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00:10Hello, Telesur English presents a new episode of China Now, a Wave Media's production that
00:14showcases the culture, technology and politics of the Asian giant. In this first segment,
00:20China Currents takes a deep dive into the week's top stories from the major upgrade of the Shenzhou
00:25spacecraft to China's first 128-channel fully implanted brain-computer interface trial
00:32that just enrolled 32 patients with spinal cord injuries. Let's see.
00:42Hello and welcome to this week's China Currents. Here's what we're covering today. A Shenzhou
00:49spacecraft just got a major upgrade and the first-ever 3.5-hour radial docking. China's
00:56first 128-channel fully implanted brain-computer interface trial just enrolled 32 patients with
01:04spinal cord injuries. And something unexpected is happening in global chipmaking. Phones and PCs
01:10are coming back to China as AI takes over the world's fab capacity. Finally, a football revolution in
01:18Ru Ru Guizhou, the Village Super League, is changing how the world sees Chinese grassroots culture.
01:24Let's start an orbit with Shenzhou. On the night of May 24th, a Long March 2F Y-23 rocket lifted
01:32off
01:32from Jiuquan, sending into Shenzhou-23 spacecraft into orbit. Just three and a half hours later,
01:39it completed a successful radial docking with China Space Station. That timing matters. This was China's
01:47first attempt at radial docking under the ultra-fast 3.5-hour rendezvous mode, widely considered the
01:54hardest docking maneuver in orbit. It worked on the first try. But the biggest story isn't just speed,
02:01it's capacity. Shenzhou-23 comes from triple-layer protected windows, upgraded after micro-crack issues
02:09in a previous mission. More importantly, its return payload capacity has doubled, now over 100 kilograms,
02:17and cargo volume has tripled. That changes how missions are planned. Astronauts no longer have
02:24to choose which experiments come back and which stay behind. More science, more equipment, even personal
02:30items, everything can return. And the faster docking means astronauts spend less time waiting in a cramped
02:37capsule and more time inside the station doing real work. Now, let's move from space to a different
02:46kind of frontier, the human brain. On May 18th, Beijing Tiantan Hospital launched China's first
02:54multi-center clinical trial of a 128-channel fully implanted brain-computer interface. The trial will
03:02enroll 32 patients, all of whom have spinal cord injuries that left them paralyzed in all four
03:09limbs. Now, forget the sci-fi horror image of wires sticking out of someone's skull. This system is
03:16completely hidden, using flexible electrodes tucked under the dura and a wireless in-body charging battery
03:23embedded beneath the chest skin. Why go fully implanted? There are three BCI parts, non-invasive,
03:31semi-invasive, and fully invasive. The last one is the hardest, but it's the only way to capture high
03:38resolution neural signals. Semi-invasive is like listening to a meeting from outside the conference
03:44room. Fully invasive puts the microphone right on the table. The trial's immediate goal is hand function,
03:51finger flexion, precise grasping. According to lead neurosurgeon Wang Jia, roughly 80% of daily tasks
03:59depend on the hands. Restore that, and you don't just improve quality of life, you restore agency.
04:08This trial goes beyond earlier efforts like the semi-invasive Beinao One system. It's deeper,
04:15larger, and multi-center. If it works, it won't just help spinal injury patients, but potentially
04:22millions of stroke survivors. Now, from medicine to chips. This week, SMIC, China's largest chip foundry,
04:32had one of its biggest moments in years. On May 19th, SMIC posted record results in the first quarter of
04:402026. Revenue hit $2.5 billion, up double digits year on year. Profits also grew, and more importantly,
04:50accelerated from the previous quarter. Then came the market reaction. On May 25th, SMIC's stock jumped
04:59nearly 19% in a single day, hitting an all-time high and pushing its market value past 1.2
05:07trillion yuan.
05:09So what lit the fuse? Three things landed at once. First, SMIC finally secured full control of its
05:17flagship 12-inch fab in northern China, a factory that's already past its heavy depreciation phase.
05:26A lot more of what it earns now turns into actual profit. Second, Huawei introduced what it calls
05:35the Tau Law, a new way of boosting chip performance through system-level design,
05:40not just smaller transistors. That suddenly gives mature node fabs like SMIC a much bigger role to play.
05:49And third, the AI boom is pulling capacity away from everything else. As TSMC and Samsung chase high-margin
05:58AI chips, more and more everyday chips for phones, cars and appliances are coming back to Chinese fabs.
06:07SMIC's own forecast tells the story. It expects revenue to grow another 14-16% next quarter, roughly
06:15twice what the market had been expecting. There's also a technology signal worth watching. Using older
06:22DUV tools combined with new process techniques, SMIC is now producing chips that are being compared
06:29cautiously to much more advanced nodes. The gap, at least, is shrinking.
06:36None of this means the risks are gone. Global rivals are expanding too. Costs are rising and US export
06:42controls still loom. But this week wasn't about a single stock move. It was about something bigger.
06:49AI reshaping demand, global chip making quietly rebalancing, and China's foundries finding themselves
06:56in the right place at the right time. And finally, let's go to a football pitch in rural Guizhou.
07:05CHUNCHAO, the Village Super League, began just three years ago as a local amateur tournament,
07:11where teams played for prizes like pork and rice. This season, it feels like something else entirely.
07:18The 2026 Guizhou Championship is now underway. What started with just 20 teams has grown into a
07:25league of 137 village teams and nearly 2,700 amateur players. All locals. Farmers, teachers,
07:35shop owners, students. No professionals allowed. And the match day atmosphere feels nothing like a
07:42conventional league. Between games, the pitch fills with sound. Choral folk songs echo across the stands,
07:49bronze drums, pound out rhythms, and traditional dances unfold right on the sidelines. Some matches
07:55now draw crowds in the tens of thousands. At one home game in late May, more than 60,000 fans
08:02packed
08:02into Rongjiang. South Korean coach Lee Jang-soo summed it up simply. The atmosphere is unbelievable. I can't
08:11wait to tell my family about this. And this isn't just changing weekends, it's changing livelihoods.
08:17Over the May Day holiday alone, Rongjiang County welcomed nearly half a million visitors,
08:24generating close to 500 million yuan in tourism revenue. More than 2,000 migrant workers have
08:31since returned home to start businesses, creating over 6,000 local jobs. What began in a single county
08:39has now spread across the entire province. Matches are being played in all nine prefectures of Guizhou,
08:46and crucially, it didn't spread because anyone planned it to. Even outside China, the attention
08:53has been unexpected. Teams from dozens of countries have traveled to Rongjiang for friendly matches,
08:59drawn less by the spectacle than by the atmosphere. The ambition now? A Chunchao World Cup in 2028.
09:08It's easy to see this as just another sports craze, but it's really a window into contemporary rural
09:14China. One powered not by policy slogans, but by participation. That's all for this week's China
09:22Currents. Thank you so much for watching, and we'll see you next time.
09:34We have a short break now, but don't go away because we'll be right back.
09:46Welcome back to China Now. This second segment, Thinker's Forums, welcomes Wen Chuang, Assistant Professor
09:52of History in New York University of Shanghai, who is going to share the interesting story of a Muslim
09:59Egyptian who was born in the early 1860s and became a British Christian doctor in China during Victorian
10:06England. Let's have a look.
10:15Hello, everyone. My name is Yun Peng, and welcome to this episode of Thinker's Forum.
10:19Chances are, if you are watching this show, you are living in a very modern world. You probably
10:26have a good grasp of English, and if I dare to venture a guess, you probably also believe that
10:32societies can develop, that education is fundamentally good, that science has a possibility of improved
10:38life. And beyond that, you probably also believe that time is more or less linear, that there is at
10:44least theoretically progress in this world. And no matter what you think about democracy, about
10:50freedom, no matter how skeptical you are about what those words actually mean, you probably believe
10:55that to some extent, these are fundamentally good ideas. But I want to ask you, where do you think
11:02those ideas come from? I'm from China. I was born and raised in China. I know that my ancestors,
11:09dating all the way back from Confucius 2200, 2500 years ago, he did not invent these ideas. To me,
11:16those ideas are fundamentally modern and fundamentally Western. And our, and by our, I mean the Chinese
11:24experience, our encountering with the West is not one that's based on philosophical debates
11:29and publishing houses. It's based fundamentally on unequal treaties, on military power, on gunboat
11:36diplomacy. And that is true for a variety of global South powers, global South nations. Our experiences
11:42with the West is one that is shaped not only by the exchange of ideas, but also the exchange of
11:48gunpowder,
11:49by power, hard ball power. And today our guest is Professor Wen Chuang of NYU Shanghai. And in a recent
11:58paper, she tells a story that might help us see this from another angle. Her article shows the
12:05extraordinary life of Ahmed Fahmi. And at first, this will sound just like another eccentric biography.
12:13But as the story and those, we're going to, we're going to talk about why this is not just a
12:18biography,
12:18but something that reviews what's going on with the global South encountering with Western modernity.
12:26Professor Wen, welcome to the show. Thank you for inviting me. It's my honor to be here.
12:31So let's jump straight in. For audience who doesn't know Ahmed, please give us an outline of what his
12:38story looks like. And more importantly, tell us what moves you in this story beyond just the particular
12:46accentuarized details of his life. Thank you for inviting me. I'm really glad that someone noticed
12:56my article. I really didn't expect the article can reach a popular audience. Ahmed Fahmi is a very
13:03ordinary Egyptian. Probably without this article, nobody would even notice his existence. He was born,
13:11raised in 1860s in the Muslim family in Egypt. However, in his teen years, when he was teaching
13:20Arabic to the American Presbyterian missionaries, he converted into Christianity. And as he converted
13:29into Christianity, and because his family was a prominent Muslim family, his family disowned him,
13:35regarded him as a shame to the family's reputation. Luckily, at this juncture of his life,
13:43a British diplomat rescued him and sent him to the University of Edinburgh to study medical
13:51biomedicine for eight years.
13:54So at this time, Egypt is still a colony of Britain.
13:57Yes. Egypt became part of the British Empire Siamie colony in 1882. And in University of Edinburgh,
14:09he studied for biomedicine for eight years. After that, he wanted to go back to Egypt to practice
14:17medicine. However, his family still didn't allow him to go back. As a result,
14:23he was hired by the London Missionary Society to go to preach for Christianity as well as
14:31biomedicine in Fujian province in Zhangzhou for 32 years. Right.
14:38So this is really an extraordinary story of a person from the Global South and spent the majority of life
14:48in another part of the Global South in the high age of global imperialism.
14:54Right. And just for our listeners who are not familiar with Chinese geography,
14:58Zhangzhou in Fujian province, even today, is not one of the most glamorous places in China.
15:04Right. This is a very local locality. Yes. And especially so in Victorian England.
15:11Exactly. Exactly. But when he first arrived, he still encountered a lot of difficulties,
15:18even if he was trying, you know, as a person from the subordinate class, he wanted to help
15:25another class of supporting people. He encountered difficulty because he come with Christian message
15:34as well as biomedicine. While local Zhangzhou villagers still believed in traditional Chinese medicine,
15:42as well as traditional Chinese beliefs such as Taoism or Confucianism. The first 10 or 15 years,
15:50he encountered a lot of resistance, actually. It was not until 1902 when there was a cholera outbreak
15:59in local Zhangzhou village, when traditional Chinese medicine could not save people quick enough. And he used
16:08the Western biomedicine to save a lot of local villagers and lost his own wife, that he really earned the
16:17respect of local people. And from then on, his Western medicine clinics started to have more patients and
16:25local people really started to show respect to his efforts. So do you think when the Chinese,
16:32the local Chinese people view this doctor who, like who is obviously ethnically Egyptian, but to the
16:39Zhangzhouese locals, it would be very difficult to tell one Egyptian from a stereotypical Britain, right?
16:45So do you think they see him as Egyptian or do you think they see them as English? Or do
16:49you think
16:49there's a difference between the two for that era, for the people in Zhangzhou?
16:53Very good question. Actually, I found from the Zhangzhou local gazeteers that the local people treated him
17:01as British. They actually didn't know he was originally Egyptian. And most likely because of Ahmed
17:09Fahmi's own family history, he didn't show too much about his Egyptian aspect of his identity as well.
17:18Local gazeteers all wrote him as Da Ying Yi Sheng, meaning doctors from Great Britain.
17:26Okay, so I want to talk about like his own identity later. But first, like, tell us how did the
17:32British
17:33state see him? Did he ever acquire British citizenship? And what kind of institutional
17:38legitimacy did the British state confer upon him?
17:41The British state still treated him as a subject, as a colonized people, because he was originally from
17:52Egypt. And even if he stayed in Greek Britain for eight years, and he married a Scottish wife, he never
18:01really acquired British citizenship. When he was living in China during the Boxers Rebellion in 1900, he was
18:12seeking refuge from the British consulate in Fujian province, but they didn't grant him any protection.
18:22Because they treat him as a British subject, not the citizen. Even for his children, who was born in
18:31Zhangzhou to he and his wife, which the first wife was a British citizen, could not get a birth certificate
18:39for a long time, because they were born in China. And he was, again, a missionary worker for London
18:49to the missionary society. And even for missionary societies, they were not always in agreement with the
18:57British Empire, metropole's decision in London. So he really had difficulties moving between different
19:05parts of the world, and his identity was always in limbo. Eventually, and ironically, after his first wife
19:14died, he married a second wife, who is an American missionary, who was based in Xiamen. And in the end,
19:23he acquired the American citizenship. So that's his life story.
19:28Okay, all roads lead back to America, I guess. So this is such a dramatic story. This guy born in
19:35Alexandria, right, in Egypt, born an Egyptian Muslim, then converted to Christianity. He went to
19:43Azhar University.
19:45Right, that's the premium kind of Muslim center of education.
19:49Exactly. So he converted. It's almost like Harvard of the Islamic world at that time.
19:54Gotcha, gotcha. No wonder I don't know it, I barely know Harvard. So this guy converted
19:59then to Christianity, then not only converted, but also moved to Edinburgh to pursue a study in medicine,
20:06became a preacher, went to China, and throughout all this life, only at the very end was he accepted by
20:16a sort of like Western legitimacy on his citizenship in the form of American citizenship, not even
20:21a British one. I just want to know, what do you think his contemporary British compatriots would
20:29view him through the lens of? Do they mostly see him as a Christian conversion story? Did they mostly
20:37see him through an empire civilizing the barbarian people lens, or something else, or a mixture of all
20:44these? For his co-workers in the London Missionary Society, they actually respected him because he
20:52really did very well in Zhangzhou. He not only converted some of his disciples, but also successfully
21:02spread Western medicine to local people that traditionally only believe in traditional Chinese
21:08medicine. So for his co-workers in the London Missionary Society, they respected him and even
21:15helped him to get his British citizenship. I find from the British archive that there were a letter of
21:22support for him to get British citizenship. But for British who worked for the empire's bureaucracy,
21:31they just treated him as a subject, a forever subject, forever Egyptian subjects. They did not treat him
21:40with the real human angle, but just as a cold object or subject who was moving in between. When they
21:49was
21:49reviewing his immigration application, their reasons for denying his application for the British citizenship was
21:58because he didn't live in Britain long enough. Actually, the first time when he was living in Edinburgh for
22:06studying Western medicine, if he had applied citizenship at that time, probably he will pass it. But yes, as I
22:17guessed, he was busy studying and was adjusting to his new environment in terms of religion, in terms of
22:27language, in terms of subject of study. He probably just didn't have time or didn't wrap his head around to
22:35even think about applying for British citizenship. However, once he arrived in China, when he realized the importance
22:44of the British citizenship, then the British bureaucracy, the bureaucrat says, well, he didn't live in London long
22:54enough for this application. That's why they rejected his application. Even Lord Aberdeen, who was kind of his sponsor,
23:06sent out a letter of support, didn't help either. So back to answer your question, to the bureaucrats who work
23:16for the imperial bureaucracy in London,
23:19they didn't treat him with a human angle, just as a forever subject.
23:25Right. And I think, to some degree, that is a very modern thing, that we can log people as a
23:31data point to
23:32a centralized bureaucracy, and then recognize their legal status, their ethnic, their whole background being
23:39reduced to a piece of paper, and then give them rights according to that piece of paper. That, to us,
23:45sounds not familiar, but understandable. But that, to someone who's in the pre-modern era, must just sound
23:52absolutely alienating. Yes, it was very alienating. How do you think... It's always difficult to get into
23:59the psyche of a historical figure, because we have so little information. And in this case,
24:04correct me if I'm wrong, but you're mostly doing your research through not journals, but more documented
24:11evidence of what other people was saying about Ahmed, right? So if I'm asking you this very unfair
24:17question, to get into the head of Ahmed, what do you think is going through his mind when he's
24:25wrestling the question of whether or not he's British or he remained Egyptian? What do you think
24:31that is a fair question even to ask of this historical person, given the time period that he lived in?
24:36I think, judged from his later life choice after he retired from Zhangzhou, his choice was to settle down
24:48in Great Britain rather than in the United States. Even if by then he had already got American citizenship,
24:56had an American wife, they could have easily settled in New Jersey, the hometown of his wife. But they
25:04actually settled in London, and Ahmed Fahmy, in the end, passed away in London. Judged from that,
25:13I think Ahmed Fahmy really aspired to become a British citizen. And he really believed in Christianity,
25:21and he really believed in the civilizing mission, that what he was doing was really good for
25:29the humanity. But he must have felt countless times of being disappointed, disenchanted, and uprooted from
25:42his own families. So far as I know, he never really returned to Egypt. And he actually is, in this
25:52sense,
25:53very different from many other Muslim converts to Christianity, who also practiced Christian medicine.
26:03But within the Arab world, there were a few other figures like this. But their job, once they finished the
26:13medical training, was not to send to as far away as to China, to the East Asia, but still within
26:20West Asia,
26:21the Middle East region. So in that sense, he must have felt alienated from his own roots. But for him,
26:30I guess his epistemic knowledge-making has already given him a new home, that he felt life is meaningful
26:41for enough. Because in the end, his son also went to University of Edinburgh, and also become a medical doctor,
26:51and actually a renowned one. Later, medical doctors' journals published articles about his first son.
27:00Wow.
27:00So that's my guess about his psyche.
27:04In a sense, this is such a classic modern immigrant story. You hear constantly of just
27:10Egyptian. In America, there's a stereotype of Egyptians going into America, the first generation
27:15being very educated, and the second generation remaining very educated, like generations of
27:19Egyptian doctors. And I'm surprised to hear that Ahmed's story, in a way, corresponds to that very
27:26modern conception of immigration. But in a way, this is such an extraordinary story. We have an
27:32Egyptian Muslim who ended up being a doctor trained in University of Edinburgh. His son ended up being
27:39trained in University of Edinburgh. In a way, this is extraordinary. But when I was reading your article,
27:45I can't help but feel that this is also not, I guess, relatable is the wrong word, but something very
27:52human to the story. That in the age of empire, in the age of cosmopolitanism in the 19th century,
28:01like Victorian sense, that this story must have happened across the globe in countless places.
28:08Because Egypt is not the only place where the British empire colonized. There are places in Asia,
28:15in China, in Southeast Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, where this kind of situation must have occurred
28:21again and again. But I could also be wrong. It could also be that the story of Ahmed is so
28:27extraordinary
28:27that it wasn't really reproduced elsewhere. Do you think this kind of struggle with identity in the
28:35colonial era, exemplified by Ahmed, is typical? Or do you think this is just so generous?
28:42I think it's typical and atypical at the same time.
28:45A very historian's answer.
28:49Typical in the sense that this kind of identity struggle between someone from traditional
28:58Egyptian family and went to Britain, most of the identity struggle would consist of these two. That's
29:09not enough. And that's actually intense and conflicting enough for most people, you know, converting from
29:19Islam into Christianity and then learn Western biomedicine. But atypical would be his distance.
29:27He traveled all the way to China. So far as I know, at that time, most of the subordinates,
29:35the people they are moving in between Middle East and Europe. And there are many, many
29:42histories written about these kind of figures moving in between these two zones. But his atypical
29:51trajectory moved three different cultures, including China. And he helped in the end, on behalf of the
29:59British Empire, to spread Western biomedicine to Chinese people, even if in China, he initially
30:09received a lot of resistance as well. So in that sense, his story is really extraordinary. He was
30:17spreading knowledge and making knowledge. And even when the epilogue of the article mentioned that even when he
30:29go back to China, sorry, go back to London when he retired, other British like born into England,
30:38Caucasian British missionary who want to go to China to do missionary work, before they go,
30:44they will go to Ahmed Fahmy to ask what it's like, you know, could you could you give us any
30:51tips?
30:52So white Anglo-Saxon British missionaries were seeking Chinese knowledge from a Egyptian person.
30:58Exactly. That is fascinating.
31:01Exactly. So even when he goes back to London, he was still spreading knowledge about China.
31:08He was really a knowledge producer and a knowledge seeker of a lifetime in between all these different
31:15cultures. Right. I want to like focus on this atypical part of his life before we go back to the
31:21typical part. So I kept thinking this atypical part, a lot of it is the result of imperial coercion,
31:28right? He did not choose to the extent that any of us can choose to live in the British Empire.
31:34The economic, the military overpowering capacity of the empire must have left some kind of
31:40psychological and definitely like material imprint on Ahmed's life. But on the other hand,
31:46that empire also gave him power. Like the fact that he was a doctor, the fact that he received modern
31:53medicinal education, the fact that he got to travel that very distance that you described and establish
31:59his hospital, which, by the way, still stands in Zhangzhou, which is just blew my mind.
32:04It is.
32:04The hospital is still there. And they honored Ahmed as the one of the founding fathers of that very,
32:09very hospital. It's a socialist hospital now. It's mostly like for free, which is like in a way,
32:14public hospital in a way, very like missionarian. But, but yes, that, that tension between the
32:21coercive power of the empire and the power that it gave the very individual, it coerced into its
32:26service. I want to, I want you to talk more about it, but how should we see the imperial world
32:33order
32:33being generated by this kind of system, given that it on one hand coerces people, but on the other hand,
32:38it also empowers individuals.
32:40Yes, that's the, what I term as the paradox of empire during this period of time. Traditionally,
32:49the historiography is always saying that how empire dominate the subjects, the colonized people,
32:57or the colonized people resist the power in the metropole. However, as you correctly mentioned,
33:06empire's infrastructure, as well as networks also facilitated the mobility of people who have his
33:15own agency, use his own agency to take advantage of the power structure. So during this period of time,
33:23I termed in my forthcoming monograph, empire is the medium for the connectivities and mobilities
33:31of people from the global south. It was not always power object the connections between the Egyptians
33:40or the Chinese, or the Chinese and Egyptians drawing solidarity fight against the empire. But in this time,
33:50paradoxically, how umpires became the medium. And it was the smart, aspiring and hardworking
33:59people from the global south who take advantage of these global networks, such as the missionaries
34:05network, such as the empire's knowledge production networks, that they made connections and also
34:14produce knowledge that are beneficial to other people from the global south.
34:19Hmm. I think the empire is a medium line, such a, such a novel framing of how we think about,
34:24especially 19th century empires such as the British one. But as I'm hearing you saying this,
34:31the other part of my head is also saying that if you raise this topic in a more like
34:37anti-colonial setting, a lot of people would say that this is apologizing for the empire.
34:42Oh, yes.
34:43Because while we are focusing on the atypical part, the distance of travel, the empowerment part of it,
34:49the more typical, the more mundane part of the empire is also the oppression, the British colonial
34:55struggle in Africa, which killed millions, if not more people for the benefit of a very small ruling
35:01class in Britain. And when we are reflecting on the legacy of it, I'm wondering how do you square that
35:07between what the empire did for its benefit at the expense of the ruled people and the empowerment,
35:15the empire as medium part? And especially I'm thinking there's this famous line, I forgot who
35:19said it, but you can't have the good empire without the bad empire. And in a way, we only have
35:24empires
35:25that can act as the kind of medium because we have the empire that also acted as the pure evil,
35:32like
35:33the Belgian empire in Congo, like the British empire when it facilitated the famine in India,
35:40the opium war in China. How do you reconcile that?
35:44Yes. When I proposed this thesis or argument of empire as the medium, I was already imagining the
35:54subordinate studies people or post-colonial studies scholars would say I'm being apologetic for empire.
36:01That's not right in my intention at all. I really meant empire as a medium in a neutral sense because
36:10that's just the empire's infrastructure was there. It was the people from the global south who had the
36:17agency of taking advantage of the existing structure rather than the structure was saying that come,
36:25come, come, come, go join our initiatives. So it was still, I'm emphasizing the agency of people like
36:33Fahmi or others who are actively seeking knowledge and producing new knowledge that they take advantage of
36:43existing structure rather than being co-opted into the colonial mission, et cetera, et cetera.
36:52So I hope I can make myself clear that this is a more neutral term rather than
36:59either for empire or against empire.
37:03Right. So you're saying even though the overall structure of empire is one that's oppressive,
37:06but it doesn't foreclose all possibilities for the people living through that structure.
37:11Exactly.
37:11People still have autonomy, like you said, agency.
37:13Exactly.
37:13Exactly.
37:14Okay.
37:15And it was the agency of these people that they turned around that the structure was supposed to
37:21be oppressing them and take advantage of them and use it to make good out of it.
37:28Okay. So I want to talk about China because of course we are based in Shanghai today and
37:34in a way the modern Shanghai is the combination of the colonial history that is very painful for Chinese
37:40people, but also the story of how China incorporated that colonial history as part of its own and
37:46developed it into what we today would recognize as the modern China. Talk us through how China
37:52encountered the Western modernity and in what way is Ahmed's story not only Egyptian-British story,
38:00but also China's story with the West?
38:03This is a great question.
38:05Most of the historiography about modern China is through its encounter with the West, especially
38:13with Europe and also our growing historiography on China's encounter with Japan.
38:20But even Japan's model of modernity is based on the European one. Very few research has been
38:28doing on whether China was seeking inspirations from other global south,
38:35regions. Other scholars I can think of is Rebecca Kerl, who wrote a book called Staging the World,
38:43and she wrote how a Chinese play was looking at the inspirations of nationalism in South Africa,
38:52in Egypt, in the Philippines, translated into Chinese. I don't know.
38:59Oh, gotcha. You read the English version.
39:01Yeah, I only know the English version, as well as Philippines and Turkey.
39:06So at that time, definitely modern Chinese thinkers were looking at other global south regions. In my own
39:17research, in addition to Ahmed Fahami, I also encountered Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao's writing about modern
39:26Egypt, as well as modern Ottoman Empire.
39:30These are late 19th century Chinese scholars who lived through the period when Qing imperial China
39:35transitioned into a republic and lived through that turmoil period.
39:39Exactly. Yes. They were looking at them because
39:42the Ottoman Empire or Egypt or Persia was in a similar position in the world order as late imperial Qing
39:54China. They were both facing the pressure from European colonization.
40:00And they were thinking, what the Egyptians were doing, what the Persians were doing, what can we learn from them?
40:08And there were commentaries about the construction of the Suez Canal in Egypt.
40:14And for example, the newspapers published by Liang Qichao in Japan was saying whether Chinese should build railways at
40:28the time. And they were looking at Egypt's large scale infrastructure of building the Suez Canal.
40:35And those who were supporting this project were saying Egypt built it and Egypt was incorporated into the
40:45world economy. That's why China should build railways as well as other large scale infrastructures.
40:51But those who were against it was using Egypt as the same example, saying that,
40:57but Egypt accumulated a lot of debt. And as a result, Egypt became part of the British Empire's colonies.
41:04Do we want to repeat the same mistake? So all this to say, the global modernity or the modernity of
41:12China at that period of time
41:14was not just thinking or emulating European development. There were Chinese intellectuals looking at
41:24other non-Western global South societies, Egypt, as well as the Ottoman Empire, et cetera, et cetera.
41:33So there are growing literature on this. And I hope what we've discovered can be more useful for
41:42discovering alternative modernities rather than purely through a European lens.
41:48Right. I want to talk about the, you kind of hinted at it, but the civilizational continuity versus modernity.
41:55Because when I'm looking at Ahmed's story, one thing that jumped to me was to him, the conversion to Christianity
42:01was a break to
42:02Egyptian, not only conservativeness, but also Egyptian civilization. And for China, Chinese people loved it. I'm sure you know this.
42:12I'm sure most of the listeners would know this. But Chinese scholars, Chinese people love to say that we are
42:16a 5,000-year civilization.
42:18But when we read the really old Confucian texts, when we read
42:25the real derogative writings about ethnic minorities, about women, about people who are less educated,
42:31less wear off, we find that kind of argument utterly alien. And a lot of that,
42:37people would say, is credit to Western modernity. So talk to us about how do you think our current
42:46conception, not just in China, but in global South nations, post-colonial nations, when we think of a
42:52progressive individual, our conception partly draws from the anti-colonial period, but also partly draws
42:58from the very imports of those thoughts that are the product of empire. Talk us through how do you think
43:04about this process? It's not a linear process. It's a process that often consists of crises, of fractures,
43:16of kind of make and remake of one's identities. We often think of modernity as a progressive linear
43:26development. But when we look at these historical archives, or when we look at these different
43:33individual lived experience, we realize that maybe modernity or becoming modern is a process that is
43:43full of back and forth, maybe going forward two steps, and then backward one step, and sometimes maybe
43:51backward three steps. When you were talking about going forward, some would say that you've already
43:57assumed there's a target, there's a linear trajectory towards something that is modern, something that is
44:03good. But when I look at, say, Chinese civilization, I don't see that progressiveness documented in ancient
44:10Confucian texts. Would you say that this very idea of we can move towards a certain ideal itself
44:18is an import from the age of empire?
44:22I think maybe in the sense of moving towards the ideal, if this is one's aspiration, you
44:32give agency to the person who wants to move, meaning someone who has the free will to want to move
44:39towards
44:39certain direction. If that is the case, I would say, yes, that's moving forward.
44:47Like Ahmed Fahmi, if he was given the chance to, you know, freely become a Christian in Egypt,
44:54that will be, his life wouldn't be so dramatic and probably encounter so many difficulties.
45:02It was because he didn't have free will at the time in Egypt, then with certain help from,
45:09this is, again, historical contingency that he met certain British diplomats that enabled him to move
45:18out of Egypt. So I guess similarly in China, in other places, as long as we think if one person
45:28can
45:29move freely at their own will, according to certain aspirations, then that's progress.
45:38If that is not the case with obstructions or resistance, then that's when I say move backwards,
45:47etc., etc. That's what I term as being modern, you know, being able to choose your own path.
45:54Got it. So when we're looking at the history of Egypt and China as the history of colonial and
46:02anti-colonial histories, what do you think this Global South perspective of empire challenges the
46:09traditional narrative of what civilization and modernity is constructed?
46:15This really challenged the traditional one of, even in Egyptian history, it's always saying,
46:22as long as Egypt was incorporated into the Western economy, then Egypt is becoming modern.
46:30You use the Western machinery and you produce cotton for the British empire's textile industry,
46:40then you are becoming modern. But that's not the case. Ahmed Fahmi's story is he used his own
46:48agency, his own will to make alternative knowledge for the benefits of people other than his own,
46:56not even for the Egyptians. That's what I think is the most universally could, I believe, contribution to
47:04humanities. In this sense, he's also atypical. And traditional historiography would be European model,
47:13bless, civilize the Egyptian backwardness, and the Egyptian backwardness has to be rescued by British
47:22machineries, gunpowders. But the alternative of this Global South alternative modernity is challenging
47:32that saying that as long as individual, no matter how ordinary they are, as long as they have individual
47:39will and agency and keep trying, despite of the challenges in between the journey, the process,
47:47he, in the end, can make contributions to knowledge production as well as well-beings of other people,
47:56people other than either the Europeans or the Egyptians themselves.
48:03I want to end this conversation with one last question. And that is, how should we think about modernity now?
48:11Because before I, before I read your article, I felt like I have a pretty good sense of what modernity
48:16means.
48:17It can be bifurcated into what the Western civilization thinks of modernity means, and it can then have a reaction
48:23from the Chinese side, from what I think were my ancestors and my, my ancestors' great waterfall in the 19th
48:31century,
48:32how they used to think about it, and now a reaction to how they were forced to think about it.
48:36But then I read your article, and I was a little, I got more confused. I thought, to Ahmed,
48:44modernity is something that is so, so, so personal to his lived experience, and that any kind of abstract
48:51notions of that thing may just be another imperial, imperial project of us forcing a kind of modernity that
49:00he may not had, he may not have had in his mind when he was going through all those extraordinary
49:05things.
49:06So, if I want to ask you, what do you think modernity means? What would you say?
49:13Modernity means, for individuals, doesn't have to be, in the end, have a happy ending, or in the end,
49:20have a good position within the British bureaucracy, for example. It is, again, as I mentioned, a person
49:28who has free will, curiosity, and want to learn about the world, and can, despite the challenges along
49:38the way, and remake their own identities, and seek knowledge, and produce knowledge, and benefit other
49:46peoples, I think that's enough being modern. Well, there you have it, guys. If more people,
49:53if only with more people, agree, subscribe to Professor Wen's idea of modernity, we would have
49:58a much better life, and much better world to look forward to. Thank you very much. Until next time.
50:10And this was another episode of Shine and Hour, a show that opens a window to the present and
50:14future of the Asian giant. Hope you enjoy it, and see you next time.
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