2021 Forgotten World is devoted to Ye's life and my time with him in China.)

 

So: two Genesis Moments that unexpectedly changed the lives of two fellows in decisive ways, permitting and inspiring the birth of some (Barnett) or many (Needham) books that have entertained and enlarged the lives of readers.  Genesis Moments that sit hidden and forgotten behind the book.