What would a Chinese future look like? We spend a lot of time in Washington debating the best ways to maintain American power against an increasingly aggressive China, so it’s easy to lose sight of why that’s a goal worth fighting for. Is it just because it’s always better to be on the winning side than the losing one? What would be so bad about a more Chinese world?

Animals would fare poorly in it. It may be a minor thing, but it is a difference between Chinese culture and ours that I can’t help being bothered by. It is hard to find concrete information on animal rights in China, but a useful book on the subject is Animal Welfare in China: Culture, Politics, and Crisis (2021).

Author Peter J. Li states right at the beginning: “The term ‘animal welfare’ is not native to the Chinese language.” No kidding. The Cantonese are famous for their omnivorous and sometimes sadistic eating habits, including brains, eyeballs, scorpions, monkeys, and other (sometimes still) living things. As the saying goes (it is sometimes attributed to the late Prince Philip but I believe it is original to China): If it has four legs and is not a chair, if it has two wings and is not an airplane, the Cantonese will eat it.