走进新时代 — In A New Epoch

One of my most potent memories from my teenage years is of a TED Talk my humanities teacher shared at the beginning of grade 7. I can no longer recall the title of the video or the name of its speaker, but the theme of the speech stuck with me well into the present day — the idea that all of the new ideas and creations in this world are simply revisions of pre-existing predecessors. Put in a more cynical manner, as Picasso once said, good artists copy, great artists steal.

As I grew older, it began to occur to me that perhaps this pattern isn’t the result of conscious decisions but rather a reflection of our behavioural tendencies. Those tendencies, much like those that cause economic cycles and war, which we have been well aware of through the ages yet haven’t been able to overcome despite the advancements we’ve been able to achieve elsewhere, tangible and intangible. Of course, every nation experiences these patterns in cycles unique to themselves, although synchronization between countries has become more prominent considering the highly integrated economic, political, and increasingly, social environment global environment in which we currently reside.

Perhaps the most well-documented and traceable example of this tendency is the United States throughout the 20th and 21st centuries… INCOMPLETE (Boom+bust, war, japan, soviet union, china)

In China, this pattern becomes more interesting. When the Communist Party of China (CPC) established the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, it brought along with it a rejection of feudal Chinese values of