Books by John Gittings
The World and China, 1922-1972
This is the Introduction to my book The World and China, first published in the 1970s and recentl... more This is the Introduction to my book The World and China, first published in the 1970s and recently reissued. At a time when China's foreign policy and place in the world has assumed a new prominence, and is subject to varied interpretation and concern, it may be of some interest to look back at its starting point and early development until the last years of Mao Zedong. Much more information including original materials has come to light, and many more informative analyses have been published in this area, since I wrote in the early 1970s. I still believe that my approach to the subject then was not too far from the mark, and that it may continue to have some relevance today.
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Real China : From Cannibalism to Karaoke, 1996
In the early 1990s I made a series of ten visits to five provinces or regions of Middle China. Fr... more In the early 1990s I made a series of ten visits to five provinces or regions of Middle China. From north to south these are Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Guangxi and Hainan. Together with coastal Guangdong — with whose amazing transformation their own less spectacular 'progress’ can be compared - they formed the Central-South Region, which was established in 1950 after the communist victory.
My attention had been caught by reports of a new railway line cutting through Middle China from north to south, running parallel to but inland from the familiar route from Beijing to Guangzhou. This was known as the Second North-South Trunk Line. And that is the line along which I explored "Real China",. Chinese history was never far away, whether it was a Tang dynasty poet or Mao Zedong or a particularly gruesome episode of cannibalism in the Cultural Revolution. Middle China was modernising, but slowly and unevenly. In some places the new hairdressers and the karaoke bars were the most visible signs of progress. Urban squalor persisted alongside a new generation of "Get Rich First" entrepreneurs. The popular press revelled in crime and sex but could not discuss politics. This was post-Tiananmen China of the 1990s with all its contradictions.
Published by Simon and Schuster, UK.
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The Glorious Art of Peace, 2018
The world has become a more dangerous place. Or rather, we have been compelled by events to appre... more The world has become a more dangerous place. Or rather, we have been compelled by events to appreciate dangers which either lay beneath the surface or which we were reluctant to contemplate before. And the message of this book, that the historical record of peace thought and argument offers a better approach to those dangers than the failed dogmas and strategies which have led too often to war, becomes ever more relevant. I trace this record from ancient China and Greece, through early Christian teachings to the humanist thinkers of the Renaissance, onwards in an increasingly rich dialogue through the Enlightenment into the 19th and early 20th centuries when peace became a political campaigning issue from which the modern peace movement can be said to have emerged. We can and should continue to learn from it.
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Peace & World Affairs by John Gittings
SOAS China Institute Blog, 2024
During the Covid restrictions in 2020-21 I began to reflect on the warning signals that the globa... more During the Covid restrictions in 2020-21 I began to reflect on the warning signals that the global community had missed in failing to anticipate the possibility of a world-wide pandemic, and on similar failures with regard to the nuclear and climate-change threats. I am now expanding this work to focus on China’s understanding in these three areas, and on the extent to which Chinese policy is or might be influenced by the calculation of future existential risk. This commentary is a preliminary research note.
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Asia-Pacific Journal , 2021
The world faces a perfect storm of existential risk, with a deadly new pandemic, an escalating cl... more The world faces a perfect storm of existential risk, with a deadly new pandemic, an escalating climate crisis, and the constant threat posed by nuclear weapons. The essential facts and dangers for all of these are long- known, but they have been downplayed or neglected until presenting an immediate threat – by which time it may be too late. We need to have a clear understanding of these risks, but also need to understand the deeper reasons why they have not been properly addressed. To a large extent these lie in the dogmas of military and political elites and in an optimistic preference for short-term results. Civil society and the world community of nations should come together to work for real change, as has already been achieved with the 2020 Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. They should seek to safeguard the welfare of future generations, giving priority to that interest. The alternative is the growing risk of multiple disasters that could prove terminal.
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The Palgrave Handbook of Disciplinary and Regional Approaches to Peace, 2016
A war historian studies the history of war: no one will quibble with that definition. To say that... more A war historian studies the history of war: no one will quibble with that definition. To say that a peace historian studies the history of peace raises more difficult questions. To what extent should peace historians confine themselves to the study of peace advocacy and argument in history, and how far should they engage directly with the dominant (and peace-averse) historical narrative of war? The first task is vast in itself, given the lack of coverage and low visibility of peace advocacy and peace thinking in most orthodox histories. The second task requires the peace historian to go further, and often to challenge accepted truths in the established fields of war history and international relations. The peace historian, in modern times, has to become a war historian – or at least a Cold War historian.
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In this extract from my book , The Glorious Art of Peace (2012), I explore the way that peace and... more In this extract from my book , The Glorious Art of Peace (2012), I explore the way that peace and war were discussed in the main schools of political thought from Kongzi (Confucius) onwards, in a lively debate from which we can still learn today. This debate among China’s early thinkers casts interesting light on the Chinese government’s current claim to pursue a peaceful and harmonious foreign policy based on Confucian principles. It may also help us in setting out some basic principles on how to move from war to peace – particularly in focusing on human justice and welfare -- a task which remains as important today as it was in pre-imperial China. Do the debates over war and peace among China’s early thinkers cast light on contemporary issues, in China and globally, particularly on the preconditions for moving from war to peace?
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War still has a much higher visibility than peace, in spite of the flourishing of peace studies o... more War still has a much higher visibility than peace, in spite of the flourishing of peace studies over the last three to four decades, and many people are unaware that there is a science of peace which is every bit as complex and rich as the science of war. A survey of the shelves any large bookshop or library will illustrate the point: It is much easier to find Sunzi on the Art of War than the thoughts on peace of his Chinese contemporary Mengzi. Machiavelli’s militaristic counsel to The Prince is much more accessible than the pacific advice to another Prince of his Renaissance contemporary Erasmus. Clausewitz’s thoughts On War are more likely to be on the shelves than the reflections On Perpetual Peace by his fellow thinker of the Enlightenment Immanuel Kant. And for a round-up of thinking on peace and war, while the Oxford reader on War (Freedman, ed., 1994) is generally available, the Oxford reader on Approaches to Peace (Barash, ed., 2000), is much less so. Yet, over the last two millennia, there has been a powerful and multi-stranded narrative of peace, expressed in different forms and in different environments, challenging the more familiar dialogue of war. This trajectory of pacific thought is not just of scholarly interest but can still enrich our contemporary debate on how to fashion a more peaceful world. Here I shall trace it (briefly and selectively) from ancient China and Greece, through early Christian thought to the humanist thinkers of the Renaissance, onwards in an increasingly rich dialogue through the Enlightenment into the 19th century when peace became a campaigning issue and the modern peace movement can be said to have emerged. I shall then consider what lessons we can draw from this still under-explored wealth of peace thinking which may continue to be relevant today.
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The Spokesman, 2015
The question “why war” was one which pre-occupied the humanists of the Renaissance, the philosoph... more The question “why war” was one which pre-occupied the humanists of the Renaissance, the philosophers of the Enlightenment, and poets, novelists and peace thinkers of the modern age from the early 19th century onwards. And it is a question which lies at the heart of the approach of any great writer or thinker to the intellectual and moral challenge of peace and war. Here in this paper, written in 2015 as the First World War's centenary was being debated, I consider Shakespeare's and Tolstoy's approach to peace and war
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The Political Quarterly
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Political Quarterly, 2018
It is still worth asking whether the First World War might have ended earlier if it could not be ... more It is still worth asking whether the First World War might have ended earlier if it could not be stopped at the start. And the commitment to internationalism of peace thinkers in the early 20th century should not be overlooked.
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International Relations, 2007
The British government decision on `Trident renewal' forms part of a much wider rebuff to the... more The British government decision on `Trident renewal' forms part of a much wider rebuff to the non-proliferation and peace agenda. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty risks being discredited at its next review in 2010; new nuclear powers are setting the pace for others; another `war' is being threatened which will last `for generations'. There has been no post-Cold War peace dividend, and the chance to make up for lost time has been missed. War, not peace, is once again seen as the universal default mode. It is now clear that traditional arguments in favour of peace and nuclear disarmament are never going to succeed. The view that one `cannot predict the unpredictable', used to justify the Trident decision, will always result in decisions being reached on a worst-case scenario. New arguments need to be developed with a broader appeal based not only on strategic calculation but on a compelling alternative world view. Looking both forward and back into history we have ...
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Life and Travels by John Gittings
My brother Rob and I spent a year living in Sorrento with his Italian godmother soon after the wa... more My brother Rob and I spent a year living in Sorrento with his Italian godmother soon after the war. The atmosphere in and around Naples was somewhat improved from Norman Lewis's vivid description in his Naples '44, but food was still in short supply and poverty was intense. When we arrived, Rob was ten and I was seven years old, and it was a formative experience for us both. Our mother Kay was teaching in Palermo but after a short stay there it had been thought too unhealthy for us. Part of the account below was written a few years later while at school in England, when my memory was fresh, and the rest of it after a return visit in 2014].
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Memories of my early involvement with CND, while learning Chinese in the Royal Airforce.
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This is an unpublished memo, written for a colleague, on my time writing for the Guardian, freela... more This is an unpublished memo, written for a colleague, on my time writing for the Guardian, freelance from 1970 and on the staff from 1983 to 2003. My focus is on the plus and minus aspects of the paper's approach, as the only leftleaning/liberal "serious" British newspaper, and how that affected my work. (For criticism from the left, see Capitalism's Conscience: 200 Years of the Guardian, ed. Des Freedman, Pluto Press). I would always defend the Guardian, then and now, for providing a platform for challenging political myths and orthodoxies, and for its work exposing injustice and corruption, while recognising that these have and had limitations].
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This is an account of my four visits to North Korea, which were conducted in the highly controlle... more This is an account of my four visits to North Korea, which were conducted in the highly controlled way that one would expect, and that barely changed over all those years, yet offering just the occasional flash of insight into more ordinary life. All these visits were written up for The Guardian. A shorter version of this account has been published in the Mekong Review, 8:33, November 2023.
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Some memories of visiting Cambodia, from before the Khmer Rouge period till afterwards. The first... more Some memories of visiting Cambodia, from before the Khmer Rouge period till afterwards. The first visit was when I was working for the Far Eastern Economic Review, the later visits were made for The Guardian.
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China by John Gittings
Index on Censorship, 1999
Twenty-five years ago, on the tenth anniversary of Tiananmen, it was still possible to see some m... more Twenty-five years ago, on the tenth anniversary of Tiananmen, it was still possible to see some mixed but moderately hopeful signs of political change in China. Reporting from Hong Kong at the time for The Guardian, I sketched the scene for Index on Censorship. We may ask today what has happened to those tentative hopes that continued, for some time, into the new century.
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The Guardian, 2023
Isabel Crook, the pioneer anthropologist in China who has died aged 107, was the last survivor of... more Isabel Crook, the pioneer anthropologist in China who has died aged 107, was the last survivor of that generation of sympathetic Westerners who joined Mao Zedong's rural revolution and stayed on after 1949 to build a "new China"with mixed fortunes. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) her husband David Crook was accused of spying and imprisoned for five years while Isabel was locked up for three years on their college campus. The couple retained their belief in the post-Mao leadership of the Communist Party until, horrified by the Beijing Massacre (1989), they spoke out against it.
The Guardian 23 August 2023
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Books by John Gittings
My attention had been caught by reports of a new railway line cutting through Middle China from north to south, running parallel to but inland from the familiar route from Beijing to Guangzhou. This was known as the Second North-South Trunk Line. And that is the line along which I explored "Real China",. Chinese history was never far away, whether it was a Tang dynasty poet or Mao Zedong or a particularly gruesome episode of cannibalism in the Cultural Revolution. Middle China was modernising, but slowly and unevenly. In some places the new hairdressers and the karaoke bars were the most visible signs of progress. Urban squalor persisted alongside a new generation of "Get Rich First" entrepreneurs. The popular press revelled in crime and sex but could not discuss politics. This was post-Tiananmen China of the 1990s with all its contradictions.
Published by Simon and Schuster, UK.
Peace & World Affairs by John Gittings
Life and Travels by John Gittings
China by John Gittings
The Guardian 23 August 2023
My attention had been caught by reports of a new railway line cutting through Middle China from north to south, running parallel to but inland from the familiar route from Beijing to Guangzhou. This was known as the Second North-South Trunk Line. And that is the line along which I explored "Real China",. Chinese history was never far away, whether it was a Tang dynasty poet or Mao Zedong or a particularly gruesome episode of cannibalism in the Cultural Revolution. Middle China was modernising, but slowly and unevenly. In some places the new hairdressers and the karaoke bars were the most visible signs of progress. Urban squalor persisted alongside a new generation of "Get Rich First" entrepreneurs. The popular press revelled in crime and sex but could not discuss politics. This was post-Tiananmen China of the 1990s with all its contradictions.
Published by Simon and Schuster, UK.
The Guardian 23 August 2023
The Guardian, 1 December 2022
Helen Jarvis and John Gittings prepared and edited the Report, assisted by Shadi Sadr, Mireille Fanon-Mendes France and Zak Yacoob. Judge Yacoob provided a legal overview of the text.
NOTE: the Academia.edu format requires Jarvis and Gittings to be listed as co-authors of the Report. However, as indicated above, they are its co-editors.
This is part of a project underway for an anthology of grief and consolation in literature, music and art.
Charles Wolfe (1791-1823) was a young Irish scholar at Trinity College, Dublin who was prevented from marrying his beloved, became a curate in a remote rural area and died young. The romantic poem which he wrote about the affair was one of two that would eventually be included in The Oxford Book of English Verse (the other had been praised by Byron).