“The idea that modernisation makes for enhanced national power and rapid progress…” — Pankaj Mishra

If your writing collides with the conventional wisdom, there's going to be some kind of friction.

So much of western self-perception and intellectual worldview has been shaped by the moral rhetoric of the Cold War, the discourse in which communism featured as a clear enemy, determined to rule the world.

Since the end of the Cold War, metropolitan elites everywhere have identified progress and modernity with the cornucopia of global capitalism, the consolidation of liberal democratic regimes and the secular ethic of consumerism.

The Korean War, which China entered on the side of North Korea, fixed Mao's image in the United States as another unappeasable Communist.