China and the West: A Pragmatic Confucian’s View 9819918812, 9789819918812

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China and the West A Pragmatic Confucian’s View Yao Yang

China and the West

Yao Yang

China and the West A Pragmatic Confucian’s View

Yao Yang National School of Development Peking University Beijing, China Translated by David Ownby Department of History University of Montreal Montreal, QC, Canada

ISBN 978-981-99-1881-2 ISBN 978-981-99-1882-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1882-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Contents

Introduction Foreword

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Yao Yang: Public Intellectual, Liberal Economist, Confucian Pragmatist

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Is a New Cold War Coming? (2020)

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My Family, My Village and China’s Modernization The Vanishing Town (2002)

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Three Days Back in the Village (2005)

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Before My Grandfather’s Portrait (2009)

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“My View of Revolutionary History” (2019)

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The Path of Chinese Modernization and Its World Significance (2022)

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New Wine in an Old Bottle: A New Interpretation of Confucianism The Confucian State: An Ideal Type of Governance for China? (2020)

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CONTENTS

Go Beyond Liberal Democracy: Insights from Confucianism (2017)

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Confucianism and Liberalism (2021)

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Confucianism and Common Prosperity (2023)

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Restoring the True Face of Politics in Chinese History: Qian Mu and His Book Successes and Failures of Chinese Politics Throughout the Ages (2020)

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Turning Back to China: Understanding the CCP The End of Ideology? (2002)

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The Dilemma of China’s Democratization (2009)

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Understanding the Chinese Communist Party System (2018)

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The Sinification of Marxism: The CCP’s Most Urgent Ideological Challenge (2021)

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Name Index

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Subject Index

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Introduction

Foreword

Presented in this volume are my “big-picture” writings, interviews, and speeches outside the realm of my professional research. I was trained as a development economist in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin (1991–1996) and my primary research remains in that field. Before I went to Wisconsin to do my Ph.D., the most influential journal among university students in China 读 书 Dushu/Reading. After I returned to teach in my alma mater, Peking University, in January of 1997, I started to write for the journal, thinking that it was time for me to become a participating writer and not just a read. This is how I started to write for the general public. One of my enduring interests is political philosophy and its application to China, which is yet again related to my early contributions to Reading. I submitted an essay to the journal in the fall of 1998, and after two or three months, I got a phone call from the journal office saying that one of the chief editors, Wang Hui, would like to meet me.1 In the meeting, instead of talking about my essay, Wang Hui recommended that I write about Amartya Sen, a left-leaning Indian economist who just won the Nobel Prize in economics that year. To Wang Hui, Sen was an important economist but barely known in China. Although I had studied Sen’s 1 The other editor was Huang Ping. Both have become my friends ever since. They are the core figures in China’s New Left camp.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Y. Yang, China and the West, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1882-9_1

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work in development economics when I wrote my M.A. thesis at Peking University, as well has his work on social choice while I was studying in Wisconsin, I did not yet have a full picture of Sen’s contribution. I then spent three months reading everything by Sen that I could get my hands on, finding it to be a rewarding journey. I found that Sen was not only an accomplished economist, but also increasingly an influential political philosopher. The result was my first non-academic publication “An economist who cares about the bottom of society” (Dushu/Reading, March 1999). Even today, Sen remains my role model, both as a professional economist and a public figure. Following his footprints, I have added political philosophy to my ongoing research in economics, which has concentrated more on China’s political economy in the last decade. Over the years, I have come to participate ever more in China’s public debates as well as writing for the international media. My education at Wisconsin left a deep mark on me. I remember that in his first class of development economics, my thesis advisor Michael Carter started the course by talking about Karl Marx. I was bewildered because back at Peking University we no longer studied Marxism.2 Later on, I realized that Wisconsin was once the home of progressive economists such as John R. Commons (1862–1945), and that Michael Carter, as well as another professor in the department Dan Bromley, were the last generation of the Wisconsin School. The Wisconsin Idea that puts serving the community as the university’s top priority has survived. I did not realize how my Wisconsin education had impacted me until I began to participate in China’s domestic debates. Twenty years ago, China’s prevailing public discourse was about how to build a free-functioning market economy and a competitive political system, all the things that my colleagues thought were good about the United States at the time. My Wisconsin education taught me another side of the United States, i.e., caring about public interests, caring about equality. My views have evolved over the years, but my care about the public and equality has endured. The essays in this volume roughly reflect my intellectual journey in thinking about the “big picture” of China over the last 25 years. They are not necessarily ordered by the time of publication; instead, I choose to group them thematically into four parts. 2 I finished my graduate study in 1989 and went back to my birth city Xi’an to work for two years before I went to study in Wisconsin. After the 1989 student movement, graduate students have been required to study Marxism again.

FOREWORD

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Part I contains this foreword, an introduction by David Ownby, and an interview that I did with the Beijing Cultural Review (BCR) on US–China relations. David is my translator, and he was very kind to write an introduction to the volume. He runs the blog “Reading the China Dream” (https://www.readingthechinadream.com/about. html) in which he posts his translation of the writings of contemporary Chinese public intellectuals, including mine. When Palgrave invited me to put together a volume of my “big-picture” writings, I immediately thought about David and asked him to translate more articles of mine in addition to those he had already translated and posted on his blog. I am grateful for David’s consent to do it. He has a superb command of written Chinese, being able to grasp the subtlety of classical words that many educated native Chinese are unable to understand correctly. One of the problems of translating Chinese into English is how to deal with the loose grammar in written Chinese. David has done a superb job; his translation reads smoothly and conveys my ideas in a precise manner. David’s introduction provides a Western expert’s understanding of my ideas about Chinese modernization, Confucianism and the CCP’s political system. I myself have benefited from his summary. Not only do I see from his introduction how my understanding about China is reflected in the Western eyes, also I am more clear about the logic of my own thought that has evolved over time. I am sure that the reader will benefit equally well from David’s introduction. The BCR interview provides an angle for the Western reader to put the essays in this volume in perspective. One of the enduring themes of my “big-picture” questions is China’s modernization process, which from the very beginning has been intertwined with China’s contact with the West. Chinese nation-building has taken the West as its mirror image, and Chinese intellectuals have developed their views about China and the rest of the world by digesting the masterpieces written by Western scholars. For three decades since reform and opening began in 1978, China was headed on a path to converge with the Western (or more precisely, American) model, be it in terms of social and economic order or political governance. This was changed after China entered the socalled “New Era” in 2012. Partly because of the increasing size of China’s economy, partly because the global financial crisis revealed the weaknesses of the American model, China began to show a more assertive face in the international arena. At home, the new CCP leadership was determined to reverse some of the bad consequences of the three decades’ of economic

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and social liberalization such as corruption, business-political cronyism, and the disintegration of the Party. In doing so, harsh measures have been taken, which has created widespread suspicion that China is going backward. Against this backdrop, the American attitude toward China has changed decisively from engagement to competition and confrontation. For me, the competition is unavoidable because the two political systems are founded on different philosophies, the American system on liberalism and the Chinese system superficially on Marxism–Leninism, but in fact more profoundly on Confucianism. In this sense, the US–China competition is positive because it will reveal the upsides and downsides of both liberalism and Confucianism and hopefully, will push both China and the West to improve their political governance. In the BCR interview, I answered the question about a new Cold War between the United States and China and explained the ideological causes for America’s turn in its China policy. China’s interaction with the West, as well as China’s modernization process, has entered a new stage. Explaining this turn, the BCR interview lays the stage for the rest of the volume. The main body of the volume contains 14 essays grouped into three parts. Part II “My Family, My Village and China’s Modernization” collects four essays and one interview reflecting my understanding of China’s path of modernization through the lens of my personal experience and reading. For several generations of Chinese, the meaning of the Communist revolution is a ghost that haunts us. One way or another, every family has been affected by the revolution. My family is no exception, and I have been thinking hard about the role that the revolution has played for China. In the end, I have reached the conclusion that the right way to think about the revolution is to treat it as part of China’s modernization process. The CCP has been conscious from the very beginning about its mission—modernizing China. Despite its brutality, the revolution pulled China over the threshold of a modern society. The Nationalists (Kuomintang) might have the same mission, but did not follow the historical imperative, i.e., to overthrow China’s old social, political, and economic structures through revolution. The CCP somehow felt the pulse of history and became an instrument for China’s modernization drive. Despite its failures and brutality on many occasions, the Communist revolution leveled off Chinese society, improved human development, and laid a solid foundation for China’s industrialization. History does not follow a linear trajectory. After the revolution was finished, the CCP had to find a way to unify the country under a common

FOREWORD

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purpose. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping returned to the scene and led the Party to take a decisive turn. Class struggle was abandoned, economic growth became the central task of the Party, and the country’s long-term goal was set to be the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The Party departed from orthodox Marxism, a radical Western school of thought, and “returned” to China, embracing its traditional values and practice including the pragmatic philosophy, political meritocracy and material rewards of the market. To me, this turn has been the fundamental reason for China’s economic success since 1978. The aim of the reform was to establish a market economy, but 99% of the developing countries in the world have market economy, yet only a handful have managed to put poverty behind them. The introduction of the market is a necessary step toward success, but not sufficient. To catch up with the developed world, a country needs much more, among which the most important is a properly functioning political system that aligns politicians’ own goals with societal interests. The CCP system has done a relatively good job on this score. Part III “New Wine in an Old Bottle: A New Interpretation of Confucianism” contains five essays on Confucianism, including two on which I collaborated with Qin Zizhong. I first met Zizhong when he was a Ph.D. student in philosophy at Renmin University. He sought me out because of my theory concerning China’s disinterested government. We discovered our common interest in Amartya Sen (Zizhong’s Ph.D. thesis was on Sen) and later in our joint writings we quoted Sen quite intensively. Our discussions about the disinterested government led us to think about the meaning of the middle way 中庸 Zhongyong , and finally our reexamination of Confucian political philosophy. Since then, we have written several academic papers to provide new interpretations for Confucianism. In the process, we have developed our Confucian political philosophy, which is summarized in our joint book The Confucian State. My turn to Confucianism was entirely a product of my collaboration with Zizhong, and I owe him a great deal. The reader will see from the first four essays in Part II that I had a paradoxical view about the Communist revolution in the first decade since my return to China. On the one hand, I believed that the revolution was necessary; on the other hand, I could see the damages that the revolution had done to the grassroots society, particularly the destruction of the traditional order and social fabric that pulled the grassroots society together in the past. After I started working with Zizhong, I began to

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realize that China’s next step in its quest for modernization is to rebuild its own culture, which has to be grounded on Confucianism in addition to absorb the Western values produced by the Enlightenment. This turn was also a result of China’s entry into a New Era, in search of a new direction for its future and a new position on the world stage. To me, the country’s turn is irreversible, but without clear philosophical guidance, it could derail. The CCP has “returned” to China in practice, but its theory still hangs on some obsolete Marxist teachings. It urgently needs a new theory that accords with its practice. To me, this theory has to be grounded in Confucianism because Confucianism and its relevant moral values constitute the mainstream belief system of Chinese people. On the political front, though, the common view is still that Confucianism defends autocratic rules and thus is obsolete as a political philosophy. Zizhong and I try to give Confucian political thought a modern face. Methodologically, we apply the modern analytical tools of philosophy to reinterpret Confucianism. At the substantive level, we try to find the elements in Confucianism that are consistent with or even improve on contemporary liberalism. The Confucian State in our final construction is a new governance model different from liberal democracy, yet is able to deliver personal freedom, open access to political positions, and effective governance. Now I can explain what I mean by a “pragmatic Confucian” that appears in the subtitle of this volume. I place great faith in ideals because I believe that a society without ideals will come apart at some point. But I understand that many ideals are utopian and can never be realized. That is why I am also a pragmatist. One thing that is common between Americans and Chinese is that both peoples are pragmatic in that they leave the future open for exploration. But Chinese are more end-oriented than Americans because Chinese believe that the desirability of the end can reasonably justify the means. In that sense, Confucius was pragmatic because he put more emphasis on ends than on means. To him, if the end accords with ren/good, then any means that can reach the end was justified. Of course, reason is important to reach that conclusion. Confucius believed that learning and personal perfection could help reach a high level of reasoning. However, over the last two millennia, the pragmatic side of Confucianism has been forgotten; instead, Confucianism has been dogmatized. On the ground, pragmatism is also a distinctive feature of the Chinese character, a fact that many scholars in the humanities tend

FOREWORD

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to ignore. A pragmatic Confucian is meant to restore the true face of Confucianism and Chinese culture. Part IV “Turning Back to China: Understanding the CCP” collects four essays that I wrote on Chinese politics. The first one “The end of ideology?”, written in 2002, reflects my early concern about excessive commercialization in Chinese society and politics. Even in that early time, I was not a blind advocate for the market and believed ideals were needed to regulate the market. I guess that was one of the blessings that my Wisconsin education has impressed on me. I would have certainly thought otherwise if I had attended the University of Chicago. This is also reflected in the second essay (written in 2009) in which I discussed China’s democratization dilemma. Although I understood how commercialization and the emergence of a bourgeoisie retarded China’s democratization, I still believed that democratization was the only way out for the country. The reader will see from the essays in Part III that my view has changed quite a bit now. But to the extent that I still believe that the CCP system needs to introduce more checks and balances and give more protection to individual freedom, my call for democratization still lives on. The last two essays present my understanding of the CCP system and its need to reform its ideology—in the jargon used by the CCP itself, to sinify Marxism. The CCP has done a good job to lift the living standard of Chinese people. By international comparison, this is not an easy task by any means. There must be some genre of merit in the CCP system. My observations of the CCP system takes me to believe that the only way to justify it is to place it on the foundation of Confucianism. In the third essay, I combined the political theory of selectorate and our theory of the Confucian State to interpret the CCP system. I compare the CCP system with liberal democracy and pointed out their merits and drawbacks. I was not shy about pointing out the necessary improvements for the CCP system, as well as for liberal democracy, to fully meet all the principles of a just polity. In the fourth essay, I discussed the way how some of the Marxist ideas can be combined with/reinterpreted by Confucian thought in addition to pointing out the obsolete parts of Marxism. I believed that sinification of Marxism is the most urgent challenge faced by the CCP’s theoretical reconstruction. I wrote the essays in this volume in a span of 20 years, sometimes on the same topic, but to a different audience. Therefore, there are repetitions among them. To keep the entirety of each essay, I have not deleted

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the repetitions. The whole book is meant for light reading, and most of the essays were written for non-academic readers, even if some of them were published in academic journals. Because the volume aims at the Western reader, the Chinese references in those essays were deleted. I apologize to the reader for any confusion thus caused. I thank the Palgrave China representative Jacob Dreyer for his encouragement. We met in Beijing two times during COVID-19. His insights on contemporary China still ring in my ears. I also thank the Palgrave/Springer editor Arun Kumar Anbalagan for his assistance during the publication process of the volume. Yang Yao February 17, 2023, Beijing

Yao Yang: Public Intellectual, Liberal Economist, Confucian Pragmatist

Introduction On April 28, 2020, the Beijing Cultural Review published an online interview with Yao Yang entitled “Is a New Cold War Coming?”1 Yao (b. 1964) is a well known economist at Peking University, Director of the China Center for Economic Research, and the Dean of the National School of Development (a major government think tank). The Beijing Cultural Review is a high-profile, mainstream publication, subject to the control of China’s censors but not part of the propaganda apparatus. The context for the interview is the early days of the Coronavirus pandemic, when China and the United States were hurling insults at one another, plunging the already difficult relationship between the two countries to a new low. Yao’s interview is worth reading because it is wide-ranging, wellinformed, and unusually frank and balanced. He engages in little or no Trump- or America-bashing, nor does he trumpet China’s rise. Even as he suggests that a new Cold War has probably already begun, Yao laments the current state of Sino-American relations, which benefits 1 Yao Yang 姚洋, “Duihua Yao Yang: ‘Xinxing lengzhan’ yao dao lai ma? 对话姚洋: ‘新 型冷战’要到来了吗?” [Interview with Yao Yang: Is a New Cold War Coming?]. Wenhua zongheng 文化纵横 [Beijing Cultural Review] online version, April 28, 2020, available at https://kknews.cc/news/kkx6jzp.html. English translation available at https://www.rea dingthechinadream.com/yao-yang-the-new-cold-war.html.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Y. Yang, China and the West, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1882-9_2

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neither country, and despairs of finding a solution when virtually the only thing Americans can agree on is that China is an evil Communist country and a threat to the future of the free world. “Who do we talk to?” the interviewer asked Yao: “Speaking to the West, and especially to Western elite groups, may not serve any purpose, because they have already made up their minds and will not listen to us.” The solution he ultimately proposes surprised me: The long-term response is for us to rebuild China’s own discursive system. But the first thing to do when you are rebuilding a discursive system is to throw out the old one. Like you [the interviewer] just said, the discourse of class struggle is no longer appropriate for today. My feeling is that if China wants to stand up before the world, then the Chinese Communist Party must return to China. The great revival of the Chinese nation is the Party’s goal, which means that it must return to the Chinese tradition. But this kind of theoretical transition is extremely difficult, which has brought us to the currently awkward situation where even we don’t believe much of what we say. The first thing to do is to iron out the theory; this is the most fundamental question and the crux of many of the issues we are facing today. So my proposal is that we return to the Chinese tradition, and especially to the Confucian tradition, because Confucianism was the most important philosophy informing how we govern the country. To my mind, Confucian thought is just as good as liberal thought, and our goal is not to defeat liberalism, but instead to say that what we have can be as good as what you have. If we explained our current system from a Confucian perspective, I think it would go over a lot better.

In other words, China’s contribution to getting the US–China relationship out of the Cold War hole both countries have dug is to rebrand the country, to stop talking about Communism and start talking about Confucianism. On the face of it, this is much the same logic behind the choice of the name “Confucius Institute” for the Chinese equivalent of the French Alliance Française or the German Goethe Institute. Confucianism may not evoke a warm, positive response in the West, but at least it does not prompt a knee-jerk, negative response, or such is Yao’s hope.

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Confucianism (or New Confucianism or Mainland New Confucianism2 ) is an existing current of thought in contemporary China, alongside the Liberals, the New Left, and others. Although there is considerable variety among China’s New Confucians, most of those who adopt this label are cultural nationalists of one stripe or another, who believe that China erred in choosing Western solutions (liberal democracy and/or socialism) to Chinese problems in the early twentieth century, and that China’s rise in the reform and opening period, in contrast to the eclipse of the former Soviet Union and the apparent decline of the West, indicates that Chinese civilization has reemerged triumphant. Some New Confucians can be quite extreme in their historical revisionism, for example arguing that Kang Youwei—and not Sun Yat-sen or Mao Zedong—should be celebrated as the founder of modern China. This extremism complicates the relationship between the New Confucians and the Chinese Communist Party, even if both embrace varieties of authoritarianism and nationalism. New Confucian arguments are often accompanied by a certain amount of fire and brimstone, as well as copious quotes from the classics; this is part of the New Confucian habitus. Yao Yang’s seemingly off-the-cuff call for China to reembrace Confucianism in order to avoid a new Cold War seems to come out of a different playbook, and I at first did not know whether to take him seriously. As I investigated further, however, I discovered that Yao does indeed have a Confucian agenda, about which he has been writing and speaking publicly since roughly 2017, and which appears to have become an important focus of his life as a public intellectual more recently. I find it intriguing that a well-respected, senior economist at one of China’s most prestigious universities would—seemingly overnight— start talking about Confucianism, suggesting that China should abandon

2 “New Confucianism” generally refers to Confucianism as refashioned in the twentieth century by figures like Feng Youlan, Mou Zongsan, and others, and is not to be confused with “Neo-Confucianism,” which generally refers to the refashioning of original Confucianism in the Song and later periods. “Mainland New Confucianism” is a more recent term coined by New Confucians in mainland China, meant to distinguish their politically aggressive version of Confucianism from New Confucianism as practiced in the Chinese diaspora (Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States). For a general introduction to the Mainland New Confucians, see Stephen C. Angle, “The Adolescence of Mainland New Confucianism,” Contemporary Chinese Thought 49, no. 2 (2018): 83–99. https://doi. org/10.1080/10971467.2018.1549352.

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Communism, the defining feature of the regime since 1949, because an appropriately retooled Confucianism can compete with liberalism as a political and social order without provoking the same reflexive ideological response as does Communism elsewhere in the world. Such a move raises any number of questions, both about Yao and about the intellectual (and political) environment in China. Where does Confucianism figure in Yao’s intellectual trajectory, and what work is Confucianism doing for him? Did Yao “convert” to Confucianism at some point, or is thinking of Confucianism as a set of beliefs perhaps not appropriate in his case? How does Yao convince people to listen to him, since he has no particular training in Confucianism? What is Yao’s relationship to China’s New Confucian world (Yao rarely—if ever—cites the works of other New Confucians, nor does he use the label “New Confucian” or “Mainland New Confucian” even as China’s New Confucian websites are happy to include Yao and his writings)? I will argue here that Yao Yang’s Confucian engagement is above all pragmatic, less a question of deeply held beliefs and more an effort to solve certain problems facing China and the world. Yao’s primary goal is to illustrate that Confucianism can do the work of liberalism—and indeed do it better—thus moving China toward democracy and perhaps allowing China to lead the world toward a brighter future instead of a new Cold War. That he manages to publish such ideas in prominent places suggests that there is a plasticity about intellectual life in China that is rarely acknowledged in the West.

Public Intellectuals and Their Career Trajectories in China Yao Yang began writing seriously about Confucianism in his mid-fifties, some 25 years into a busy and successful career as an economist and head of a very “establishment” think tank at Peking University, during the course of Xi Jinping’s second mandate as the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. To my mind, the best way to understand this seemingly surprising mid-career change is to look at the trajectory of Yao Yang’s career as a public intellectual. Public intellectuals, or establishment intellectuals, exist in China, even in Xi Jinping’s China. These are intellectuals who generally respect the rules of the game as imposed by China’s Party-State, publish for the most

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part in China and in Chinese, and yet are neither dissidents nor propagandists nor spokesmen for the regime. There are many taboo subjects that these intellectuals cannot address—Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xi Jinping, the Party (to some extent)—but outside of such taboos, they have considerable freedom to speak their mind, and there are genuine debates in China over important issues such as economic reform, common prosperity, and proper governance, among others. These intellectuals are part of the fruits of reform and opening and China’s engagement with capitalism and the forces of globalization. Just as reform and opening reshaped China’s infrastructure and supply chains, it refashioned Chinese intellectual life as well, as the government poured vast sums into China’s elite universities and the spread of the Internet, which, despite the various restrictions imposed on it, made it easier for China’s intellectuals to engage in research and keep up with trends outside of China. Scholarly exchanges between China and the rest of the world flourished, and publication in China moved generally toward the market and away from strict censorship—although there are many exceptions to that generalization—thus increasing the flow of information within China. Many Chinese intellectuals learned English and studied in the West, and a massive translation industry in China allowed Chinese intellectuals whose language skills were not up to par to keep up. Although this was surely not the government’s goal, many Chinese intellectuals came to see themselves as citizens of the world over the course of reform and opening, and Chinese intellectual life grew increasingly rich and diverse. It is not an exaggeration to say that a de facto pluralism took root in the years prior to Xi Jinping’s assumption of power (it was surely this pluralism that prompted Xi’s efforts to reimpose ideological discipline). Whether we should call these figures “public intellectuals,” “establishment intellectuals,” or something else is complicated, in large measure because “public” and “establishment” have different meanings in different contexts. If by “establishment intellectual” we mean an intellectual that agrees with the political establishment, then many Chinese intellectuals who consider themselves liberals struggling under an illiberal regime would reject the label as inaccurate. If by “public intellectual” we mean a thoroughly independent, autonomous intellectual, then this does not quite fit either, since China’s public sphere does not permit genuine independence and autonomy. Again, my personal point of view is functional, and I follow Chinese intellectuals who publish in mainstream

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venues in China, attempting to influence public opinion or perhaps even state policy, without being either propagandists or dissidents.3 We know little about such intellectuals outside of China because our natural tendency is to pay attention to Chinese dissidents, part of the heritage of the Cold War. In fact, most Westerners would be hard put to name a Chinese intellectual who is not a dissident, and this is true of many China scholars as well as the general public. Chinese dissidents are often courageous individuals who deserve our sympathy and support, but a “successful” dissident in China inevitably becomes something of a pariah and is often jailed or exiled, immediately losing much of their influence within China, if they had any to begin with (I recall a Chinese colleague asking me, in 2015 or so, in China, who Ai Weiwei was). Whether public intellectuals in China are more or less courageous than dissidents is a value judgment, but they believe they have a better chance of changing China from within by respecting the rules of the game. There are many Chinese public intellectuals, so our ignorance of them is not because they are rare or hard to find, but because few of us read Chinese or follow intellectual trends in China. The Chinese website Aisixiang (www.aisixiang.com, “Cherish Thought”), for example, serves as a repository for the writings of many of these intellectuals, although the criteria for deciding who gets in and which of their works are catalogued on the site is a mystery to me (the site is run by “Frank” at Peking University, but I have been unable to find out much more about it). Click on Aisixiang’s “Think Tank” menu (www.aisixiang.com/thinktank/) and you arrive at a page containing the names of some 650–700 Chinese intellectuals. In September of 2022, I chose ten figures at random from the site to get an idea of how many texts might be available. The average number of texts for my ten intellectuals was 107, which means there might well be some 70,000 texts available, and if the average text is, say, 25 pages in length (entirely possible, as Chinese intellectuals tend to be quite long-winded), this means some 1.75 million pages of text. Of 3 For my larger project, which involves translating and curating the work of any number of Chinese intellectuals, see www.readingthechinadream.com, as well as the following volumes: Timothy Cheek, David Ownby, and Joshua A. Fogel, Voices from China’s Century. Columbia, 2019; Xu Jilin, Rethinking China’s Rise, David Ownby, translation and introduction. Cambridge, 2018; Qin Hui, Globalization after the Pandemic, David Ownby, translation and introduction. Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2022; Xiao Biao, Self as Method: Thinking through China and the World, David Ownby, translation and introduction. Palgrave, 2022.

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course, not every piece is a gem, but it is not difficult to find something interesting once you know the lay of the land. The overwhelming majority of Chinese public intellectuals are university professors who also write for public consumption (or produce videos, which is becoming more common in the smart phone era). In other words, they have academic careers where they write for their peers in specialized venues, thus establishing their bona fides and building the credibility necessary to address a broader public. This means that public intellectuals in China have career trajectories, just like intellectuals elsewhere, and if you take the time to organize the Aisixiang entries for any important Chinese intellectual chronologically, you can get a sense of how their careers and intellectual concerns have evolved over time. For example, the well known liberal (near-dissident, I would say) Qin Hui (n. 1953) started out writing about “peasant wars” in Chinese history in the 1980s, interrogating the standard Marxist version that saw them as class struggle, after which he moved on to the broader field of “peasant studies,” which included contemporary issues (he wrote a long study comparing how South Africa and China treats its migrant workers, concluding that things were worse in China4 ), then to problems with globalization (China’s use of its comparative advantage in “low human rights” to become the world’s factory5 ), the importance of China’s 1911 Republican Revolution,6 and has most recently penned a series of essays

4 Qin Hui 秦晖, “Cong Nanfei kan Zhongguo 从南非看中国” [Looking at China from South Africa]. Aisixiang 爱思想 [Cherish Thought website], published online on May 12, 2010, at http://www.aisixiang.com/data/33585.html. Online translation available at https://www.readingthechinadream.com/qin-hui-looking-at-china-from-south-africa.html. 5 Qin Hui 秦晖, “Ershiyi shiji de quanqiuhua kunjing, yuanyin yu chulu: Jianping 21

shiji de Zibenlun 21 世纪的全球化困境: 原因与出路: 兼评 21 世纪的资本论” [Dilemmas of Twenty-First Century Globalization: Explanations and Solutions, with a Critique of Thomas Piketty’s Twenty-First Century Capitalism]. Aisixiang 爱思想 [Cherish Thought website], published online on July 3, 2015, at http://www.aisixiang.com/data/90079. html. Online translation available at https://www.readingthechinadream.com/qin-hui-dil emmas.html. 6 See for example Qin Hui 秦晖, “‘Jingke ci Kongzi’ yu ‘Zilu song Qinwang’ 荆轲 刺孔子” 与 “子路颂秦王” [“Jing Ke Stabs Confucius” and “Zilu Sings the Praises of Qinshihuang”]. Published online on Qin’s Caixin blog on June 28, 2020, at https://qin hui.blog.caixin.com/archives/230708. Online translation available at https://www.readin gthechinadream.com/qin-hui-jing-ke-stabs-confucius.html.

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on Western appeasement in the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine.7 The New Left political scientist Wang Shaoguang (b. 1954) started out researching China’s Cultural Revolution (for his Cornell University dissertation and first book8 ), then developed an interest in state capacity in China9 (a huge and rich topic on which Wang spent at least a decade), and then moved onto the issue of Western “representative democracy” versus Chinese “responsive democracy,”10 which involved, among other things, empirical studies on how China consults the people in putting together its five-year plans, and how China set up a nationwide (if fairly primitive) health care service. Like Qin and Wang, Yao Yang is a public intellectual with a track record, and understanding that record will help us to understand his embrace of Confucianism.

Yao the Economist Yao Yang was and is a serious and productive economist, and published hundreds of articles and dozens of books, in both Chinese and English, before turning to Confucianism in the mid-2010s.11 If we hope to understand the position of Confucianism in the longer trajectory of Yao’s career, we need to start with his work as a scholar and thus as an economist. Yao studied development economics at both the M.A. (1989) and Ph.D. (1996) level, doing his Master’s at Peking University with Justin 7 See for example Qin Hui 秦晖, “WuE zhanzheng yu SuFen ‘Dongzhan’—EWu zhanzheng xilie zhi si 乌俄战争与苏芬“冬战”——俄乌战争系列之四” [The RussiaUkraine War and the Soviet-Finnish ‘Winter War’—Ukraine Commentary No. 4]. Published online by FT Chinese April 10, 2022, at https://www.ftchinese.com/story/ 001095779?full=y&archive. Online translation available at https://www.readingthechina dream.com/qin-hui-ukraine-4.html. 8 Wang Shaoguang, Failure of Charisma: The Cultural Revolution in Wuhan. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1999. 9 See for example Wang Shaoguang and Hu An’gang, The Chinese Economy in Crisis: State Capacity and Tax Reform. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2001. 10 Wang Shaoguang 王绍光, “Daibiaoxing minzu yu daiyixing minzu 代表性民主与代 议性民主” [Representative Democracy and Representational Democracy]. Aisixiang 爱思 想 [Cherish Thought website], published online on March 29, 2014, at https://www.ais ixiang.com/data/73405.html. Online translation available at https://www.readingthech inadream.com/wang-shaoguang-representative-and-representational-democracy.html. 11 Yao’s reasonably up-to-date English-language curriculum vitae is available at https:// en.ccer.pku.edu.cn/faculty/fulltime/y/239558.htm.

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Yifu Lin (famous for having defected from Taiwan to mainland China and for having been Chief Economist and Senior Vice President at the World Bank), and his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, with Michael R. Carter, focusing on agricultural and applied economics. He finished his Ph.D. in 1996, and returned to China to a position at the Peking University’s China Center for Economic Research, immediately becoming an active, engaged scholar. Yao’s career as an economist has largely coincided with China’s transition to a market economy, a long, complex process that continues to this day. From the very beginning of Yao’s career, his research focus has been on this transition, which is social and political as well as economic, in the broadest sense, looking at technical issues as well as more fundamental institutional concerns. Rather than concentrating on one particular aspect of China’s reforms, Yao instead appears to have sought to get a handle on a large range of issues. Sample titles from the beginning of his career in 1999 and 2000, which give a sense of the range of Yao’s early work, include: “The Development of the Land Lease Market in Rural China,”12 “Rural Industry and Labor Market Integration in Eastern China,”13 “Implementation of Socially Optimal Outcomes in the Process of Dissolving Public Enterprises in China,”14 and “Building Support for Policy Change by Improving Governance in China: The Case of Shunde.”15 These are case studies that at first glance appear limited and technical, but in fact address major questions raised by China’s reforms: what to do with China’s farmland now that collectivization is largely over; how to implant industries in rural areas; what to do with unprofitable state-owned enterprises; how to tell if we are succeeding (i.e., what are our governance goals and how do we measure them).

12 Yao Yang, “The Development of the Land Lease Market in Rural China,” Land Economics 76, no. 2 (May 2020): 252–266. https://doi.org/10.2307/3147227. 13 Yao Yang, “Rural Industry and Labor Market Integration in Eastern China,” Journal of Development Economics 59, no. 2 (Aug. 1999): 463–496. https://doi.org/10.1016/ S0304-3878. 14 Gao Shanwen and Yao Yang, “Implementation of Socially Optimal Outcomes in the Process of Dissolving Public Enterprises in China,” China Economic Review 10, no. 1 (Spring, 1999): 41–58. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1043-951X(99)00004-8. 15 Yao Yang, “Building Support for Policy Change by Improving Governance in China: The Case of Shunde,” Transition Newsletter 12, no. 2 (2002): 13–15.

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In addition, the field of economics in China grew and changed as China’s economy opened to the forces of markets and globalization, and Yao Yang worked very hard to make sure that the field developed in ways that conformed with academic standards in the West, collaborating frequently with foreign scholars and applying Western standards of peer review and other measures of quality control to Chinese publications, with the goal of making Chinese research part of world research. For many years, Yao found time to serve as the editor of the China Economic Quarterly, a publication of the China Center for Economic Research (founded by Justin Yifu Lin), and Yao proudly describes his efforts in an article celebrating the twenty-year anniversary of the journal’s founding in an article entitled “Forging Ahead for Twenty Years.”16 Alongside what may be seen as a nuts-and-bolts concern with technical issues of reform and the state of the economics discipline in China, Yao Yang also displayed a concern with social justice issues from early on in his career.17 For example, in 1999, he published an admiring portrait of the Indian economist and philosopher Amartya Sen in Dushu (Reading), China’s foremost intellectual journal at the time, and later published on topics such as gender relations and democracy in China’s rural areas.18 Looking at the overall trajectory of Yao’s publication record it is possible to discern a pattern in which he alternates between technical, granular studies of problems on the ground and larger, big-picture essays where he seeks to address broader, more philosophical issues. In Yao’s case, his big-picture pieces have become more frequent and ambitious over the years, although Yao does not appear to have a particular axe to grind, nor 16 Yao Yang 姚洋, “Dili qianxing ershi nian 砥砺前行二十年” [Forging Ahead for Twenty Years]. Jingjixue 经济学 [Economics] 21, no. 5 (2021), online version available at http://m.aisixiang.com/data/130238.html. 17 See for example Yao Yang, “Establishing a Chinese Theory of Social Justice,” Contemporary Chinese Thought 38, no. 1 (Fall 2006): 15–51 (translated by David Kelly). 18 See Yao Yang 姚洋, “Gongzheng wei shei er she? 公正为谁而设?” [Who is justice for?]. Dushu 读书 [Reading] 8, 1999; Yao Yang and You Wuyue, “Women’s Political Participation and Gender Gaps of Education in China: 1950-1990,” World Development 106 (2018): 220–237; Wang Shuna and Yao Yang, “Grassroots Democracy and Local Governance: Evidence from Rural China,” World Development 29, no. 10 (2018): 1635– 1649.

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to be building a unified theory of anything, at least not until he began working on Confucianism. In addition, Yao continues to keep his nose to the grindstone and produce fine-grained, empirical work. Before working directly on Yao for this project, I had for some reason believed that he was a New Left scholar, like Wang Shaoguang or Hu An’gang.19 I now believe this to be somewhat misleading. Quite naturally, Yao finds much to praise in China’s recent economic experience, even China’s Maoist experience (although his praise here is mitigated), which means that the titles of some articles suggest an affinity with the New Left, but at the same time, it seems clear that Yao has not chosen his research topics because they will help to achieve a New Left agenda, which has been historically linked to the revival of socialism, and more recently to a celebration of state power. Indeed, in many of his big-picture essays, he seems to push back against trends or characterizations that he sees as dangerous or exaggerated, instead of jumping on a popular bandwagon. Recent examples of such push-back include: “Advocating China-US Decoupling is Dangerous,”20 “By No Means Should We Believe that China’s Moment to Play the Leading Role on the World Stage has Come,”21 and “How to Correctly Understand Common Prosperity.”22 The more I read of Yao’s work (and I read only his big-picture 19 On the New Left in general, see Shi Anshu, François Lachapelle, and Matthew Galway, “The Recasting of Chinese Socialism: The Chinese New Left since 2000,” China Information 32, no. 1 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X18760416. 20 Yao Yang 姚洋, “Guchui Zhong-Mei tuogou shi weixiande 鼓吹中美脱钩是危险 的” [Advocating China-US Decoupling is Dangerous]. Caixin 财新, published online on August 7, 2019, at https://opinion.caixin.com/2019-08-07/101448255.html. 21 Yao Yang 姚洋, “Qianwan buyao wu yiwei Zhongguo maotou de shiji yi dao, qu tiao shijie de daliang 千万不要误以为中国冒头的时机已到, 去挑世界的大梁” [By No Means Should We Believe that China’s Moment to Play the Leading Role on the World Stage has Come]. Aisixiang 爱思想 [Cherish Thought website], published online on July 24, 2020, at http://www.aisixiang.com/data/122235.html. 22 Yao Yang 姚洋, “Zhengque lijie gongtong fuyu 正确理解共同富裕” [Correctly Understand Common Prosperity]. Aisixiang 爱思想 [Cherish Thought website], published online on October 25, 2021, at http://www.aisixiang.com/data/129222.html. Online translation available at https://www.readingthechinadream.com/yao-yang-on-commonprosperity.html.

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pieces), the more I think he is something of a contrarian, and not at all an ideologue, and that he sees himself as a patient, pragmatic, problemsolving liberal, with a concern for justice (or as he puts it, “I believe in liberalism, but am by no means a Hayekian rights supremacist”).23 As a pragmatist, it makes sense that Yao avoids labeling himself, and that he has published work that aligns with the concerns of liberals, New Confucians, and the New Left, depending on the issue in question.

Yao Yang and Life in China’s Villages Yao Yang’s work as an economist—and particularly his big-picture essays—may well eventually offer some clues to his eventual Confucian turn, but just looking at the titles of the dozens of books and articles he published in the 1990s and 2000s, nothing seems to be necessarily pointing in that direction. More helpful in getting a sense of Yao’s higherorder thinking about the meaning of his research at this point in his career are four texts of a more personal nature that explore Yao’s experience in his father’s home village. In these essays—the initial drafts of which seem to have been written in 2003 or 2004, although he revised them later— Yao reflects on the significance of China’s revolution in the process of China’s modernization, and on the meaning of reform and opening in a village context, both of which themes will eventually lead Yao to Confucianism, although again there is no specific mention of Confucianism in these texts. The four essays are entitled “Before My Grandfather’s

23 See Yao Yang 姚洋, “Hui xiang san ri 回乡三日” [Three Days Back in the Village]. Aisixiang 爱思想 [Cherish Thought website], published online on April 6, 2019, http:// www.aisixiang.com/data/115801.html, original text written in 2004. Online translation available at https://www.readingthechinadream.com/yao-yang-three-days-back-in-the-vil lage.html.

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Portrait,”24 “Three Days Back in the Village,”25 “My View of Revolutionary History,”26 and “The Vanishing Town,”27 all of which explore similar themes. Yao was born in Xi’an, but at the age of ten months returned to his father’s home village in Jiangxi, Hujiangbei, to be raised by an uncle and aunt until the age of eight, at which point he returned to Xi’an, where the schools were better. This was and is a common practice in China, where busy young parents working away from home entrust the care of infants and young children to relatives elsewhere. Yao subsequently spent one more year in Hujiangbei, and even after leaving the village for good, Yao returned with some frequency because of the emotional ties he still felt to his uncle and aunt, and to his many relatives there (Hujiangbei is a single-surname village, with most people sharing the Yao surname). Yao’s ties to his family and village are clearly an important element in his life and thought, and much of his formal scholarly work had to do with changes in village life, as the above discussion of the nuts and bolts of his research has illustrated. What motivated him to write this series of more personal essays at this point is not immediately obvious, but I imagine it had something to do with his evolving persona as a public intellectual with something to say to a non-scholarly audience; a couple of the essays were very widely read, according to Yao. In addition, it may well be that the advancing age of those who took care of him when he was young 24 Yao Yang 姚洋, “Zai zufu de yixiang qian 在祖父的遗像前” [Before My Grandfather’s Portrait]. Aisixiang 爱思想 [Cherish Thought website], published online on November 30, 2009, at http://www.aisixiang.com/data/31021.html. Online translation available at https://www.readingthechinadream.com/yao-yang-before-my-grandfath ers-portrait.html. 25 Yao Yang 姚洋, “Hui xiang san ri 回乡三日” [Three Days Back in the Village]. Aisixiang 爱思想 [Cherish Thought website], published online on April 6, 2019, http://www. aisixiang.com/data/115801.html, original text written in 2004. Online translation available at https://www.readingthechinadream.com/yao-yang-three-days-back-in-the-village. html. 26 Yao Yang 姚洋, “Wode geming shiguan 我的革命史观” [My View of Revolutionary History]. Aisixiang 爱思想 [Cherish Thought website], published online on April 1, 2019, at http://www.aisixiang.com/data/115765.html. Online translation available at https:// www.readingthechinadream.com/yao-yang-my-view-of-revolutionary-history.html. 27 Yao Yang 姚洋, “Xiaoshi de xiaoxhen 消失的小镇” [The Vanishing Town]. Sina, published online on August 31, 2004, at http://finance.sina.com.cn/financecomment/ 20040831/1630989497.shtml. Online translation available at https://www.readingthech inadream.com/yao-yang-the-vanishing-town.html.

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made Yao realize that his ties to the village would ultimately weaken and he would no longer return, leaving him with the desire to make his peace with the village world. A prominent theme Yao explores extensively in these essays is the effect reform and opening has had on his home village, and indeed on many Chinese villages. The opening salvo of reform and opening in the early 1980s was in fact the destruction of the People’s Communes that had been the structuring element of rural life since the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s. Communal agriculture and the political structure that had made collectivization possible were replaced—if not overnight, with considerable speed—with the responsibility system, which largely returned rural China to what it had been right after land reform in the early 1950s (although the land has remained the property of the state under the responsibility system). In other words, individual farmers and farm families cultivated the land allocated to them and took their product to market, these rural markets having been restored as communal agriculture was abandoned. Subsequently, farmers migrated to the big coastal cities for work, made money, and built houses back home. In other words, reform and opening has been another important chapter in the lives of China’s rural people, although who authored that chapter and how it will ultimately turn out remain to be seen, as Yao suggests in his writings. Yao applauds the material changes that have come to his home village, the televisions, cell phones, motorcycles, cars, and houses. No one in his village seems to worry about food, clothing, or shelter. At the same time, Yao’s impression is that family feelings, or communal feelings in general, have dissipated over the course of reform and opening, as even his relatives become ever more distant from one another. There are any number of manifestations of this, from the occupation and appropriation of public land and public goods, to the mad frenzy of house building that respects neither neighbors nor architectural traditions, to the abandonment of public or family institutions (such as ancestral halls), to an omnipresent pollution and ugliness. In other words, the lack of shared feelings has translated into a destructive individualism bordering on selfishness, which Yao finds painful. In overall terms, the success of reform and opening is attributable to markets and entrepreneurship, and the management of both by the Chinese Party-State. In urban, developed areas, markets and entrepreneurship have followed the channels created by the mixture

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of Party control, state-owned enterprises, and private businesses (both Chinese and foreign), which have created new structures for urban and suburban life in China; or, as Yao puts it in a big-picture piece not based on his family village, “In the urban areas, massive enterprise restructuring is changing the face of China’s economy. For most state-owned enterprises, the essence of restructuring is privatization, where ‘the state retreats and the people advance.’”28 In the rural areas, however, the old structures have fallen apart without anything else having taken their place. The state is barely present in China’s villages, and governments higher up the food chain tend to focus on encouraging local economic development (in smaller cities and towns, not in the villages). “Anarchy” is too strong a word for village life as described by Yao Yang—perhaps because his is a single-surname village, which provides a weak, vestigial sense of community—but Yao finds precious little evidence of a functioning public sphere, which is clearly worrisome. Kinship structures no longer constitute a public sphere, even in a single-surname village, because China’s Communist revolution decimated the village elite. The collectivization of agriculture carried out before and after the 1949 revolution surely accomplished this to some degree by destroying the material basis permitting lineages to function, but Yao focuses more on the Great Leap Forward and particularly on the Cultural Revolution, in which the rural elite were sacrificed to the political and material interests of the poor. Yao cites the example of his great-uncle, who practiced medicine in a local town while renting out his land back in the village to a tenant. This practice meant that he was reclassified as a “rich peasant” during the Cultural Revolution, at which point his apprentices rose against him and seized his house in town, leaving him no choice but to return to the village, where he died bitter and unhappy. The rest of the town’s commercial elite disappeared as well, and for similar reasons.29 What struck me in reading Yao’s account is that he depicts at least part of the rural social order as having survived until the Cultural Revolution, 28 See Yao Yang 姚洋, “Yishixingtai de zhongjie? 意识形态的终结?” [The End of Ideology?]. Sina, published online on August 31, 2004, at http://finance.sina.com.cn/ financecomment/20040831/1731989659.shtml. Online translation available at https:// www.readingthechinadream.com/yao-yang-on-the-end-of-ideology.html. 29 See Yao Yang 姚洋, “Xiaoshi de xiaoxhen 消失的小镇” [The Vanishing Town]. Sina, published online on August 31, 2004, at http://finance.sina.com.cn/financecomment/ 20040831/1630989497.shtml. Online translation available at https://www.readingthech inadream.com/yao-yang-the-vanishing-town.html.

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much later than in most narratives about rural life in China. Of course there were great regional variations, but the rural order is often depicted as having collapsed considerably before the revolution, or during land reform immediately before and after the revolution in 1949. Yao’s thoughts about his village and family in turn prompted larger reflections on the significance of China’s revolution, which Yao discusses in the context of his grandfather.30 This grandfather, Yao Youguang (1906–1927), joined the Chinese Communist Party as a young man, and was subsequently executed by the Kuomintang after his participation in the failed Nanchang Uprising of 1927, thus making Yao’s grandfather a revolutionary martyr. “What would my grandfather think today about the revolution for which he gave his life,” Yao muses, “and about the life his descendants are living now?”. Yao’s answer, unsurprisingly, is complex. On the one hand, he argues that China’s revolution was necessary, because China’s traditional society was not evolving toward modernity, which left it weak and exposed to foreign invasions and bullying. At the same time, the particular path China’s revolution took was contingent on any number of circumstances; in other words, if the Chinese revolution was inevitable, Mao’s revolution was not. Yao decides that his grandfather would have opposed the many errors that occurred in the wake of China’s socialist transformation in 1956—especially the Cultural Revolution—but that he would have given the Party a second chance once it turned the page on this regrettable period. As for his grandfather’s view of reform and opening, Yao believes that he would have thought that “as a socialist country, we should do better.” Inequalities between rich and poor, town and country have increased, and the abandonment of the villages to market forces leaves villages with no way to navigate the transition from “natural people” to “citizens,” which is what modernization ultimately means at the individual level, in Yao’s view. In other words, Yao seems to be saying that “the revolution has served its historical purpose, but now it is time to move on,” which is a fairly common argument in China, particularly among liberals. But he also argues that the policy of reform and opening

30 See Yao Yang 姚洋, “Zai zufu de yixiang qian 在祖父的遗像前” [Before My Grandfather’s Portrait]. Aisixiang 爱思想 [Cherish Thought website], published online on November 30, 2009, at http://www.aisixiang.com/data/31021.html. Online translation available at https://www.readingthechinadream.com/yao-yang-before-my-grandfath ers-portrait.html.

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has not been an unmitigated success story in China’s villages, even if living standards have clearly improved. China’s villages are materially richer, but not yet modern. As we saw above, Yao’s work as a developmental economist is largely concerned with problem-solving. Most of these problems are issues discussed in policy circles and in the media, and like any engaged scholar, what Yao wants to do is to arrive at a clear understanding of the issue from a scholarly perspective, but also engage the issues in a more public way, hoping to move the argument, or the policy discussion, toward a solution. Yao’s discussions about his village and his grandfather allow us to see another dimension of Yao’s work—his concern about the meaning and the degree of success or failure of the Chinese revolution in the long term. At first glance, this might seem unexceptional. The Chinese revolution was the central fact of modern and contemporary Chinese history, which would suggest that many scholars in the humanities and social sciences should be researching and writing about various aspects of the revolution (I remember reading somewhere that, on average, a new book about the French Revolution is published every week in France). At the same time, the success of the revolution is a key element in the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party, which claims the right to conceive and diffuse the official view of the Chinese Revolution, which naturally complicates the lives of researchers who like to see themselves as more or less independent. In addition, China’s rise over the course of the period of reform and opening has implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) called into question the success of China’s revolution. New Confucians occasionally argue that the Republican Revolution of 1911 was a mistake, because China was already headed toward a constitutional monarchy more suited to its “national character.”31 The failure of the Republican Revolution made the Communist Revolution a necessity, they grudgingly acknowledge, but it would have been better to avoid revolution completely. There is a similar argument over whether the history of the People’s Republic should be seen 31 See for example Chen Ming 陈明, “Chao zuo you, tongsantong, xin dangguo: Zhongguo meng de Rujia jiedu 超左右、通三统、新党国——中国梦的儒家解读” [Transcend Left and Right, Unite the Three Traditions, Renew the Party-State: A Confucian Interpretation of the China Dream]. Aisixiang 爱思想 [Cherish Thought website], published online on March 18, 2015, at https://www.aisixiang.com/data/85305.html. Online translation available at https://www.readingthechinadream.com/chen-ming-transc end-left-and-right.html.

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as a continuous history of 60 years or two discrete periods defined by the policy changes that eventually became reform and opening. In other words, did reform and opening succeed because it built on the work of national construction achieved under Mao? Or rather did is succeed in spite of the Maoist era, because it made a conscious break with the earlier period?32 Since my research focus has been largely on Yao Yang’s Confucian turn, I am not sure precisely when he began to talk about the Chinese revolution in his published work, although he penned an essay entitled “The End of Ideology?” at roughly the same time that he wrote his essays about his village in which he addressed similar themes in a less personal way, and did not bring up the Chinese revolution.33 However, the fact that Yao Yang’s grandfather was a revolutionary martyr perhaps motivated him to think deeply about the revolution, and gave him a certain license to share his thoughts. His engagement with and concern for his relatives who remained in the village surely played a role here as well, as Yao saw with his own eyes the ultimate effects of rural reforms he has researched and written about. In any event, Yao eventually arrives at the following conclusion: the Chinese revolution was a necessary step in China’s pursuit of modernization, in that it destroyed the ancien régime with all of its inefficiencies and inequalities, clearing the way for the construction of a new and better order. The period of the planned economy was necessary as well, despite the excesses and missteps of the Maoist era, because these measures created the infrastructure—including social infrastructure like mass education and public health—necessary to a successful modernization. Reform and opening built on the successes of the planned economy even as it rejected the plan in favor of the market as a better way to allocate resources and engage with the forces of globalization. Reform and 32 See for example Zhou An’an 周安安 and Wu Jing 吴靖, “Zhengge guojia dou zai nuli, er wo buguo shi qizhong yifenzi 整个国家都在努力, 而我不过是其中一份子” [The whole country is working hard, and I’m just one of those workers]. Wenhua zongheng 文 化纵横 [Beijing Cultural Review], published online on June 1, 2022, at https://mp.wei xin.qq.com/s/YCDPvSzCihOesftyRws_mA. Online translation available at https://www. readingthechinadream.com/zhou-anan-and-wu-jing-on-like-a-flowing-river.html. 33 See Yao Yang 姚洋, “Yishixingtai de zhongjie? 意识形态的终结?” [The End of Ideology?]. Sina, published online on August 31, 2004, at http://finance.sina.com.cn/ financecomment/20040831/1731989659.shtml. Online translation available at https:// www.readingthechinadream.com/yao-yang-on-the-end-of-ideology.html.

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opening should not be seen as in contradiction to revolution, because both are part of the more important process of modernization. Similarly, if the results of reform and opening do not lead to modernization— if overemphasis on markets and money undermines village society, for example—then reform and opening are subject to criticism and review as well. This is one chain of reasoning that eventually leads Yao Yang to his advocacy of Confucianism, although he did not articulate it directly in his writings about his father’s village. In short, revolution was one event in the long march of China’s modernization, a process that it not yet completed.34 As this process stalled, for various reasons, over the course of the 2010s, Yao turned to Confucianism for a solution to these new problems.

Yao Yang and Confucianism Thus one piece of the puzzle of Yao Yang’s Confucian turn may be found in his reflection that the combination of revolutionary overkill and reform and opening have undermined China’s rural social order; Confucianism might conceivably address this issue by reconstructing hierarchies based on something other than material wealth. Another concern that also pushed Yao in the direction of Confucianism has to do with his view of China’s relationship with the rest of the world, particularly the West, and here again Yao shows his contrarian side. In my reading, Yao came to believe that China’s rise means that China’s role in and responsibilities to the world have increased exponentially with China’s rise to great power status, but that China is failing to assume these roles and responsibilities—or at least performing at a suboptimal level—because China’s regime insists on “telling China’s story well”35 in a language the rest of the world simply will not accept, which in turn makes things worse. While many Chinese intellectuals flout a sometimes prickly pride in China’s uniqueness, and the Chinese Party-State frequently warns foreign governments and journalists not to meddle in Chinese affairs (because they supposedly 34 See Yao Yang 姚洋, “Wode geming shiguan 我的革命史观” [My View of Revolutionary History]. Aisixiang 爱思想 [Cherish Thought website], published online on April 1, 2019, at http://www.aisixiang.com/data/115765.html. Online translation available at https://www.readingthechinadream.com/yao-yang-my-view-of-revolutionary-history.html. 35 On “telling China’s story well,” see https://chinamediaproject.org/the_ccp_dictio nary/telling-chinas-story-well/.

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do not understand them), Yao wants China to be part of the world, to be understood by the rest of the world, and to contribute to the rest of the world on an equal footing. Two particular pieces of evidence support this reading, and both are collective forums in which various members of China’s New Left were invited to discuss particular issues (which makes me think that Yao Yang may have had some association with the New Left after all). The first was in July of 2010, when more than 40 scholars met at Peking University for a conference on “Looking for New Voices: Wang Hui’s Academic World and the Way Forward for Contemporary Chinese Thought,” where (mainly) New Left thinkers used Wang Hui’s work and thought as a vehicle to discuss “The China Problem from the Perspective of Globalization,” “Chinese Academic Thought over the Past Twenty Years,” “Ideological Debates and Transcending Left and Right,” and “Contemporary Academic Production and Real-Life Concerns.”36 Wang Hui (b. 1959) is a founding member of China’s New Left and one of China’s best known public intellectuals. He has published on an extremely diverse range of subjects over the course of his long and prolific career, and has had a profound influence on China’s thought world as a result. Most of those invited to the conference were also members of the New Left, and generally preached to the choir in a variety of ways, exploring various aspects of Wang’s contributions and adding their own two cents. Yao Yang’s contribution was quite different. His takeoff point was Wang Hui’s effort to understand China from the perspective of a globalized world. In Yao’s words: My field is economics, I have a great deal of contact with colleagues outside of China, and I am also organizing a Sino-US economic dialogue. My feeling is that it is in fact no longer possible for China to do as it has been doing, focusing solely on domestic issues, on its own problems, and not considering itself in the world context. In the past, when foreigners 36 “Bieqiu xinsheng: Wang Hui de xueshu shijie yu dangdai Zhongguo sixiang zhi jinlu 别求新声——汪晖的学术世界与当代中国思想之进路” [Looking for New Voices: Wang Hui’s Academic World and the Way Forward for Contemporary Chinese Thought]. Aisixiang 爱思想 [Cherish Thought website], published online on September 26, 2010, at https://www.aisixiang.com/data/36224.html.

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studied China, it was more or less simply a process of their understanding us…Now, everyone’s needs have changed completely, and we need interaction, not a unidirectional transfer of Western knowledge to China. In the last thirty years, China has had very little international influence; we are a very large country, but our influence on the world is very limited.

In today’s perspective, no matter how you look at it, the weight of China’s economy is huge. We account for nearly 40% of the world’s economic growth each year; for many countries, China is their number one trading partner. The world needs China and needs China’s involvement in world affairs. Our official position is still to ‘hide our light under a bushel,’ although of course we have added language like we are ‘making a contribution.’ But the world is not satisfied with our ‘contribution,’ and instead demands that we act and participate. This is something I feel very strongly about. When I go to Europe and the United States for meetings, there is a general consensus in the West that China should not simply reap the economic benefits of the global order as it has in the past, but should participate in the formulation of the world’s rules and then abide by them. For us scholars, this means an entirely different set of demands. In the past we were simply passive, in the sense that people [i.e., foreign scholars] would come to us and we would provide them with the materials they needed to do their research. This was true not only for other humanities and social disciplines, but also for economics—people would come here and collect their data and then go back home to do their case studies…Now I think the world has changed. It has something to do with the rise of China, although how we define China’s rise is still a problem. But China’s economic rise is a fact. By my own calculation, as early as 2022, China will overtake the United States to become the world’s largest economy. We can’t hide from this.” Yao’s remarks are simple and straightforward, but their meaning is quite profound. The Chinese Communist Party and many Chinese intellectuals—particularly members of the New Left—reject Western universal values as ideological statements masquerading as historical facts, contingent products of the industrial and democratic revolutions that were imposed on the non-Western world by imperialism and globalization. Yao is saying that China is now the world’s second largest economy and will soon be the largest. For the Chinese to see themselves as the passive victims of Western hegemony no longer makes sense, particularly since

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they succeeded largely by joining forces with global capitalism. “Perhaps we are unique,” Yao seems to be saying, “and perhaps we aren’t, but if we are, let’s tell the world what is unique about us instead sticking our head in the sand.” Yao does not suggest in this statement precisely how he believes China should contribute to or lead the world, but he does suggest that he is beginning to think about such issues in his customary problem-solving way. The second forum was a discussion of “Chinese discourse,” organized by the generally New Left review Open Times in January 2018.37 The editors’ description of the forum’s purpose suggests that they were thinking much as Yao Yang was in 2010, if their tone is perhaps more China-centric, stressing China’s uniqueness: Following China’s continuing rise…it has become necessary and possible to establish a decolonized scholarly discourse system based on a Chinese position and perspective. Over the course of the modern era, and particularly since the New Culture Movement of the May Fourth Period, the strong introduction of Western discourse in modern times, and the wholesale importation of Western discourse in the emerging social sciences in China over the forty years of reform and opening, merit our review and reflection. At the same time, determining how to delve into the inner texture of Chinese civilization, how to view the historical continuity of the process of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation from a broad historical perspective, how to construct a Chinese discourse system, how to portray China more organically and how to exchange and dialogue with other civilizations in the world, is the mission of our times.

As in the 2010 forum, most of the many participants were members of China’s New Left (the transcript comes to more than 100,000 Chinese characters, some 150 pages when converted to a Word document). Although there may well be hidden pearls in this document, my initial impression of most of the contributions is that while their goal is understandable and even laudable—i.e., to produce a contemporary scholarly discourse in the social sciences and the humanities that will be an accurate reflection of China’s realities and not a modified version of Western discourse—it is extraordinarily difficult to accomplish this when the social sciences and humanities as understood throughout the world are largely 37 Kaifang shidai, “Zhongguo huayu 中国话语” [Chinese Discourse]. Kaifang shidai 开放时代 no. 1 (2019) (entire issue).

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Western inventions, enthusiastically emulated in China for much of the past century. This inevitably means that many of the contributions to this forum remain aspirational and thus somewhat sloganistic (unless they address smaller, more concrete issues that do not quite reach the level of global discourse, which in fact may be the only way to proceed). Once again, Yao Yang’s contribution stands out. The title of his paper is “The Confucian Philosophical Foundations of the Chinese Pragmatist Tradition,” and the first few paragraphs read: As everyone knows, one of things that has most characterized China over the past forty years is pragmatism, which to my mind has two basic characteristics. First, pragmatism has no transcendent or eternal truth. The Chinese do not believe in an external, eternal truth that transcends the human world and takes concrete shape in human affairs. We said as much in the idea that ‘practice is the sole criterion of truth’ at the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee in December of 1978…

Second, the desirability of the ends can reasonably deduce the legitimacy of the means…In a 1962 speech, Deng Xiaoping quoted Liu Bocheng38 (1892–1986) as saying, ‘It does not matter if it is yellow or back, a cat is a good cat if it catches the mouse’… In the context of war, ‘the reason we were able to defeat Chiang Kai-shek is that we set aside the old rules and the old approaches, and decided everything according to the situation, because winning is what counts.’ Deng Xiaoping had a very thorough understanding of pragmatism… Without this pragmatism, it is obvious that China’s reform and opening would not have been possible, because the reforms were not limited by ideological constraints. The course of reform has been a process of interaction between constant local experimentation and ideological change at the center, leading to the results we see today… Our task is to return Chinese pragmatism to the Confucian tradition, or to take it a step further, we believe that we should begin with Confucianism’s theory of human nature.” Yao did not say it outright, but he could have: “If you want Chinese discourse, what we’ve got is Confucianism, and Confucianism is above all pragmatic.” 38 Liu Bocheng was a famous military commander, often described as the founder of the People’s Liberation Army.

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Somewhere between 2010 and 2018, then, Yao’s thoughts began to turn in this explicitly Confucian direction. To the extent that a precise date is important, Yao published a piece on “Building China’s New Discipline of Political Economy” in November 2016, in which he mentioned Confucianism only once, in the context of what he calls the Party’s practice of meritocracy, and in February 2017 published an essay on “Rebuilding China’s Field of Political Philosophy,” in which Confucianism is given pride of place as a viable alternative to Western liberalism and an important resource on which the Chinese Communist Party can build in efforts to improve its governing practices and move toward democracy.39 This theme has been a consistent part of Yao Yang’s work as a scholar and a public intellectual ever since. Looking at the body of work Yao has produced on Confucianism, it is clear that he has continued to alternate between detailed, scholarly work, and big-picture statements in which he attempts to share his findings and arguments with a larger audience, as he has done throughout his career. Of course, detailed studies of rural markets are not quite the same thing as case studies that prove that “Confucianism can be an effective substitute for liberalism,” but the same pattern holds. His goal is to develop his ideas, achieving credibility and plausibility, to communicate with a range of audiences, and ultimately to have an impact on Chinese public opinion and perhaps Chinese politics at the highest level. The interview mentioned in the introduction to this essay is a good place to start to get a sense of Yao Yang’s overall objectives.40 The title of the interview is “Is a New Cold War Coming?” which gives us an idea of the stakes involved. Yao’s primary concern is that the United States and much of the world will blame China for the outbreak of the coronavirus 39 See Yao Yang 姚洋, “Goujian Zhongguo xin zhengzhi jingjixue 构建中国的新政治经 济学” [Building China’s New Discipline of Political Economy]. Aisixiang 爱思想 [Cherish Thought website], published online on November 29, 2016, at http://www.aisixiang. com/data/102331.html; Yang 姚洋, “Chongjian Zhongguo de zhengzhi zhexue 重建 中国的政治哲学” [Rebuilding China’s Political Philosophy]. Aisixiang 爱思想 [Cherish Thought website], published online on February 2, 2017, at http://www.aisixiang.com/ data/102986.html. Online translation available at https://www.readingthechinadream. com/yao-yang-rebuilding-chinas-political-philosophy.html. 40 Yao Yang 姚洋, “Duihua Yao Yang: ‘Xinxing lengzhan’ yao dao lai ma? 对话姚洋:’新 型冷战’要到来了吗?” [Interview with Yao Yang: Is a New Cold War Coming?]. Wenhua zongheng 文化纵横 [Beijing Cultural Review] online version, April 28, 2020, available at https://kknews.cc/news/kkx6jzp.html. Online translation available at https://www. readingthechinadream.com/yao-yang-the-new-cold-war.html.

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pandemic—and in fact there was much talk of asking China for reparations at the time, and considerable rancor still exists against China nearly three years later as I finish this essay in February 2023. Given that SinoAmerican relations were already in dire straights prior to the outbreak of the pandemic, the danger Yao sees is that China will be further demonized and isolated, thus threatening China’s—and the world’s—economic future as well as China’s ongoing process of modernization. Yao mixes realism with some optimism, doubting that the world will slide into a depression like that of the 1930s and arguing that widespread American or Western decoupling from the Chinese economy is hardly imaginable. The American government will not deny semiconductors to China, Yao opines, because of the size of the Chinese market and because China could retaliate in kind, denying the West certain precious metals on which China has a near monopoly. Despite his brave front, Yao is clearly worried, and we now know that the Biden administration ultimately has decided to attempt to deny China the world’s most advanced semiconductors as part of a continuing and ever broader effort to counter and contain China’s rise. Of course, when he gave his interview, Yao thought that China had already shown the way out of the pandemic, and that the rest of the world would eventually follow China’s example. Had he known then how things would develop he would have surely been even more pessimistic. Above and beyond the immediate economic effects on China and the world, Yao clearly fears that relations between China and the West will spiral out of control, producing the kind of deep-seated antagonism that characterized relations between the United States and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, and that China will be consistently labeled as Communist and authoritarian—a “danger to the free world.” The Chinese government would then have little choice but to respond in kind, doubling down in its attacks on the West with the sort of rhetoric which would undermine the basic message of reform and opening in China, slowing or stopping China’s drive to modernize and democratize. After all, everyone in China is thoroughly aware of who won and above all who lost the first Cold War. This is where Confucianism comes in. Yao sees no hope that the United States or the West will change its views of China. He notes that while Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump detest one another and disagree on almost everything, their views of China are virtually identical. He further notes that the American media, which once reported fairly objectively on China, has been pushed into a consistent anti-China posture by Trump.

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Thus almost no one will fight China’s corner in the West, and it will be up to Chinese intellectuals to craft a credible defense of China’s covid policy (again, at the time, Yao thought this was doable, which makes sense if we think back to the springtime of 2020 and compare the fight against the virus in New York and Beijing). More broadly, however, Yao suggests that it is up to China to change its image in the world, which means “telling China’s story well” in a language the rest of the world can understand and accept. This in turn leads him to Confucianism, which, while little understood outside of China, has the virtue of being something other than Communism or socialism. Yao adds that the way China tells its story often falls flat in China as well, that “we don’t believe half of what we say,” meaning that he would prefer that China’s new image reflect genuine changes in China’s political discourse and not be limited to an international marketing campaign. Yao’s reference to Confucianism in this interview is intriguing but largely unexplained. Most of the interview has to do with the effects of the pandemic on Sino-American relations and the world economy, and reads much like countless other interviews, editorials, and thought pieces published in the time, in China and elsewhere in the world, musing about the effects of the pandemic. Yao does not explain how Confucianism could do the work of liberalism, and the interviewer, while seeming to agree that “China’s story” is not being well told either in China or abroad, does not push Yao to elaborate. To grasp Yao’s thoughts about the value of Confucianism, let us turn to his writings which delve more deeply into the question, many of which are long, dense, and quite sophisticated, at least to my eye. We might begin with “An Analysis of Confucian Liberalism,” which Yao co-wrote with Qin Zizhong (a younger scholar who specializes in Confucianism) and published in the spring of 2021 in the Journal of Chinese Humanities.41 The text begins with the following set of premises: liberalism is widely accepted throughout the world—including China—as

41 Yao Yang 姚洋 and Qin Zizhong 秦子忠, “Rujia ziyou zhuyi bianxi 儒家自由主义辨 析” [An Analysis of Confucian Liberalism]. Aisixiang 爱思想 [Cherish Thought website website], published online on May 27, 2021, at http://www.aisixiang.com/data/126709. html. Online translation available at https://www.readingthechinadream.com/yao-yangand-qin-zizhong-on-confucian-liberalism.html.

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being roughly synonymous with modernity; in recent decades, liberalism’s internal contradictions have meant that Western liberal regimes have found it increasingly difficult to deliver good governance; pre-Qin Confucianism, properly understood and revised, can offer correctives to some of the problems recently encountered by liberalism, and thus could be considered to be on a par with liberalism, meaning it could achieve world significance. The argument is quite detailed, with frequent citations to classical and modern (liberal) authors in the West, and pre-Qin Confucian thinkers in China. The authors begin with an analysis of the crisis of contemporary liberalism, which they define as the conflict between negative and positive freedoms, in Isiah Berlin’s famous terms. Negative freedom is freedom from coercion; “Don’t tread on me,” as the New Hampshire state flag puts it. Positive freedom is the freedom to pursue larger goals—social, economic, political—which can easily involve other people, which in turn may come at the expense of negative freedom (a neighborhood initiative to encourage composting may affect my “negative freedom” to discard my coffee grounds in the garbage). Although the authors’ discussion of this theme is not exhaustive, they revisit the standard authors and their arguments—Marx and Mill, Rawls, and Dworkin, among many others— in order to argue that the liberal beliefs in the value of the individual and the individual’s right of self-determination, on the one hand, and notions of equality, particularly absolute equality, on the other, are fundamentally irreconcilable. The only political solution Western liberal democracies have found to this conflict, they insist, is to alternate between political parties that represent either negative or positive freedom, but as the wealth gap and inequality fuel anger and populism in many Western democracies, this solution may be running out of steam. The basic claim Yao and Qin make is that pre-Qin Confucianism, properly understood, offers a more nuanced view of the individual, the collective, and thus of freedom, than does liberalism, and thus offers a way out of liberalism’s dilemma. One reason for this is that while liberal arguments concerning freedom and equality are abstract “ought” statements, Confucianism is more pragmatic and takes the world as it is. Concretely, this means that while Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi viewed all men as being born more or less equal—all said some version of “every man can become a sage” (although Confucius was more inclined to distinguish between small “petty men” and “superior men”)—they also noted that in

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the real world, individual achievements depend on social and environmental factors and on individual effort, meaning that the founders of Confucianism were basically untroubled by a certain inequality in individual real-world outcomes. Yao and Qin note that a Confucianism of the twenty-first century must take John Rawls seriously, and must do what it can within reasonable limits to assume that all citizens have a basic equality of opportunity, but should continue to reject demands for equality of individual outcomes, which can stifle individual motivation and thus sap social vitality. Yao and Qin further discuss the ritual and political/hierarchical dimensions of Confucianism, which are often cited as proofs, in China and elsewhere, that Confucianism was inherently illiberal from the outset. Here, the authors argue that Confucius’ original vision of a new meritocratic society based on self-selected and self-trained “superior men” represented a great step forward for individual freedom in the context of the feudalism of the earlier Zhou period. They acknowledge that both the ritual demands of Confucianism, as well as the use of Confucianism to enforce political hierarchy and order, can be seen to impinge on negative freedom from Berlin’s perspective. At the same time, these dimensions can also be seen as very human compromises between negative and positive freedoms. When I participate in family rituals, I strengthen the family unit and thus myself; the same can be said of political participation; families and politics are surely examples of the exercise of positive freedom. For Yao and Qin, this reflects yet again Confucianism’s grounding in the real world, as opposed to liberalism’s enthusiasm for abstractions, because most human activities inevitably give rise to hierarchies of one sort or another, which again flies in the face of demands for absolute equality. Their argument is thus finally that Confucianism can contribute to the modern world by serving as a corrective to a liberalism that has lost its way, ensuring reasonable equality of opportunity to all but respecting the individual outcomes that naturally emerge, as well as the meritocratic hierarchies implicit in the differences in individual achievements. It is striking that there is no claim here to cultural or civilizational superiority or uniqueness; pre-Qin Confucian ideas are seen as a resource to be exploited for the needs of contemporary humanity—just like the heritage of Western liberalism. No claim is made that China under the dynasties was liberal or democratic; China’s emperors and Confucian thinkers over the centuries ignored the promise of pre-Qin Confucian thought just as the West has done. Yao and Qin write as concerned citizens of the world,

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in a style that is meant to appeal to Chinese intellectuals (and particularly Chinese liberals, many of whom are intimately acquainted with the Western liberal heritage). They know of course that few American liberals will read their work, and their goal is to convince Chinese liberals not to give up hope in China because of the victories of Donald Trump and Xi Jinping (I should note that Donald Trump has considerable support among certain Chinese liberals). At the very least, Yao’s Confucian liberalism is a fig leaf allowing Chinese liberals to keep faith in democracy under a culturalist cover, but he clearly hopes for much more. Another example of this kind of text is a piece Yao wrote on common prosperity very recently.42 In China, “common prosperity” is a code word for government intervention and redistribution designed to address the problems of inequality created by the embrace of markets and entrepreneurship during reform and opening. It is a contentious issue, because there have been winners and losers in China’s very competitive economy, and those who win like to think they got there by working hard and being smart—which is surely true enough in many cases—while those who lose often believe that inequalities have gotten out of hand and that China is moving in the direction of the United States, where extreme inequalities are seen to threaten the social and political order. Yao Yang has addressed the issue on many occasions before different audiences, arriving at a compromise solution: let’s not kill the goose that laid the golden egg (high tech, entrepreneurship), but instead work on equality of opportunity (by making serious investments in basic education and revising the current educational system). In “Confucianism and Common Prosperity,” Yao returns to the classics to try to make a similar argument. The argument is quite scholarly, and hinges on different readings of key passages in the Confucian Analects and other pre-Qin (and later) texts, and thus constitutes another essay in which Yao seeks to prove his bona fides as a legitimate interpreter of the Confucian tradition. Whether Yao is right or wrong in his reading need not concern us here, and I am not competent to judge in any case. Yao’s introduction sums up his argument in a way that makes the point I want to make here:

42 Chinese edition forthcoming, English translation available in this volume.

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In the past few decades, Confucianism has been understood [in China] as a doctrine that upholds hierarchy and order and opposes egalitarianism. Such a view is largely related to two general orientations of Chinese society since reform and opening. First, reform and opening established the role of the market economy, and one of the most important principles of the market economy is the survival of the fittest, which is completely different from the [collectivist] ‘shared rice bowl’ of the era of planned economy; at the same time, with reform and opening, Chinese society has begun a return to tradition, leading scholars and people in general to seek out the parts of tradition that are consistent with reform and opening. In this context, the Confucian pursuit of equality to be discussed below has been easily reinterpreted and even denied. Of course, the notion that Confucius had views about equality may be contrary to the original intention of pre-Qin Confucianism, and may be in even greater contradiction with the views of later Confucian scholars. In my view, however, Confucius’ ideas to the effect that ‘where there is even distribution there is no such thing as poverty’ should indeed be read as an expression of his desire for an ideal society, and the egalitarian society proposed in the Book of Rites has been a dream of many Confucians for some two thousand years. In fact, there is no lack of egalitarian concepts in pre-Qin Confucianism, and Mencius’ discussion of the “four sprouts”43 contains elements of the idea that ‘all people are born equal.’ At the same time, Confucius and Mencius were also strong defenders of hierarchy and order, and also affirmed the individual’s right to seek riches. Moreover, the meritocratic ideas espoused by later Confucians who had absorbed Mohist thoughts on the matter even more belong to the constitutional principles that mark the traditional Chinese system. Consequently, there is a huge tension between the egalitarian aims of Confucianism and its strong hierarchical and meritocratic elements. How can this tension be eliminated? Confucian researchers in the past few decades have almost unanimously rejected Confucian egalitarianism and have offered reinterpretations of discussions of ‘equality’ in the Confucian classics, especially the Analects. These reinterpretations see equality as a procedural equality of opportunity, where everyone is free to seek after their own desires, thus bridging the gap between Confucius’ discussion of uneven distribution and his thoughts on hierarchy and order. This essay 43 By the “four sprouts,” Mencius meant that all people are born with “a concern for others, a sense of shame, a sense of humility, and a sense of right and wrong,” which, if properly nourished, will grow into true Confucian virtues.

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argues that this forced reinterpretation is unnecessary, and that the conflict between egalitarianism and meritocracy in Confucianism should be taken seriously. The way to eliminate this conflict should not be to return to the original text in search of new meanings, but rather to take a contemporary perspective and use modern philosophical theories to graft Confucianism onto present-day concerns, thus producing a new theory. This essay argues that Confucian egalitarianism and meritocracy can serve as theoretical resources in today’s discussion of common prosperity, and that the bridge between the two involves investing in the people and narrowing the gap in their earning power. Confucian egalitarianism contains the ideal of common prosperity, which is society’s pursuit at the macro level; at the same time, Confucian meritocracy also provides a guide for the micro-level organization of society through providing incentives, and the only way to narrow the income gap is to narrow the gap in people’s earning capacity.

Yao’s argument on common prosperity is thus very similar in form and content to Yao and Qin’s broader argument concerning Confucian liberalism. In both cases, the idea is to return to ancient Chinese wisdom in search of new and helpful viewpoints on thorny contemporary issues. In both cases, Yao draws on pre-Qin Confucian writings as his primary data source, yet he writes as a social scientist and not as a specialist in Confucianism, and he addresses himself to other Chinese intellectuals and social scientists who will be able to understand and appreciate his discussion of these classical sources, which I assume would be of relatively little interest to the public at large. I mentioned above that Yao has addressed the common prosperity issue in a variety of settings; I have translated a talk he gave to Chinese entrepreneurs on the theme, and while he arrives at the basically the same conclusion, he talks about Adam Smith and the Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma, not Confucius and Mencius.44 To me, this confirms the notion that Yao is targeting Chinese intellectuals in his detailed writings about Confucianism and Confucianism’s relevance to the contemporary world.

44 See Yao Yang 姚洋, “Zhengque lijie gongtong fuyu 正确理解共同富裕” [Correctly Understand Common Prosperity]. Aisixiang 爱思想 [Cherish Thought website], published online on October 25, 2021, at http://www.aisixiang.com/data/129222.html. Online translation available at https://www.readingthechinadream.com/yao-yang-on-commonprosperity.html.

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Although Yao Yang has channeled considerable energy into his project, it is hard to measure what effect his efforts are having, whether he is convincing other Chinese intellectuals or not. As noted above, other Mainland New Confucians are pleased to include Yao’s writings on their websites, and Yao is presumably happy to take advantage of the platform they offer, but Yao’s message differs considerably from that of most Mainland New Confucians in that Yao Yang is an avowed liberal, which means that the cultural pride and nationalism preached by New Confucians like Jiang Qing and Chen Ming are largely absent in Yao’s writings, nor does he often talk about the uniqueness of Chinese civilization, as do many of his peers. Strangely enough, Chinese intellectuals tend not to cite other Chinese intellectuals with whom they agree, so even someone like the philosopher Bai Tongdong, who shares an outlook similar to Yao’s, does not mention him in his work—nor does Yao mention Bai in any of the texts I have read.45 This means that it is difficult to know whether Yao is having a bandwagon effect. There is nonetheless some evidence that Yao’s project is earning a certain amount of attention. On July 2, 2021, Yao’s published an article entitled “The Challenges Facing the Chinese Communist Party and the Reconstruction of Political Philosophy,”46 again on the online platform of the influential Beijing Cultural Review. Dubbed “Yao Yang’s Most Recent Ten-Thousand Character Proposal” (surely the editor’s doing), the text stands as a good summary of Yao’s standpoint on Confucianism. What is most striking about Yao’s text, however, is that it was published on July 2, the day after the celebration of the 100-year anniversary of the CCP, and neither Xi Jinping nor Xi Jinping Thought receives a single mention in Yao’s text (while Deng Xiaoping is singled out for considerable praise). Xi and the Party spent the months leading up to the birthday

45 See for example, Bai Tongdong, Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019, which makes arguments quite similar to those of Yao Yang. 46 Yao Yang 姚洋, “Zhongguo Gongchandang minlin de jiaozhan yu zhengzhi zhexue de chonggou 中国共产党面临的挑战与政治哲学的重构” [The Challenges Facing the Chinese Communist Party and the Reconstruction of Political Philosophy], published online by Wenhua congheng 文化纵横 [Beijing Cultural Review] on July 2, 2021, at https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/w43MO5JcrGYZkqL2s0QyfA. Online translation available at https://www.readingthechinadream.com/yao-yang-on-rebuilding-chinas-political-philos ophy.html.

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bash talking about the sinicization of Marxism, and Yao offers his “tenthousand character proposal” on the very same subject without even a passing nod to the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao. This text is thus not another stroll through the sometimes obscure world of pre-Qin Confucian texts, aimed at Yao Yang’s fellow travelers, but is very close to a political statement, or it at least tells us what “work” Yao Yang thinks Confucianism can do in the current political climate. Yao’s manifesto is quite an impressive document, in many ways masterful in what it says and what it does not. Yao begins with history, noting that the Western impact on China since the nineteenth century can only be compared with the impact of Buddhism of medieval China in terms of depth and complexity. China eventually absorbed Buddhism, sinicizing it to the point that virtually all Chinese people forgot Buddhism’s foreign roots. The same thing will happen with the West—and hence with Marxism—Yao insists, but there is much work to be done. The initial impact of the West was to destabilize the ancien régime, eventually leading to its demise, the “greatest change in three thousand years,” as Chinese intellectuals frequently put it. The Chinese Communist Party emerged in the vacuum created by the eclipse of the dynastic order as one of many attempts to respond to the problems of the day and lead China toward modernity, and was successful because the weight of China’s tradition meant that modernization required a thoroughgoing revolution to liberate Chinese society from the past, and the Chinese Communist Party was the sole actor that proposed revolutionary solutions to China’s problems. Marx’s language of class struggle made sense in this historical context, and the CCP had the wisdom to apply Marxism pragmatically to the specific needs of the Chinese situation. The same language of class struggle continued to guide China’s path even after the success of the revolution, but if China under Mao made admirable progress in terms of basic infrastructure and nation-building, the experiment collapsed—or perhaps exploded—under the weight of its own contradictions in the Great Leap Forward and particularly the Cultural Revolution, and revolution came to be an obstacle to the more important goal of modernization. Then came reform and opening and Deng Xiaoping. In Yao’s words, “Future historians will likely see Deng Xiaoping’s greatest achievement as having led the Chinese Communist Party back to China. The first step in this process was the repositioning of the idea of ‘class struggle.’

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The ‘Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China,’ promulgated in June of 1981, carefully summarized the Party’s experience and the lessons learned in the first 30 years of its existence.” Yao then traces China’s evolution following the abandonment of the idea of class struggle, both in terms of policy on the ground—meaning China’s transition to a market economy—and in terms of official ideology. His narration of official ideology essentially stops with Jiang Zemin’s “Three Represents,” which welcomed capitalists into the Party, at the same time noting that throughout this period, “practice ran ahead of Party theory,” which means that “one of the major challenges currently facing the CCP is the tension between Party practice and Party theory.” The core of Yao’s essay goes on to offer a reinterpretation of the success story of the era of reform and opening which gives the CCP its due as an able, pragmatic manager, but attributes the underlying cause of China’s rise during reform and opening to China’s largely unconscious return to the Chinese tradition, a return which has little or nothing to do with Marxist ideology and more to do with Confucianism. His arguments are fairly straightforward. First, reform and opening was all about pragmatism, encapsulated in famous statements like that of Deng Xiaoping that “It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.” More broadly, Yao means that during reform and opening, China largely set ideology aside and concentrated on concrete goals and the means necessary to achieve these goals. What does this have to do with Confucianism? In one sense, Yao wants to say that Confucianism (and Chinese civilization in general) has historically been this-worldly and secular, in contrast, for example, with Christian civilization which seeks ultimate meaning in an afterlife, or Indian civilization which seeks to deny the objective existence of the reality that appears to surround us. Of course we find serious otherworldly Daoists and Buddhists (to say nothing of utopian Marxists and Maoists) throughout much of Chinese history, but Yao would insist that it was Chinese/Confucian pragmatism that made it possible to be Confucian at the office during the week, Daoist on weekends in the mountains, and Buddhist when death came calling. Yao’s point is that reform and opening worked because China returned to pragmatism, which meant returning to Confucianism, even if few realized it at the time. In Yao’s view, when Deng Xiaoping proposed “crossing the river by feeling the stones” to achieve economic growth at the outset

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of reform and opening, he essentially told the Chinese people to trust their instincts and their reflexes. These instincts and reflexes are both pragmatic and traditional, which to Yao means that their core essence is Confucian. Or that even if this is not strictly true, a convincing case can be made for it, and the Chinese can start to think of themselves as Confucian, and as being successful for that reason. Yao’s second argument is essentially a version of his Confucian liberalism discussed above, although he phrases it quite differently in this particular text, talking about a “balance between individualism and order.” In the context of reform and opening, he argues that China, which has always lacked “civil society” in Western terms, perhaps became too individualistic in the sense of individual grasping and striving. In a highly entrepreneurial age, however, individual grasping and striving moved China’s economy forward, and China’s strong state intervened to set limits to individualism when necessary, even imposing collectivism at times (such as during the pandemic). Yao then goes on to discuss China’s evolving “meritocracy” under reform and opening, which once again draws on his work on Confucian liberalism: One consequence of Chinese-style individualism is meritocracy. Unlike the Western monolithic theory of human nature, Confucianism holds that human nature is diverse, fluid, and malleable. People are born different, but with the exception of the extremely intelligent and the extremely stupid, people’s achievements depend on individual efforts over the course of their lives. For Confucians, there is no abstract equality, because what talents and achievements a person ultimately possesses are the result of individual effort, and abstract equality ignores the role of effort…The impact of this view of human nature on Chinese society has been profound and lasting. At the personal level, it manifests itself in esteem for individual achievement; at the political level, it manifests itself in political meritocracy, i.e., it requires officials to have levels of morality and competence that match their public positions… Meritocracy can be an antidote to contemporary Western populism. From the beginning, Western liberal democracy has not been a pure democracy, but a republican system that mixed elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. But after World War I, and especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, democracy came to dominate and ultimately evolved into today’s populism. In response to the impact of postwar democratization

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and the civil rights movement, Western intellectuals contributed to these changes by providing theoretical justifications for further democratization and equality, pushing the above-mentioned changes forward. However, pure democracy does not allow for rational political decision-making, either at the theoretical or the practical level. For any society, the abandonment of the principles of political hierarchy and meritocracy can have disastrous consequences in the long run.

Concretely, Yao links China’s meritocracy to the fact that the Party— and not an uninformed or short-sighted electorate—chooses the country’s leaders and manages them through organs like the Organization Department. Yao’s final reason for the success of reform and opening is the “rule of virtue,” by which he seems to mean that those who govern at any level in the system must practice benevolent rule, as their Confucian forbearers claimed to do. The rule of law is necessary but not sufficient, Yao insists; as the proverb has it, “the law is an ass,” meaning that the letter of the law inevitably falls short of its spirit. Yao’s overall argument is thus that as China’s practices leapt ahead of the Party’s theories, China unconsciously returned to its Confucian heritage, or a modernized version of this heritage. This heritage is essentially pragmatic, both at the level of individual entrepreneurship and of state policy, where leaders largely set ideology aside to pursue economic modernization. The system did not spin out of control because the Confucian understanding of human nature respects individual differences and values order and hierarchy; the Party contributed by managing China’s human talent in ways that resemble a Confucian meritocracy. To cite Yao yet again: The goal of state governance is to strike a balance among political actors, provide social order, and achieve specific social goals. Liberal democracies leave the choice of social goals to the majority of voters, which is not necessarily socially optimal, because consensual social goals may not be the choice of the majority of voters. At the core of the Confucian political structure described above is the traditional Chinese political meritocracy, but it also incorporates Western elements of democracy, and checks and balances on power.

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Such a republican system facilitates the implementation of consensual social goals and prevents the arbitrary exercise of power. It has many similarities with liberalism, the most important of which is the same protection of fundamental individual freedoms. However, it rejects abstract equality and accepts only equality under the principle of proportionality. The resulting Confucian liberalism both inherits the core values of liberalism, and also reflects reality better than liberalism, and therefore is more likely to be carried out. The contemporary Chinese political system overlaps highly with the Confucian political structure described above: the CCP is the central organ, the National People’s Congress is the sovereign body, the State Council is the executive body (government), and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference is the admonitory body.” Yao Yang is no Pangloss and does not argue that China represents “the best of all possible worlds.” In other writings, he readily admits the weaknesses of the National People’s Congress and the CPPCC as counterweights to the Party, criticisms he omits here.47 But the point he makes here is no less audacious: the Party must come to terms with the fact that China’s transformation since reform and opening has resulted from an unconscious return to Chinese tradition, and not from yet another turn of the Marxist dialectic. As Yao puts it: Marxism in its original form is not suitable as the ideological guide for the Party to accomplish the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation; what we need to do is to develop a 21st century Marxism in the process of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Moreover, Marxism is a product of Western civilization, and for the Chinese nation to take its place within world civilization, it must offer the world a culture that China has created.

What work is Confucianism doing for Yao Yang? Should Yao’s ambitions come to pass, Confucianism will move China’s modernization process forward by nudging the Party-State away from ideology and toward pragmatism, and will solve Western democracies’ problems with populism by

47 See for example Yao Yang 姚洋, “Lijie dangdai Zhongguo Gongchandang tizhi 理解中国共产党体制” [Understanding the Chinese Communist Party System]. Published online by Beijing Daxue guojia fazhan yanjiuyuan 北京大学国家发展研究院 [National School of Development] on April 7, 2017, at https://www.nsd.pku.edu.cn/sylm/gd/ 258190.htm.

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offering a new vision of liberalism more at home with inequality and hierarchy. If path dependency surely makes either outcome unlikely, Yao’s Confucian crusade nonetheless stands as evidence of the ongoing relevance of Confucianism, whose meaning continues to evolve, and the liveliness of intellectual debate in China, even under Xi Jinping.

This Volume of Translations The present volume came together in the following way. I discovered Yao Yang’s Confucian turn at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, and subsequently began following him, translating his work, and adding it to my website, Reading the China Dream. At some point in 2021, I was invited by Ralph Weber and Philippe Major of the University of Basel to contribute to a conference on New Confucianism and the sociology of knowledge, to be held in August of 2022, and decided to write my conference paper on Yao Yang. During the summer of 2022, Jacob Dreyer, my editor at Palgrave, met Yao Yang while visiting Beijing, and mentioned to him that I was translating his work (I had “met” Yao once briefly online, but was not otherwise in touch with him).48 The idea of a book emerged rapidly in this context. I sent a draft of my conference paper to Yao, and was pleased that he agreed with my depiction of his career and work as a public intellectual. Yao then chose a few more essays to add to the collection, and the volume rapidly came together over the fall of 2022. As the author, Yao of course had the final word on which essays were translated and on the order in which they are presented. Looking at the volume as a whole, there is some repetition, which is almost inevitable when translating a collection of essays, and there are also some essays—particularly “Understanding the Chinese Communist Party System”—which at first glance seem less immediately related to Confucianism than others. These texts largely relate to Yao’s efforts to get beyond the “democracy versus authoritarianism” divide that dominates virtually all discussions of China in the United States and in the West in general, a concern shared by many Chinese intellectuals. Clearly, this is directly related to Yao’s championing of Confucianism, because his 48 This essay is only slightly different from the one that will eventually appear in Weber and Major’s conference volume, and this volume of translations may come out first. I fear this may be one of those moments where it is better to apologize than to ask permission. Sorry.

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explicitly stated goal is to change the subject, or to call a time-out, in the hopes of opening a more fruitful dialogue between the world’s two greatest powers. Yao is not arguing that China is not authoritarian, but rather that authoritarianism is only one part of the larger complex whole that is China, and that authoritarianism cannot explain everything about China. The desire to transcend the democracy/dictatorship divide leads to articles like “Understanding the Chinese Communist Party System,” in which Yao attempts to explain the function and relative success of China under reform and opening using concepts drawn from Western academic literature, or by recasting aspects of the system’s attributes as Confucian, as in his discussions of China’s “meritocracy.” In my reading, Yao’s goal is less to say that there is a “China model” which is flawless and ready for export, and more to plead with Western observers to take China seriously, or at least to get beyond the idea that “as long as China does not vote, there is nothing for us to talk about.” To some readers, these arguments may appear to fall somewhere between regime propaganda and whataboutism, a reaction I fully understand. My reply to this would be: first, that Yao’s goal is for China and the United States to engage as equals, trying to solve the world’s problems; second, that Yao is well aware of China’s problems, and discusses them with considerable openness, if not in every essay; third, that Yao is basically writing for other Chinese intellectuals, mostly liberals, trying to convince them to keep faith in China’s modernization and ultimate democratization, and to some extent he has to meet his readers where they are; fourth, some of Yao’s texts are aspirational, in that he is talking about the China he hopes to see evolve, not necessarily China as it is today. Yao Yang, a fluent English speaker, has checked my translations, which should vouch for their accuracy. I have tried to make these texts readable and even eloquent, which is not difficult, because Yao’s Chinese is excellent (if you read nothing else, read his essays about his father’s home village, particularly “Three Days Back in the Village”). In most cases, I have chosen not to translate Yao’s Chinese-language footnotes; specialists can hunt them down in the Chinese originals, pinyin is meaningless to non-specialists, and translating footnotes makes no sense to me. In

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one text—“Understanding the Chinese Communist System”—we kept the footnotes because they are mostly to Western authors, and Yao’s point is to attempt to describe this system in the language of Western social science. David Ownby Montreal, February 2023

Is a New Cold War Coming? (2020)

Beijing Cultural Review: We have noticed that during the coronavirus pandemic, many Western media and politicians have not been particularly friendly to China. Do you see a situation like the following on the horizon: because of the pandemic, the Western world comes to believe that there is a basic confrontation1 between Chinese and Western institutions and values, which will lead Westerners to set aside some of their own conflicts of interest and come together to carry out a thoroughgoing ideological challenge to China? In other words, beginning with the demonization of the China virus, will there be a broad mobilization throughout Western society leading to a “new Cold War?” Does this possibility exist? Yao Yang: I think this possibility is very likely, and to a certain degree we already find ourselves in the situation of a New Cold War. There are two basic reasons for this.

Part 1 of an interview with Beijing Cultural Review: “对话姚洋: “新型冷战” 要 到来了吗?” 文化纵横, April 28, 2020. Available online at https://kknews.cc/ news/kkx6jzp.html. 1 Translator’s note: “PK” in the text, abbreviation of internet gamer slang for “player killing,” which means showing off one’s skill by killing the opponent’s avatar.

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The first is the need for Western politicians to play the blame game. The first outbreak of this virus was indeed in Wuhan, and we made some mistakes in our response at the beginning. But when we look back on things now, a slow response in the early stage seems to characterize the response of every country. But at least beginning from January 23, Western countries knew that human transmission of the virus was possible, yet for about a month and a half they took no measures at all. Even when the situation became extremely critical in Italy, other countries continued to do nothing until the huge outbreak in mid-March. But once China started to act, it quickly brought the virus under control and was the first to emerge from the epidemic. Rational people in the West agree that China’s control of the virus was extremely successful. But now, some politicians in the West, seeing that how serious the epidemic is their countries, have started to blame China, saying that China didn’t tell them early enough. This makes no sense. At the very least, beginning from January 23 they should have taken measures in their own countries. The US stopped flights from China, but why did they take no anti-virus measures within the country? In fact, the thinking of some government officials in the West was probably a lot like that of officials in Wuhan at the beginning. These officials surely hoped they could get the virus under control without taking such extreme measures. The cost and social impact of closing down a city is huge, and this kind of decision is hard for anyone to take. The next thing is that now Westerners want to make this into a “systems” question, saying that the reason that China could carry out such drastic control measures is because China is not a democratic society, and this is where the power and capacity to do this came from. The second reason is more fundamental. Once the pandemic is over, it is quite likely that the West will have a new viewpoint of China’s political system, and it is entirely possible that the West will unite in a fundamental challenge to the Chinese system. This will be a very big challenge for China. The West will not discuss China’s role in beating the virus or the aid China gave internationally, but will instead latch onto the question of China’s system and then unite on this pretext to attack China and demand reparations. Politicians in several Western powers have been talking about this, and this will likely be a huge challenge that we will eventually have to respond to.

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Right now, I think that Chinese scholars—particularly prominent scholars—should step up and identify clearly, from a theoretical perspective, the philosophical basis of the Chinese political system. What are its strengths? What are its weaknesses? In a word, we should positively explain the working logic of the Chinese system, we should transcend the antagonistic dualism of authoritarian governments versus democratic governments, and analyze the Chinese political system factually from the perspective of government capacity. BCR: The liberal camp led by the United States and Great Britain seems to have a historical habit in dealing with its competitors, which is to demonize their opponent from an ideological perspective and then mobilize their society to carry out a cold war. But everyday people in the West saw with their own eyes the effectiveness of the Chinese response in controlling the virus and the Chinese government’s concern for the people and sense of responsibility. Will this be a problem for the Western politicians attempting to carry out a Cold War against China because of the coronavirus? Because it looks to me like the resources and reasons that would justify this mobilization are lacking. Yao Yang: Everyday people in Western countries pay no attention to China, and before the outbreak of the virus, very few people knew what was happening here. Nor do they know much about how China controlled the virus. I used to have a certain faith in the mainstream media in the US, and thought that their reporting on China was relatively fair. But since Trump came to power, I find that media stories and discussions of China have completely changed, and this includes people that were friendly to China and many China scholars…I used to think that in a democratic country like the United States, a president could not change the way everyone thinks, nor could he change the direction of public opinion, but this is what Trump did, he changed the direction of public opinion, and especially changed the overall American view of China. From another perspective, the pandemic in the US is extremely serious, and tens of thousands of people have died, but the American people do not seem all that worked up about it. In a country with elections, if the government did what it was supposed to do, and still a lot of people died, then that’s it, the people just accept it. It is precisely this kind of political and social culture that allows American politicians to say straight out how many people are going to die. Something like this would be impossible in our system. The people would never accept it. From the perspective of

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Chinese tradition, the government is supposed to have a nearly limitless responsibility for the people. But it’s not necessarily like this in an electoral system like that of the US, where the government’s responsibilities to the voters are limited. The focus is on accountability and not responsibility, so as long as the government has done what it is supposed to do, then even if people died, it was something out of their control, and the people can’t complain. Trump might even come to be seen as the hero of the fight against the virus, even though he did nothing and left everything to the state governors. In such circumstances, when politicians try to mobilize American society and the American people to oppose China, the media will usually not mount any opposition, and will not denounce Trump for doing this. The American media has an unwritten rule, which is that Americans and foreigners are treated differently. They might call Trump every name in the book on the nightly news, but 70 or 80% of politicians and the media agree about China. For example, Pelosi and Trump can’t stand one another, but their views of China are almost identical. BCR: If there is a possibility that a new Cold War will develop out of the pandemic, then this raises the question of how we should respond. In our response, should we first think about our explanation? What we are going to say? Next, should we think about to whom we are going to offer our explanations? In the past, and even today, China has been bad at explaining itself to the rest of the world. Most of the Chinese intellectual world has bought into the story of the clear antagonism between authoritarian dictatorships and electoral democracies, and has been unable to construct our own discursive system. In the Mao era, we had the dictatorship of the proletariat and the rest of Marxist discourse, but now most of this has lost its power of persuasion. You just said that we should not fall into the antagonistic discourse that pits the democratic model versus the authoritarian model, so what should we say in our response to Western efforts to find trouble on us? The second question is, who do we talk to? Speaking to the West, and especially to Western elite groups, may not serve any purpose, because they have already made up their minds and will not listen to our arguments. So should we try to reach Western people at large, while at the same time trying to reach mid-range and developing countries? Yao Yang: Let me first answer the second question, which is a question of how to do something; the first question is more basic, and requires

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a longer response. I said a few minutes ago that there is a great possibility that we will enter into an ideological new Cold War, but there is still time to pull back from the brink. From China’s perspective, we should put together a comprehensive explanation or a White Paper about the Wuhan virus situation, in which we recount straightforwardly what happened between the end of December and January 23, saying what we did and why we made mistakes. We should state clearly that during this period we did indeed drag our feet and weigh the pros and cons, but did not purposefully engage in a cover-up. On January 3rd we notified major countries about the virus and began to put measures in place, but ultimately we had to close the city, a decision that was extremely difficult to make. We have to explain the process clearly. Explaining the process clearly and admitting our errors and delays will pull the rug out from under the West. If they still don’t accept it, then there’s no way to convince them. The next step is to explain what we accomplished in the fight against the virus in Wuhan. For example, one great achievement is that not one of the 40,000 medical personnel who came to help Hubei was infected, which is a miracle. There are also the superior coordination and mobilization capabilities that we demonstrated during the epidemic prevention process. Also our recent revision of the statistics, because there were errors in the earlier, more chaotic periods. In sum, I feel like if we hurry up and produce a White Paper, we can take back the initiative. But recently some media in China have expressed extremely nationalist sentiments, which is terrible. We can’t behave like Trump, who will say anything. This is our short-term response. The long-term response is for people to build China’s own discursive system. But the first thing to do when you are rebuilding a discursive system is to throw out the old system. Like you just said, the discourse of class struggle is no longer appropriate for today. My feeling is that if China wants to stand up before the world, then the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) must return to China. The great revival of the Chinese nation is the CCP’s goal, which means that it must return to Chinese tradition. But this kind of theoretical transition is extremely difficult, which has brought us to this awkward situation where even we don’t believe much of what we say. The first thing to do is to iron out the theory; this is the most fundamental question and the crux of many of the issues we are facing today.

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So my proposal is that we return to the Chinese tradition, and especially to the Confucian tradition, because Confucianism was the most important philosophy informing how we governed the country. To my mind, Confucian thought is just as good as liberal thought, and our goal is not to defeat liberalism, but instead to say that what we have can be as good as what you have. If we explained our current system from a Confucian perspective, I think it would go over a lot better. BCR: If the new Cold War can be avoided, then for China, the decisive thing to a great degree will be how we define and carry out our policy toward the US. If at present we treat Americans as the enemy, this will only push the Americans to use all their national strength to treat China as their enemy, which is clearly not a wise strategic choice. The Chinese government is very clear on this point, and at present is still doing all it can to make common cause with the US, to provide more developmental space for China. But humbling yourself in the search for unity might not be the right thing, and people might ignore you. Do you not think we could achieve some kind of unity through fighting back? Yao Yang: The Sino-US relationship is already competitive, and our attitude should be to seek cooperation even in the process of struggle. The US has already defined China as a competitor. China has never adopted this position, but I don’t see why not. We can admit that the US– China relation is currently in a state of competition in terms of ideology, geopolitics and science and technology, and we must respond to this competition. Yet we should tell Americans that in spite of this competition, there is still room for cooperation between the US and China, for example in the fields of commerce and global order. I have always felt that the second round of the Sino-US trade negotiations is a golden opportunity. The US broke the World Trade Organization (WTO), which has ceased to function, but the US still wants to negotiate with China, and the rules coming out of those negotiations will in fact become the template for reform of the WTO, which will mean that we have participated in setting international norms. For this reason, I feel like we should not see the China–US trade war as a simple story of the US wanting to defeat us, and instead we should adopt a more dynamic attitude and should negotiate and cooperate with the US, which will help us slowly enter into a territory where the rules are defined. So even if we say that China and the US have entered an age of a new Cold War, this new Cold War remains different from that between the US

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and the USSR. In the Cold War between the US and the USSR, there was basically no cooperation, while at present there remain very many areas in which we can collaborate with the US, in addition to global commerce, anti-terrorism, climate change, and aid to developing countries, there can also be cooperation within the US–China bilateral relationship. To my mind, China’s US strategy along this line would be a fairly good one for the future.

My Family, My Village and China’s Modernization

The Vanishing Town (2002)

Dazhou Market is a small town in central Jiangxi, and our village Hujiangbei is three li away from the town.1 Whenever I think of Dazhou, I think of my great-uncle. My grandfather Zhichang had two brothers. He was the oldest, and died before I was born. The youngest, Youguang, went to high school in Zhangshu in the 1920s, a rare thing at the time. During the Great Revolution,2 he became a member of both Kuomintang and the CCP and returned to the county to lead its land reform. People in the countryside understood nothing about the revolution except it meant that revolutionaries could be killed, so they sent the middle brother, Dichang, to the county town to try to talk the younger brother out of it. Dichang was literate, and when he arrived in the county town, he at least knew where to find his brother. When they met, Youguang laughed and said to his older brother, “You don’t understand what’s going on. Go back home!”.

姚洋: “消失的小镇,” The Economist’s Teahouse 经济学家茶座, no. 7 (January 2002). 1 One li is half kilometer. 2 The Great Revolution was led by the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) and the

Communist Party to defeat the warlords and unify China in the period 1924–1927 when in first Kumintang-communist cooperation happened.

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Who would have thought that the wisdom of the country people was greater than that of this high school graduate? When Chiang Kai-shek turned against the Communists in 1927, Youguang went on his own to Nanchang, apparently to join the Nanchang Uprising,3 and then stayed on to do underground work under the cover of teaching elementary school. The Kuomintang searched for him everywhere, and finally caught a fellow villager with the same surname. This man knew Youguang, but did not know he was a Communist, and thought he was merely a teacher. So he led them to Youguang, who was arrested. It is rumored that the Kuomintang tried to win him over by offering him an official title, but he resolutely refused and was eventually beheaded; his head displayed to the public. At the same time, the hometown militias4 began to seek revenge back in the village. Youguang’s young son died on the way of fleeing, and his wife remarried. Zhichang and Dichang took refuge in a distant mountain, staying in a village of people with our Yao surname for three years. It was then that Dichang learned to practice medicine. Twenty years later, Dichang met the countryman that had “informed” on his brother on a ferry. This man was already fairly wealthy, and when he saw my greatuncle, he apologized and offered him a hundred silver coins. But Dichang refused, saying, “Let bygones be bygones.” Soon after liberation, this person died of an illness, meaning he escaped what awaited him in the “Three Antis and Five Antis” campaign.5 After liberation, the class status of my surviving great-uncle Dichang was a small land renter,6 meaning he was neither a class enemy nor a comrade-in-arms. He made his living by practicing medicine in town. In the years leading up to the Cultural Revolution, his life was quite peaceful. In my vague memories from my early childhood, I still have an image of

3 Translator’s note: The Nanchang Uprising was the first military action undertaken by the Communists after the rupture of the United Front with the Nationalists. Communist forces succeeded in taking Nanchang city, but shortly thereafter were forced to retreat. 4 Translator’s note: The Chinese word for these militias is huixiangtuan/还乡团,

although this generally refers to groups that appeared in the 1940s, taking revenge on those who had supposedly helped the Communists. 5 Translator’s note: These campaigns, launched in 1951 and 1952, targeted capitalists and other symbols of “corruption”. 6 Translator’s note: This is not the same as a landlord, and applies to people who had small amounts of land and practiced professions other than that of farmer.

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his pharmacy. He had a big house in the town, a typical kind of Jiangnan house with gables and upturned eaves. The part of the house that faced the street was the pharmacy, behind which was the courtyard, with a well in the middle, and behind these were the sleeping quarters. Completely typical for houses in southern towns. I vaguely remember that his former tenant also lived in the house, and the two families had a good relationship. The tenant’s son was also my first grade teacher. I originally did everything with my left hand, including writing, and he insisted that I write with my right hand instead. But I never saw the tenants in the pharmacy. As far as I can remember, my great-uncle’s pharmacy was always neat and tidy. The pharmacy was divided into two parts by a counter. On one side of the counter was the area for seeing patients, a narrow space with a few chairs and probably a table. On the other side were medicine cabinets, all along the wall with many small drawers containing different Chinese herb medicines. What I remember most clearly is the small copper scale on the counter, which was used to weigh the herbs. The street outside the pharmacy was wide (I later discovered it is not so wide after all—this is surely childhood memories at work), and the middle part was paved with stone slabs, the road leading in one direction to our village and in the other to the dock on the river. The other families around my great-uncle’s house also had stores. I remember that the family across the street had a cotton loom, and the machine was powered by a foot pedal. The noise was never-ending. I didn’t know what they were doing, so I asked my great-uncle, and he said people were “working.” The word was too abstract for me, and for a long time, I associated the idea of “work” with the noise made by the foot pedal. Next door, there was a grocery store selling rare kinds of seafood, such as seaweed and dried cuttlefish, something that people usually enjoyed when they had guests or during the holidays. Because of this small store, there was always a faint salty smell in the area, and this smell came to be part of my memory of holiday times. Next to the river bank, there was a small abandoned temple occupied by a cooperative making bamboo ware. A distant relative from our neighboring village was in the cooperative, and whenever I was on my way to town with the adults, I would visit the small temple and the relative would sharpen a pair of chopsticks for me or give me some other little gift. I especially loved the smoothness of the thin bamboo strips and the

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sight of the skillful movements of the artisans as they wove the bamboo baskets, the strips fluttering in their hands. People in our village call the town the “street,” and there was a periodical market on the street. Whenever I went to the market with the adults, I would usually go to my great-uncle’s house. Once I saw a pimply-faced young man from my village at my great-uncle’s pharmacy. I myself once went there for “emergency” treatment. It was noon one day, my aunt was frying vegetables, and I was standing on my tiptoes, stretching my neck to look into the pan, when a large drop of oil splashed onto the back of my neck. I burst into tears. My aunt and uncle panicked and picked me up and ran down to the street. By the time I arrived at my great-uncle’s place, I had stopped crying and my grand-uncle probably put a little salve on me and left it at that. These are fond memories. But before long, the Cultural Revolution began. One day at noon, I ran home to see that our wok was gone and my aunt was wiping tears from her eyes. When I asked her what was wrong, she said, “Uncle is being struggled.” I ran to the threshing floor and saw my uncle kneeling in front of a crowd of people with our family’s wok on his head, being criticized by an outsider he didn’t know. It turned out that someone had found out that our family fed rice to the pigs and denounced us for wasting food. For some time after that, every morning before breakfast, my uncle had to face the image of Mao on the wall, and intone with me “sailing the sea depends on the helmsman.” Uncle could not read or write, so God knows how he learned this song. What happened to my great-uncle was even worse. After the Cultural Revolution began, he was reclassified as a rich peasant and began the suffering that would color the last years of his life. His apprentices rebelled against him, ransacked his house, and took away some valuable things. My great-uncle was known far and wide as a kindly old man, and I don’t know what he had done to offend these apprentices. His only son, my Nanchang uncle—because he worked in Nanchang, was also affected. Nanchang uncle was an officer in the provincial military district, secretary to the commander, and married to the most beautiful female soldier in the military district at the time. My father’s photo album contained a picture of him in full military dress, which I admired so much that I stole it and carried it in my wallet, which finally destroyed it. However, because his family had been reclassified as a rich peasant, Nanchang uncle’s brilliant military career came to an end. He was ordered

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to change careers, and became secretary of a Party branch in a factory. This blow was fatal to him. However, the worst was what happened to my great-uncle. During the Cultural Revolution, he looked completely haggard. His deep sunken eye sockets, high cheekbones, high and narrow nose, and wispy goatee all spoke of the vicissitudes of his life. One of the most memorable events happened when he was about to be driven back from the town to his village. That winter, my parents decided to bring me back to live with them in Xi’an, after I had spent nearly eight years in the village, and my uncle and aunt agreed, even though it was as painful as cutting flesh for them. One day, they brought me to my great-uncle’s house in town, saying that my father’s colleague would come by and take me back to the village. So they dropped me off and went back (I can’t remember why they left, maybe my great-uncle told them to). However, my father’s colleague never showed up, and I got impatient and started running back to the village by myself. My great-uncle chased after me. He was already in his seventies and couldn’t catch me no matter how hard he tried. He had to stop when he reached the river bank, by which point I was already a long way away. He stood there and yelled out my childhood name. In the cold wind, his body seemed so thin, and his cry so helpless. Despite my youth, the scene could not but move me. However, I did not turn around and instead let the old man cry out helplessly in the wind. Whenever I remember this scene, my heart aches. My great-uncle finally wasn’t able to make it through that winter. He and his wife were driven back from the town to the village. The good thing was that the family house is roomy, so there was no problem for the two of them to live there. But my great-uncle was depressed. Finally, one night, when everyone was warming themselves around the fire, he sighed and said “I might as well die. Living is not worth it.” No one said a word. Then he went to bed, and before long I was awakened by a noise, and my aunt told me that my great-uncle had died. That night, the entire family of a dozen or so people was thrown into chaos. My lasting memory of that night is fear. At that time, communication and transportation were difficult, and my Nanchang uncle did not get to the village until the day of my greatuncle’s burial. I remember that it was raining that day, and my uncle was wearing a military raincoat that was rare in the countryside, which made me envious. Although he complained that his father’s class status

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had ruined his future, he was still sad that he had not been able to see him one last time, and I still remember his painful expression when he heard that my great-uncle had already been buried. Later on, when she was thinking about this scene, my aunt reckoned that my uncle is quite “deep.” I don’t know what she meant by “deep.” While my great-uncle died, the other businesses in town also closed shop. In their place was a government-owned supply store near the national motorway. The face of the town changed dramatically as a result. The supply store was very large, but its red brick walls stood out jarringly among the surrounding gray bricks and tiles, making it look inappropriately big. The old street was basically abandoned, and nearby villages switched their focus of their activities to the supply store. From time to time, we saw wealthy people from the town being taken for youjie—“walk the street”—in our village. They wore a paper-made high hat and banged a small gong in their hands and shouted, “I am a bad element!” A rope was tied to their bodies and held by cadres behind them. Although my great-uncle had died, my great-aunt was still a rich peasant, so she often had to go to construction sites to reform herself through labor. After the Cultural Revolution, the house in town was returned to my great-aunt but she could no longer live there, so she sold it for 800 RMB [approx. $120 USD] to the tenants who were living in it. In the 1980s, the government tried to revitalize the town by setting a day for people to go to the market. However, the social fabric that once sustained the town’s existence had been destroyed, and government intervention could not make the town’s commerce thrive again. I went back to the town in 1994 on my way to do fieldwork for my dissertation and found that the face of the town had changed dramatically, with the number of new houses greatly exceeding the number of old ones, and new houses were the same small two- or three-story flat-roofed buildings you see everywhere, with no traditional flourishes. The town’s supply store is still there, but it is no longer the commercial center of the surrounding villages. Each village has its own small store; because of the convenience of transportation, when people go shopping they either go to Shuibian, a town ten li away, or to the county town. Shuibian was originally the headquarters of a commune, and later became the seat of the county government of the neighboring county, so it prospered. Dazhou used to be a town like Shuibian, and used to be able to rely on its tradition of commercial culture to compete with Shuibian, but after the Cultural Revolution, the commercial tradition disappeared

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with the removal of the local elites, so it was no longer able to keep up with an administrative center like Shuibian. The economist Douglass North (1920–2015) says that there is path dependence in the process of institutional change. This theory ignores the role of episodic events on such processes. The Cultural Revolution was just such an episodic event. It broke the social and cultural structure of the Chinese grassroots society, thus removing the cornerstone of Chinese cultural continuity. Some people might wonder if the evolution of Chinese culture after the Cultural Revolution does not reflect precisely the impact of this event, but such doubt is unhelpful for our understanding of history. I wrote this story both to fulfill a long-lasting wish—I cannot forget the image of the thin old man standing helplessly on the river bank and always wanted to write about him—and to provide a small example of institutional evolution. Through this case, I hope to show that institutions, especially informal institutions like culture, are carried forward and transmitted by specific groups of people, and when these people are suppressed or removed, the continuation of such institutions will be extremely difficult. In the past, most people only discussed the destructive power of the Cultural Revolution on Chinese culture at the macro level, but few people paid attention to its impact on Chinese grassroots society. The general view is that the grassroots level is more stable and therefore more likely to preserve traditional elements of Chinese culture. The title of Edward Friedman, et al.’s book on Wugong Village in Hebei is Chinese Village, Socialist State, and the mere title reflects this point.7 If by “Chinese village” we mean only the lifestyles and mentalities of the farmers, then Friedman is not wrong. However, the transmission of culture beyond basic habits and ways of thinking at the grassroots level is very fragile because, in rural China, the transmission of culture depends on a small number of elites, and when these elites are suppressed or eliminated, only the dregs of rural culture remain. The collapse of culture at the grassroots level inevitably changes the overall face of Chinese culture, and thus makes the recovery of traditional culture very difficult.

7 Edward Friedman et al., Chinese Village, Socialist State. New Heaven: Yale University Press, 1993.

Three Days Back in the Village (2005)

It was an early winter morning in the south, and the air felt crispy. Our driver, a young man named Wang, drove me and my Nanchang uncle out of Nanchang city,1 heading toward my home village Hujiangbei in Xingan county. We passed Xiangtang, where we should have been able to take the expressway, but the driver missed the sign directing us there. Thinking that Nanchang is only 120 kilometers away from Xingan, we suggested that Wang stays on the slower national motorway Route 105. Because of the Beijing-Kowloon rail line and the expressway, there were very few cars on the motorway, but the quality of the road was very poor, and the car was a new Citroën Elysée, still in the break-in period, so Wang drove it slowly, and it took us nearly three hours to get to the Xingan county town.

姚洋, “回乡三日,” The Economist’s Teahouse 经济学家茶座, no. 19 (April 2005). Much of what is described for the village has been changed over the years. The essay is included here to show how I relate economic and sociological theories to Chinese reality through the lens of my own village. 1 Nanchang is the capital city of Jiangxi province which is located to the south of Yangtze River in central China.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Y. Yang, China and the West, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1882-9_5

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Like the last time I went back to my home village, my Nanchang uncle insisted on buying good vegetables and meat, saying that there would be no good food in the village. Just then, my cell phone rang, and I saw from the number that the incoming call was from another cell phone, but the person on the other end was my aunt from the village: “Little Yang, where are you?” she asked. I answered, “We’re in Xingan, buying some food.” My aunt said, “There’s no need! Juxiu brought a chicken and she’s cooking it. Just come on over for lunch.” So I told my uncle not to buy any food. He muttered, “if we don’t bring food, God knows what they’ll feed us,” but then said “we’ll just buy something for the kids.” So we each bought a bunch of oranges and snacks. The oranges were surprisingly cheap, only 30 or 40 cents a catty. I told the old lady at the stall to give me ten yuan’s worth [about $1.50 USD], but a big plastic bag full only came to five yuan. Continuing 15 kilometers south of the county town, we arrived at the place where the car was meant to drop us off. From a distance, I saw two sons of my second cousins, Xiaobing and Xiaoping, sitting at the side of the road waiting for us. When the car stopped, they came to fetch our luggage and the food. We told the driver to head back to Nanchang, and followed Xiaobing and Xiaoping down the road toward the village. They told us that there was a big drought in the village this year, and the water level in the Yi river was very low, so the crops were in bad shape. Sure enough, the river was very shallow, with part of the riverbed visible. The rapeseed planted along the roadside was stunted and colorless due to lack of water, and it looked like the spring harvest was in for trouble. Hujiangbei is actually not far from Route 105. When you get off the motorway and follow the Yi river for a bit you can see it. I still remember one year when the river flooded when I was a child, and a big chunk of the river bank directly in front of our house washed away. Our village and several villages around us were flooded for three days and nights, and people lived and ate in their attics. I was only four or five years old at the time, and I remember it being fun, not scary. One of the things I remember seeing from the attic was one of my cousins paddling around on a little raft, rescuing fruits and vegetables floating in the water. I pestered my aunt let me try it too. The winter following the flood, a bunch of people came to rebuild the dike, some of whom stayed in our house, so we set up a huge wok in the hall to feed them. They reinforced the old dike and added new dikes in some sections. Since then, although the river has flooded, the dike has never broken again.

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Perhaps because it’s been many years since I’ve been back, the impression I carry in my mind of my hometown is that of the towering camphor trees on distant dikes and smoke curling up from the kitchen chimneys. This time, what I saw was different. There were no camphor trees, and no smoke curling up from the kitchen chimneys, and in their place what caught my eye were several white or green buildings sticking out like sore thumbs at the head of the village. Nor is what you see on the opposite side of the Yi river exactly a green mountain. The Beijing-Kowloon Rail Line passes at the foot of the mountain, and on one of the hills stands a China Telecom wireless communication relay tower. As I approached the village, I saw that the drought had almost dried up the little lake in front of the village, revealing the dirty bottom of the pond. In the remaining murky water, fish were struggling to break the surface of the water to get some fresh air. The lake in the name of our village—Hujiangbei, the “village at the back of the lake and the river”– refers to this lake, and the river is the Yi River. I never really understood what “back” meant. Maybe out of my nostalgic feelings, for me, our village had always been different from the villages around us, all of which were called this or that “family” village, like Liu Family Village, or Liao Family Village. But this time, my village left my dream world behind, becoming a messy reality. Our house faces the small lake and occupies the best location in the village. When my aunt saw us coming from afar, she went back in the house to get a string of firecrackers, which she then set off. It was a long string of firecrackers, and when they ignited, tears came to my eyes. There were three brothers in my grandfather’s family, as I introduced in the last piece. The oldest Zhichang was a farmer, the second brother Dichang was a doctor, and the youngest Youguang joined the revolution and was captured and beheaded by the Kuomintang after the Nanchang Uprising in 1927. My Nanchang uncle was the only son of Dichang. Zhichang was my biological grandfather, who had three sons as well. My father was the youngest among his brothers and was passed by the family to continue Youguang’s blood. I was born in Xi’an where my parents worked. When I was ten months old, my parents sent me back to the village, where I was raised by my younger aunt and uncle who did not have children. They treated me better than they could have treated their own children; in fact, I called my aunt “Iya,” which means “mother” in the local dialect. When I was eight years old, they had to send me back to Xi’an to live with my parents

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for the sake of my education, which broke my aunt’s heart. My elder uncle died some years ago, and my elder aunt died shortly after I left. On her deathbed, she entrusted my aunt with the three children she had been raising. My uncle and aunt were known far and wide as good people, and they quietly took on the responsibility of raising the children and seeing to their marriages. A few years later when I was a fourth grader I went back to my village to live for another year. A year may be short, but by now I was old enough to understand things, and for this reason, the village made a deep impression on me. After starting university, I went back to my hometown roughly once every four years, but it had been more than ten years before the visit I am describing here. The first few times I went back, my uncle was still alive, and every time I went back he would take me around the village to greet the villagers. More than half of the 30-odd families in the village were close relatives.2 I remember that in 1983, when I returned to my hometown for the first time after entering university, my uncle took me to see the newly divided land that he had received under the responsibility system.3 He carefully explained to me the boundaries between our land and that of other people, just like a farmer does when talking about his own land. When I last time returned to the village in 1994, my uncle was already showing his age, but I didn’t expect him to die a year later. At the time, I was studying in the United States, so I couldn’t go back to the funeral! In the past, it was my uncle who came out to set off firecrackers for me, but this time, only my aunt was left. My aunt is old too. She was always short, but now, at 76, she is a shriveled up old woman. I had not expected that I would be involved in a major change in her life as an elderly person on the occasion of this visit. But I’ll get to that later. When I went in the house, the children of Xiaobing and Xiaoping gathered around me. I wasn’t yet 40, but I was already a grandpa!4 My

2 Translator’s note: The expression Yao uses is 未出五服的亲戚, which means “relatives within five generations”. 3 Between 1978 and 1984, China had a major reform to abandon the commune system that lasted for twenty years. The new system is called the household responsibility system. It effectively gives land back to the hand of farm families. 4 Translator’s note: The term Yao uses is gonggong /公公, which is what children call any “older” relative. In other parts of China, he might have been called shushu/叔叔, which means “uncle”.

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Nanchang uncle and I gave them some oranges and cookies, and the three children, big and small, started eating. The one child policy seems to have won people over. Xiaobing had no more children because his first child was a boy; Xiaoping, whose first child was a girl, gave birth to a boy five years later. Most families are the same. People say that after the implementation of the “Population and Family Planning Law,” you could pay 15,000 yuan [approx. $2225 USD] in “social support fees” and continue to have children, but this has not happened in our village. When I asked why, Xiaobing said that no one could afford to pay the fine. Xiaoping added “People don’t want to have children now. It’s hard to bring them up.” I also wonder whether the slowdown in rural population growth is due to effective family planning measures or to the increase in the opportunity cost of raising children due to rising income levels. This is not a question that can be answered by a few cases, but it is an indisputable fact that the opportunity cost of raising children has increased significantly. When others in the village heard that Nanchang uncle and I were back, they gathered in twos and threes in the courtyard in front of our house and grabbed a chair or a bench to sit down. The southern sun at noon was just right, the warmth spreading across your body, perfect conditions for chatting and catching up. Among the visitors were both the old brigade head Hesheng and the new village head. The new village head’s nickname is “Torn Eyebrow” because he has a scar on his eyebrow. I remember returning to my hometown twice in the 1980s, and Hesheng talked to me about a piece of mountain land in my village that had been forcibly occupied by the township. This land had been handed down from our ancestors and was deep in the mountains, dozens of kilometers from the village. The old people said that the reason why the village could own mountain so far away was entirely because our ancestors were capable and we were a prominent family in the southern part of Xingan County (later in the county town I learned that my greatgrandfather had been the first magistrate of Xingan country in Republican times). However, in the collective era, the mountain was developed as a forest area by the commune and the village temporarily lost its ownership. After the rural reforms, the township forestry enterprise closed down for a while, and people from the village went to plant trees, and they also obtained a land use right certificate from the county forestry bureau. But for some reason, the township decided to take the mountain back, and

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the village sued the township for nearly ten years. I remember one time when I returned to the village, I went to the county forestry bureau with a few people who were literate and willing to get involved, and the person who received us was very sympathetic, saying “The mountain is yours, but there is nothing we can do about it at the forestry bureau. To solve the problem, the county government would need to intervene.” At the time I was just a student, and didn’t know anything, and the others were honest but timid farmers, so who was going to pester the county government? So we came back empty handed. I heard that later the village hired a lawyer who filed suit against the township, but despite the facts of the matter, the suit made it to the Ji’an District Court without success,5 and the mountain still belongs to the township. No one brought up the mountain when I came home this time. The situation in the village seemed to be much improved. Almost every house has a TV and a telephone, almost all the young people use cell phones, and now and then motorcycles whizzed by, sometimes with a fashionable young woman sitting behind the driver. I asked Torn Eyebrow how much the per capita income in the village was. The village head answered, “what we report to the authorities is 2,400 yuan [approx. $355 USD], but it’s actually a lot lower.” Hesheng added, “My family made less than 1,500 yuan [approx. $222 USD].” Xibao, who was standing next to him, said, “Your family doesn’t have enough labor. My family can earn 10,000 yuan [approx. $1480 USD] a year!”. His family built a three-story “foreign house” in the front of the village facing the main road, a flat-roofed house with green bricks up to the roof. There are no traditional tiles, but the roof has a circle of decorative glazed tiles. This is the standard “foreign house” in this area, and is completely different from traditional houses. The traditional houses have slanted roofs, without glazed tiles (which seem to be rare in the south), but eaves are added to the gables, the front is made of black bricks, the gables are painted white, and the frame of the house is made of wood. The standard layout inside the house is a hall in front, two side rooms, and a kitchen in the back. The back wall of the hall is dedicated to portraits of the ancestors, and there is a shrine in the corner, where incense is burned for the gods. Against the back wall there is a traditional square table 八仙 桌, two chairs with backrests, and two benches.

5 Ji’an is the city that Xingan county belongs to.

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Sitting on the benches requires a certain artfulness, because if the person at one end suddenly stands up, that end of the bench may rise up and the person at the other end could fall on the floor. So whenever anyone gets up they have to remind their fellow bench mate to pay attention. The layout of the house and the way the dining table is designed reflects the traditional hierarchy of elders and children. Although the new houses preserve some of the traditional practices, such as the ancestral pictures, the layout of the house is exactly like that of a townhouse in the city, which no longer reflects the status order but is more practical. One of the problems of the traditional houses is a lack of light, first because the windows are small and second because the overhanging roof blocks the light. The frame of the new houses is made of reinforced concrete, and the structure of the house lets in more light. There are two or three new houses like this in the village, which stick out against the backdrop of dilapidated old houses. Nanchang uncle asked Xibao how many people were in his family, and he answered that there were three. Uncle asked why three people needed such a big house. Xibao laughed and said “that’s just how we live!!” It takes 50,000 to 60,000 yuan [approx. $7410 to $8900 USD] to build a house like this, which represents ten or more years of savings for a middle-class family. As in rural areas throughout the country, when people in my village have money, they build a house, even if the old house is still livable. Our village is not that bad, and there are not that many new houses, but in my mother’s village, only one li from Hujiangbei, the problem is much worse. While we were chatting in the sun, my aunt and Juxiu got lunch ready. Nanchang uncle and I invited a few of the people chatting in the yard to join us. The rule in our village is that when someone invites you to eat, you can’t accept straight away, but instead have to wait for the host to insist. Hesheng, Torn Eyebrow, and Xibao were not much of a problem, and let themselves be talked into it pretty readily, but the old accountant kept refusing despite my efforts. I tried several times, and he kept backing away, to the point that I almost gave up, but seeing that he finally was not leaving, I made one more huge effort and finally got him to come in. Everyone had already eaten their lunch, so they just drank. Nanchang uncle started complaining about the rapid growth of the population in the village. When he left home more than 50 years ago, there were only seven families in the village, but now there are 35 or 36 families and more than 100 people. The old accountant said that there are now 107 people participating in the land distribution, meaning an

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average of about one mu 6 of land per person. There are readjustments every five years, which messes up the previous arrangement and redistributes everything. This practice is obviously not in line with the spirit of the central government, and also contradicts the newly promulgated “Rural Land Contract Law.” Most of the people in the village do not rely on the village’s land for income, except for side businesses such as raising pigs. Most people rent land in nearby Xiajiang County to grow cash crops. As a result, the village land is more of a source of welfare than a major source of income. This is probably the reason why land is periodically redistributed. Not many people go to work in the coastal areas, but more than thirty young people have left the village over the years through further education, and two families have had all of their sons go to college. For a small village, this is a remarkable achievement. For villages like mine, a rural village in the middle of the country, going to school is still the best way for young people to leave the village. After lunch I went for a walk around the village by myself. In the past, the village was clearly divided into two parts. On the east side was our branch of the family, which Nanchang uncle said had only four families in the early days; on the west side was another branch, which originally had only three families. In the middle of the east side of the village there is an assembly hall 议事厅 and an ancestral hall at the village edge. In front of the assembly hall is a wide alley, and on either side of the alley is where our families’ homes are. When I was living in the village, while there were more houses than when Nanchang uncle left 50 years ago, the basic pattern remained nonetheless the same. This was toward the last gasp of the Cultural Revolution, when the ancestral hall had been taken over by the production team and used to keep cattle and pigs, and the assembly hall functioned as a warehouse. Later, both the ancestral hall and the assembly hall were rebuilt, with money contributed by all of the families; although I was studying abroad at the time, my parents donated 100 yuan [approx. $15 USD] on my behalf. So I wanted to see the assembly hall. But before I could even get to the hall, the appearance of the alley already disappointed me. In what used to be a clean and tidy alley there is now a sewage ditch, into which drips the foul water from the pig pens, and the water snakes across the

6 Translator’s note: One mu/亩 is approximately 1/6 of an acre.

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open space and flows into the small lake in front of the village. It turns out that one of my cousins had turned a room next to our main house into a pigsty, which is the source of the sewage, and this room is right next to the alley. This sewage ditch is like a scar, which has changed the village beyond recognition, but the villagers turn a blind eye to it, and let it be. On the front wall of the assembly hall are three stone tablets with the names of the donors and the amount of their contributions engraved on them, including my name. There are several banners hanging from the side walls, which were sent from other villages when the building was rebuilt. The images on the banners are not only crude, but also completely off-topic, showing either sailboats or foreign landscapes, and one of the banners had a hole in it where a child had thrown a stone. It looks as if even the assembly hall has been restored, it has lost its past function. When I exited through the back door of the assembly, I saw the well that had always been there, but the same kind of sewage was flowing around it. My cousin’s wife who had come with me told me that the well water was no longer drinkable because of the sewage. The entire village smelled like a pig sty. The smell made strolling around unpleasant, so I took a quick look at the ancestral hall and returned to our front courtyard. There were still a few people there enjoying the sun, so I joined them and sat down on a bench. I asked why they couldn’t build some underground drainage ditches to divert the dirty water from the pig pens outside the village. Cousin Jinbao replied, “That costs money! Who can afford it?” “But how much would it cost?” I asked. “Five or six thousand yuan [approx. $740 to $890 USD] would be enough, right?” “That would cover the materials” was the answer. There are more than thirty families in the village, and each family would only need to contribute 150 or 160 yuan [approx. $23 USD] to get the money together. Given the income level of the village families, coming up with this small amount of money should not be difficult. I figured there were two reasons for not doing it. One is that not many people care about the living environment; in the words of environmental economists, people are not very willing to pay for a good environment when their income is not sufficiently high. If that’s the case, it’s truly a sad thing—the kind of sadness that comes from human nature being debased by economic interests. I prefer not to believe that this is a valid reason. As far as I can remember, the folks back home could put up with a lot, but they still acknowledged a basic need for cleanliness. At least back

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then, the sewers flowed, the courtyard where they threshed the grain was smooth and level, and you could wash your clothes or your feet in the water from the pond. Now, the sewage ditch snakes its way across the threshing ground and flows into the pond right by the dock, so who is going to wash their clothes there? Perhaps another reason that makes more sense is the disorganization of the village. In the past, public affairs in the countryside were managed by the clans, and for a small village like ours, this type of organization was enough. During the People’s Commune period, clan relationships completely disappeared, but the well-oiled production team system served as a substitute. In those days, the village was orderly, although no one particularly liked following the commands of the team leader, Hesheng. The team raised a few pigs each year, and although each pig weighed no more than a hundred catties,7 there was still an annual get-together, and relations between neighbors seemed to be much better for it. In the past twenty years, I have been back four times, and each time I felt that the villagers cared less about one another. Maybe this is because my childhood friends have all left the village, but I never truly accepted these changes, and always felt a vague sadness for the disintegration of the village social network. The village’s public spirit was lost because of the loss of the local organization to which it was attached. This is the main reason why the village could not repair the sewers. Not only would such repairs require raising money, but each family would also have to contribute to the labor (in fact, labor was more important than getting the money together). If we were living under the commune system, there would be no problem, because the village would have savings to cover the costs, and labor would be allocated from above, and hence would have been even less of a problem. But now it is a big deal. If the new village head Torn Eyebrows were to attempt such a thing, he would have to convince all of the more than thirty families in the village, among whom there would certainly be some who would not be willing to contribute money or labor. For example, people who don’t raise pigs would say “let the people who raise pigs contribute more.” The consequence of the disorganization of the village is not merely that public works are not carried out, but also that the obvious encroachment 7 Translator’s note: One hundred catties is the rough equivalent of 60 kilograms or 130 pounds.

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on the public interest cannot be stopped. One family has not only built a three-story house in the open space by the lake, but also built a methane tank next to the house, the foundation of which sticks out into the lake. The lake is the public property of the village, so how can individuals be allowed to privately encroach on it? I asked the person next to me if the methane tank had been approved by the village. Hesheng answered, “What permit? They wanted to build it so they built it!” Torn Eyebrows, the new village head, laughed along with him. This is very different from my memory of Hesheng. I remember in the spring of 1977, one of the packets of seed grain the team was soaking in the lake went missing, and Hesheng led some cadres to do a houseto-house search, and finally found what he was looking for in the pig trough of the only family in the village not surnamed Yao. This family had been vagrants prior to liberation and wandered into our village, and at first only lived in a side room in the ancestral hall. Because they had a politically correct family background, the husband of the family served for a time as team leader. Later on, they saved up their money, and built a decent house in the western end of the village. The wife of the family was stronger than other women in the village and could compete with the men, which earned her the nickname “strong woman 壮婆.” Who would have believed that “strong woman’s” original vagrant character had not changed and she finally stole the team’s seed grain, an incident that occurred not long after they had built their new home. Her husband saw this as a great loss of face and cursed her up one side and down the other, and the team also fined her work points. But today, someone is blatantly encroaching on the village pond, and surprisingly, they are getting away with it. The family doing this is probably the richest in the village, because their son owns a feed mill. There are two more brothers in the family. The three brothers are very close, so they have a lot of power in the village. I could see this when I was a child. But at that time, because there was a production team, the family was too powerful to challenge the team. Now it’s different, and they can do whatever they want. And once there is a precedent, someone will follow suit. One family has already piled rocks on the open space between our house and the lake, and an old honey locust tree by the lake dock has been cut down; clearly they are going to build a house. My aunt said to me privately: “When your uncle was alive, he said that if anyone dared to build a house in front of our house, it would be over his dead body.” Maybe this is why the people

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planning to build the house gave up on the idea. But the stones are still piled up there, and my uncle has died, so maybe they will build the house after all. The layout of the village has already changed because of the two buildings in front of the village, and if they build something else beside the dock, the village will look awful. When human desire breaks free from the constraints of organization, it becomes the enemy of anything we can call civilization. I decided to go see Uncle Mingliang—my mother’s younger brother— who lives in Liao Family village, very close to Hujiangbei. I don’t know why, but in my memories of my hometown, everything is taller and wider than it appears to be now. For example, I remember the houses as being tall and spacious, and the lake in front of our house as very big. Now I see that the houses are quite squat, and the lake is just a pond. The same is true for the road to Liao Family village. When I was a child, I went to school in this village, and I felt like it was a long walk to and from the school every morning and afternoon. This time, it took about five minutes. I knew that uncle Mingliang had built a new house by the road outside the village, so I went straight there. Arriving at the village, I found it much busier than before. The area was originally farmland between several natural villages, and there were no buildings except for the primary school by the road. Now the farmland is full of buildings and the natural villages have bled together, with an intersection with a few small stores at the center. I went into one of the stores and bought a bottle of liquor, and was about to buy some pork when Uncle Mingliang appeared. Probably someone had told him I was there. Uncle Mingliang is only ten years older than I am, but his hair is already gray. I felt a pang of sadness. Uncle Mingliang used to be a handsome, happy-go-lucky kind of guy 风流潇洒. When I was in elementary school, my maternal grandfather and grandmother were still alive, and Uncle Mingliang was not yet married. He was good at playing the flute. Once, I pestered to take me with him to the mountains to gather firewood. We hit the road after lunch, crossed the river on the ferry, and then headed for the mountains. I was so excited that I didn’t notice how far it was. After about two hours, Uncle Mingliang said we were at the right place. I’ve been talking about “cutting” firewood, but in fact, it did not take much effort, because there were a lot of dead trees on the mountain, so we just picked up the dry branches already on the

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ground, and in no time had collected two dan 8 of firewood. My load was of course much smaller, less than a third of what my uncle had on his shoulder pole. I happily shouldered my load, but after a few steps it was too much for me. Uncle Mingliang transferred some of my load to him, but the same thing happened again. By the time we got home, I was carrying just a small bundle of dried sticks. Although this experience stunted my appetite for work, when I think of the scenery we saw along the way I still have a happy feeling. I remember we stopped to rest on a hilltop and looked out over the farmland and houses spread out before us, with the Gan River9 further in the distance, floating by like a piece of white silk. Even then I got caught up in the beauty of the scene and temporarily forgot the hard work of collecting firewood. Later on Uncle Mingliang got married. My aunt was very beautiful and treated me very well. When I saw her again this time, I found that she too had gray hair. Uncle Mingliang’s new house is behind several other houses and also has three stories, but they are only using the first floor at the moment. My cousin is renovating the second floor, and nothing is going on with the third floor. A while later, two of my other cousins joined us. They are both beautiful women, like their parents. I remember when I returned home in the early 1980s, they were five or six years old, and I took them down to the river to play. Now they are married and have children. I was planning to have dinner at Uncle Mingliang’s house but I got a call on my cell, and it turned out that Aunt Genting’s son, Jianhui, had gotten a car to take me and Nanchang uncle to Shuibian town. Aunt Genting is the younger sister of Nanchang uncle. Shuibian is the new county seat of Xiajiang county, which is about ten kilometers away from where we live. Because the road to Shuibian passed through Liao Family village, Jianhui’s car was waiting at the intersection. So I promised my uncle to come for dinner the following night, and then I went to find the car. Both my aunt and my Nanchang uncle were in the car. The road to Route 105 is a gravel road with lots of potholes, so it was slow going, but happily it was a short ride, and before long we were on Route 105. 8 Translator’s note: A dan/担 can mean either a unit of weight equivalent to 100 jin (roughly 50 kilos), or the proper amount of something to be attached to a shoulder pole. Clearly the two meanings overlap. 9 The Gan River is the largest river in Jiangxi Province. It flows through Jiangxi from south to north and enters the Yangtze River by Jiujiang city.

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My aunt pointed at something on the side of the road and said, “that’s your uncle’s grave.” Nowadays it is not easy to find burial land. My aunt told me that the land for my uncle’s tomb was given by Nantou Village, which is also a village of people surnamed Yao, so they take care of other small family villages. There were basically no cars on Route 105, and in ten minutes we arrived at Shuibian town. Aunt Genting’s husband works at the Shuibian Hospital, and the family used to live in the hospital courtyard, but now they have moved into a house next to the motorway. The house is part of a complex built by several families, where they rent out the first floor, and live on the upper floors. You see this a lot in the south. Aunt Genting’s family also built two single-story structures behind the building. One serves as a kitchen and dining room, and the other as a storage space. In fact, their house has ample space, so there was no good reason to build an extra, inconvenient kitchen, and they built the two structures just to occupy the space, so it will be available when they want to build a house later on. Although Shuibian is a county town, the people who live there think just like the farmers in the surrounding villages. After dinner, we went upstairs to Aunt Genting’s house to chat. Her son Jianhui works for the county electricity board, so the family pays little for electricity, and at Aunt Genting’s house they use electricity for everything from cooking to heating. We sat around a powerful electric heater. My aunt was in a bad mood, and the first thing she said was “I’ve lived too long and have been a burden on the younger generations.” She is 76 years old this year, which is not old, even in the countryside. I didn’t know what was going on, but my Nanchang uncle interjected, saying “It’s not you, it’s the younger generations who treat you badly.” It turned out that while I was visiting my other uncle’s house in Liao Family village, my aunt was bending my Nanchang uncle’s ear about family matters. After uncle died, my aunt was left alone, and cousin Xiao San took over her kitchen and made it into a pigsty, so my aunt had to rig up a hot plate and cook in the hall. My aunt let Xiao San plant her mu of land, and also gave him 150 yuan [approx. $22 USD] a year to buy grain to eat, but Xiao San still thought that he was the one taking care of her, and had her to go up on the roof to dry his grain for him. Xiao San’s older brothers had no real interactions with my aunt, but his wife still went out of her way to speak ill of them. My aunt had been looking forward to me coming home to take care of this, and was constantly calling me her

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“little boy.” Nanchang uncle tried to reason with her, saying: “Yang is back here just for a few days. You will have to get along with them even after he goes” Auntie sighed, saying: “How am I going to get along with them?”. I have always believed that the elderly in China are overly dependent on their children. This dependence is not necessarily material, but more likely to be psychological, such as wanting their children to come home often, or to come and take care of them when they are sick, etc. This is a sign of a lack of rationality. Maybe because of the era in which we live, this generation of elderly people overall lacks emotional support, so they always project their emotions onto their children and expect them to reciprocate. In many cases, their emotional outbursts only add to their children’s burdens, and often turn out to be harmful to the old people as well, as their children’s responses may not meet their expectations. However, I wasn’t going to tell this to my aunt when she told me her story. For the most part, all I could do was to send her some money every year for living expenses, but she still had to rely on those cousins to take care of her day-to-day life. In rural areas, it is still unrealistic to talk about elders’ homes, and I had not at all expected that one of the major things I would do when I returned to my village would be to send my aunt there!. This started on the morning of the second day of my visit. Bright and early, Nanchang uncle told me that Aunt Genting told him last night that several of my aunt’s nephews were thinking about sending my aunt to an elders’ home. My aunt had three elder sisters, all of whom had passed away. But their sons were all very good to my aunt and knew that she was not happy at home, so they talked about paying to send my aunt to an old-care home, but they did not dare to bring it up because they were afraid that my cousins would not agree. Aunt Genting knew about it because she was in touch with them. But she thought it couldn’t be done because people would say bad things about our family. When Nanchang uncle heard this, he shot back, “What do you mean it can’t be done? I think this is a good idea. I came back with Yang this time in the hopes of resolving this problem.” Nanchang uncle is himself 71 years old. He said: “I can’t stop worrying about my sister-in-law. She and my brother lived their entire lives for other people. Now that my brother is gone, I want her to live out her remaining years in peace.” I choked up when I heard this, and all my arguments about old people flew out the window. All I wanted to do was to do right by

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my aunt. Nanchang uncle then said to me: “Yang, you should take care of this. Can you afford it? It’s nearly 5,000 yuan [approx. $740 USD] a year!”. I told him there was no problem, and knew my wife would agree with my decision. Setting my aunt up in an elders’ home was also in line with my thoughts about the elderly and what is “rational.” My fears were that my aunt would not agree, or that the cousins would be against it. At the breakfast table, I told my aunt about the idea and to my surprise she readily agreed. It turned out that her nephews had already asked her and she had already thought about it. The only thing left to do was to convince the cousins, and to find a suitable elders’ home. The plan was for the entire family to have lunch together that day. Before going back to Hujiangbei, we went to a farmers’ market in Shuibian to do some shopping. Nanchang uncle insisted that we both pay 100 yuan [approx. $15 USD] each. Prices at the farmers’ market were not cheap, and some items were even more expensive than in Nanchang or Beijing. When we asked, we learned that most of the goods here are brought in from Nanchang early in the morning. My aunt knew the place well and led us to the stalls of her acquaintances to make our purchases. Looking at the pleasure she took from this, I began to worry she might feel lonely at the elders’ home. Jianhui got another minivan from his work unit to take us and Aunt Genting’s family to Hujiangbei. Past the intersection in Liao Family village, the road was really bad, and I worried that the minivan, with six or seven people in it, might flip over, so I offered to get out and go on foot. Juxiu and some of the other women were already there, and they got the things out of the van and started lunch preparations. One of them instead decided to play with her granddaughter, saying “thank you, thank you” to her in Mandarin. The girl was born in the county town and is a city person, and the older woman maybe thought that if she was taking care of this city person then she wouldn’t have to cook. I sat down with Nanchang uncle outside the door and talked to a few relatives who gathered around us. One of the young men is a professional pig farmer who has rented a site in a forest in the mountains where he raises more than 100 pigs. He sells his pigs at the age of four months, which means that he can have three rounds of production and produce 300 pigs a year. Business has been very good the last couple of years, with each pig bringing in about 100 yuan [approx. $15 USD]. He does not raise sows, but rents a truck three times a year to go to Henan or Anhui

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to buy piglets, because they are cheaper there, even with the shipping costs, so it is more cost-effective than buying local piglets. Jiangxi is a big pig breeding province, and the price of local piglets is surprisingly high. The main place to sell pigs is Guangdong province. The pig farmers do not sell the pigs directly, but first sell them to middlemen who then ship them to Guangdong to sell. The young man complained that the middlemen were making all the money. I asked him why he didn’t become a middleman. He said, “Those guys have connections everywhere. I don’t.” It looks as if rural markets have matured well, with everyone playing fully to his comparative advantage. What amazes me even more is that the supply chain for pork—from piglets to final consumption—spans half of China! China’s rural economy does not exist in isolated pockets like people often think, but is instead like the industrial economy, with links all over the place, so that everyone prospers or fails together. The booming pig industry in Jiangxi brings benefits to farmers in far-away Anhui and Henan, and if Jiangxi pigs don’t sell, the income of farmers in Anhui and Henan will suffer as well. Lunch was soon ready. In addition to our own family, we invited two elderly people from our clan, and there were three tables in all. Because we had made no decision on which elders’ home my aunt would go to, Nanchang uncle did not announce that my aunt was going. He toasted everyone at all three tables. Nanchang uncle is of the older generation, and it is not proper that he toast the younger generations. His intention, which only I understood, was to shut the cousins up before they had a chance to talk, so that they would not stand in the way when the announcement was made about my aunt. After eating, I rushed over to Uncle Mingliang’s house in Liao Family village. I deliberately went through the old village. The old village was quiet, and except for the sound of old people talking behind closed doors, there was no sign of human life. Abandoning an old house to build a new house at the edge of the village is a common phenomenon in rural areas that are starting to develop. In more developed areas, old houses are usually rented to outside workers; in our village, the old houses are left empty. I walked quickly through the old village and saw that the small two-story building we used to use as a school was now lost amidst many new and old houses, although at the time the school was at the edge of the village. The new village is right next to the old one. A pond that used to be at the edge of the village had been mostly filled in to build houses, and the

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water in what was left of the pond was filthy, with garbage everywhere along the shore and white plastic bags fluttering in the wind. In the past, household refuse did not contain chemicals, so it could be returned to the fields and used as fertilizer, but things are different now, and the chemical waste cannot be absorbed by the soil, so it has become a major hazard in rural areas. This is another aspect of the disorganization of the countryside. If public institutions were healthy, there would surely not be the scourge of garbage everywhere. My cousin took care of the renovation of Uncle Mingliang’s new house in Liao Family village by himself. He had worked outside of the village for a long time and has seen the world, so his designs are quite good. We went upstairs together to the roof terrace and the whole village was in full view. Due to unbridled expansion, Liao Family village is now of a piece with the three small villages around it. I asked my cousin how they got the approval for the land on which the house was built, and my cousin said: “There’s no need for a permit. Any family can build a house on their land, and if their land is too far from the village, they can swap with someone whose land is closer.” The land close to the village is good land, but it is used to build houses. Some people believe that this is an undesirable consequence of the current rural land system. Since farmers do not own the land and the land has to be redistributed every three or five years, no one cares about land use. There is some truth in this argument, as suggested by the quote “those who lack a constancy of goods lack a constancy of mind!”10 However, on second thought, if land were privatized, would we not see the same incidence of land occupation to build houses? It seems to be that the urge to build houses is so great that private ownership of land might not necessarily serve as a deterrent. In Hujiangbei, my two cousins built their houses on their own land. These plots were originally planted with vegetables and were basically owned by the family, but the urge to build houses still swallowed them up.

10 Translator’s note: This is a quote from Mencius, see Robert Eno, Mencius, an Online Teaching Translation, p. 56. The longer quote is: “The dao that pertains to the common people is that those who have a constant sufficiency of goods will have a constancy of mind, while those who lack a constancy of goods lack a constancy of mind. Without any constancy of mind, they will abandon themselves to strange behavior and excesses; there will be nothing they are unwilling to do.” My impression is that this is sometimes taken as a Confucian endorsement of private property.

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If we say that the houses in Hujiangbei were built due to population pressure, then the new houses in Liao family village are the pure products of rising incomes. In urban areas, renovating the old parts of the cities requires a lot of moving people out and back in, a huge project that only the government can accomplish. Does the problem of renovating the old villages also exist in rural areas? From what I have seen, the answer is yes. However, in villages like my hometown, this problem cannot be solved because there is no organization with enough authority. After dinner at Uncle Mingliang’s house in Liao Family village, as planned, one of my aunt’s nephews, Wugeng, drove me and Nanchang uncle to my aunt Gengting’s house in Shuibian to discuss which elders’ home my aunt would go to. Wugeng owns a rattan factory near the Xingan county town, and his business is pretty good. There is an elders’ home right across the street from his factory, and he promised to go check it out. Aunt Genting said that there is an elders’ home in Shuibian, run by Xiajiang County, which seemed to be well equipped, so it might be worth a try. I remembered that another of my aunt’s nephews, Niangeng, had been part of the county leadership in Xiajiang and might be able to help, so I gave him a call. Niangeng said that the Shuibian elders’ home was for residents of Xiajiang County and only accepted seniors from there. But he promised to go to the County Civil Affairs Bureau the next morning and ask. Early the next morning, Niangeng called and said that the elders’ home would now accept seniors from outside the county because the demand in the county had not been as great as expected. So after breakfast, Niangeng sent a car to pick up me and my Nanchang uncle so we could go check out the elders’ home. The Xiajiang county town was originally on the west side of the Gan River across from Shuibian, but because most of Xiajiang is on the east side of the river and there are no bridges, the county town began to migrate to Shuibian in the early 1990s. More than a decade later, the new county town has become quite large. The elders’ home is nestled against a hill in the new county town. There is a large courtyard and several European-style buildings painted pink, a color that is quite rare in our region. The courtyard is planted with grass, and there is a pond in the center with a veranda and a pavilion next to the pond. After two days in the filth of the countryside, I felt like I was in another world when I first entered the courtyard. We were greeted by a man and a woman, both young professionals, he the manager and she the accountant. They showed us the rooms upstairs and down,

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while at the same time pointing out that the mother of one of the county leaders was in this room, and a retired leader was in that one. Although the idea of elders’ homes is not greatly accepted in our county, there are still some enlightened old people who have made their own choices to live there. We finally chose a single room on the first floor. This room has a lot of natural light and is close to the dining room, which is only two doors down. The room was furnished like a hotel, with a TV and bathing facilities. The manager said, “Let your aunt stay in a single room at first, and later once she gets to know people maybe she can share a room.” We thought this was a good idea and were ready to sign the contract. The contract stated that there were three levels of care. Level one is when the elderly can basically take care of themselves and the nursing home provides some daily services; level two is when the elderly need some care but can get out of bed and engage in basic activities on their own; and level three is when the elderly are bedridden and need special care. Because my aunt is still in good health, we chose level one. It was almost Lunar New Year, so we decided she would move in on the 19th, after the holiday. The manager and accountant were very happy and politely escorted us off at the entrance of the home and did not go back inside until we started our car and drove away. In the car, Niangeng talked about the past. His mother was the eldest of my aunt’s four sisters. When he was a child, his family was poor and could not afford to pay for his education, so uncle and aunt took him to live in Hujiangbei and put him through high school. Uncle also taught him to use an abacus. Uncle was illiterate, but he was very good with the abacus, and could even use both hands at once, which Niangeng learned as well. Without the kindness of these two people Niangeng would not be what he is today. Niangeng said: “I have every intention of repaying their kindness, so if you can’t take care of our aunt, then I will.” Nanchang uncle added, “My brother was Runtu in Lu Xun’s story.11 When I was a child, I had to walk a long way to go to middle school, and he was the one who always toted my bedroll for me.” He also said to me, “Without your

11 Translator’s note: The reference is to Lu Xun’s story, “My Old Home,” in which the narrator returns to his native village from his job in the cities, and encounters his childhood friend Runtu. The narrator was from a wealthier family and eventually left the village, while Runtu was from a poor peasant family, but through their friendship, the narrator learned about the pleasures of country life.

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uncle, your father would never have been able to afford to go to school. In order to earn tuition for your father, your uncle walked to Suichuan to buy oil to resell. That was more than 100 li!”. Having read Fei Xiaotong’s12 (1910–2005) books, I understand that China is a kinship society. When Fei talked about kinship relations, it was more or less pejorative. According to his metaphor, each person’s kinship relationship is like a circle of ripples in a pond, spreading out from the center where each individual is located, and the farther away the ripple, the lighter the relationship with you. When I lived in the countryside as a child, I only knew that there were many relatives and regarded visiting relatives as a joy; when I grew up and accepted Fei Xiaotong’s ideas, I developed a resistance to kinship. This time when I returned to my hometown and saw all sort of relatives making arrangements for my aunt, I began to rethink the meaning of Chinese kinship. I believe in liberalism, but am by no means a Hayekian rights supremacist. My understanding of liberalism is positive liberalism, which is the pursuit of human freedom based on the preservation of society. The “preservation of society” means not only the maintenance of its structure, but also the humane protection of each component of society. In my past writings, I have vaguely felt that liberalism in this sense is linked to traditional Chinese humanistic concepts and social structures, but after returning to my hometown this time I came to a new understanding of this on a practical level. Every society has its own unique traditions, but not every tradition is necessarily perfect. The British empiricist tradition makes the British pragmatic, but it also prevents them from thinking in a metaphysical manner, like the Germans; the German rational tradition has produced great philosophers, but it also makes the Germans dull in change; French romanticism can produce wild thinkers like Foucault who despise the world, but it often also makes France ineffectual; the Americans advocate individual freedom, which has created all kinds of social divisions despite its advantage to promote innovation.

12 Translator’s note: Fei Xiaotong (Hsiao-Tung Fei) is widely seen as the founder of Chinese modern sociology, and wrote many influential books about rural society such as Peasant Life in China (with Bronislaw Malinowski, Hesperides Press, 2008/1938) and From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society (UC Berkeley Press, 1992/1948).

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In China, perhaps because the repression had continued for too long, once the Qing dynasty fell, the slogan of the May Fourth Movement was “down with Confucius,” and Lu Xun used a madman of his own creation to accuse China of being a “cannibalistic” society.13 Recognizing the danger of such radical slogans, Hu Shih (1891– 1962) and Fu Sinian (1896–1950) began to “reorganize the national heritage.”14 Unfortunately, their “reorganization” stopped at the level of the classics, and they said little about China’s social structure. Liang Shuming15 (1893–1988) went one step further than Hu Shih and company, not only defending Chinese traditions in terms of doctrine, but also understanding the importance of the social structure of the lower classes in preserving traditions, and therefore actively engaged in experiments in village governance, thus pioneering the combination of Chinese intellectuals and grassroots society. It is regrettable that these experiments were cut short because of the Japanese invasion. However, the experiments themselves had their own limitations, most important among which was their effort to isolate the villages from society in order to realize a traditional agrarian order free from external damages. They did not realize that the villages had to be integrated into the outside commercial order, and that the rules of behavior of this outside world were often in conflict with the notions of the local society they promote. To put it more accurately, they failed to find something that would link traditional cultural values and modern commercial cultural values, to say nothing of the social structure that would support this linkage. In the 1930s, this may have been unimportant, but today this problem is unavoidable. What I saw and heard during my three days back in the village reflects this. On the one hand, at the formal level, rural society is disintegrating due to disorganization; on the other hand, the disintegration of formal 13 Translator’s note: The reference here is to Lu Xun’s famous story “Diary of a Madman,” where the narrator, something of an iconoclast who has been away from the village, has a crisis on returning home and imagines that his fellow villagers are planning to eat him. 14 Translator’s note: Hu Shi and Fu Sinian were major figures in the May Fourth/New Culture Movement of 1915–1919, and among other things sought to reread Chinese history in such a way as to reduce the impact centuries of Confucian ideology. 15 Translator’s note: Liang Shuming was a prominent philosopher and public intellectual in the Republic period, and was also involved in efforts to reconstruct rural Chinese society, which is what Yao Yang is referring to here.

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structures has highlighted the role of informal structures, and blood and kinship have once again become important ties that sustain the existence of society. If traditional values are still embodied in rural grassroots society, the sole vehicle of these values is kinship. The task facing village governance today, as I see it, is to find a new form of organization that will link traditional values and modern democratic concepts.

Epilogue The afternoon we signed the contract for my aunt, my Nanchang uncle and I went back to Hujiangbei and announced the decision to the whole family. My uncle said, “This is a good thing, and she can enjoy a happy life.” However, he started crying and got all choked up, so he left the house to go down to the lake by himself. That an old person who has taken care of their lot of descendants cannot get old and die at home is nothing to celebrate for Chinese people. In the countryside, it is an even greater loss of face for the descendants. That said, the cousins did not object. I was relieved, but like my uncle, I was choked up and I couldn’t speak. Looking around the old house, I understood that once my aunt was in the elders’ home, I would never come back here again. Maybe in a few years, my cousins will knock the house down and build something new, and my connection with my hometown will be broken. When I returned to the city, my village became a memory yet again. But I knew that there was one old person back there constantly thinking of me. Her thoughts became the thread linking my dreams to her reality. I urgently remitted the annual fees for my aunt’s year-long stay in the elders’ home, and impatiently waited for news that she had moved in, but all I got was a phone call from my aunt saying she wasn’t going. She said that the cousins and Juxiu had advised her not to go, because she shouldn’t be spending my money. I understood that this is their fear of what other people will say, and I tried to reason with my aunt on the phone for a long time, and then called Niangeng and asked him to do the same. Finally, on the day she was meant to move in, I called Niangeng again and learned that he had already taken her over there. However, after less than two months, my aunt called and said that she could not get used to it, first because the food was not good, and second because she developed a rash on her skin.The old house did not have a concrete floor and was rather humid, which is what she was used to, and she was uncomfortable in the drier environment. She said she wanted

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to go home. I knew that besides not being used to things, the bigger problem for her was loneliness, so I had to agree and let Niangeng take her back home. It would seem that for elders’ homes to work in rural China, we need not only a social effort, but the old people have to make an emotional effort as well.

Notes of 2023 My aunt is still alive today; she is 94 this year (2023). She is healthy except not being able to hear well. Now Xiaobing’s wife takes care of her. I have a sense that she will live long enough to see the family’s fifth generation. The village went through a major renovation project financed by the county government under the name of the Construction of the New Countryside. All old houses but our house were demolished and families began to build new houses on their old sites. Our house is designated as an education site for the Communist revolution because of Greatuncle Youguang. The assembly hall was rebuilt again. Husbandry now is forbidden; roads are paved; and road lights are provided. Almost every family with young people has a car. Living standards have apparently increased significantly. The problem is that there are not many young people in the village. My Nanchang uncle died two years ago, though. Despite his suffering during the Cultural Revolution, his retirement life was a happy one. I learned a lot from him about how to be a person. Someday, I will write about him.

Before My Grandfather’s Portrait (2009)

A photograph of my grandfather Yao Youguang hangs in the hall of my family’s old house in my home village. The frame is large and square, while the picture is oblong, and shows my grandfather from the chest up. His appearance is typical of the men in my family, thin, with an oval face, a high nose, and uncreased eyelids. He died in 1927, at which time he was 21 years old. The photograph was probably taken shortly before his death. At 21, he wore his hair short and parted in the middle, as was popular at the time, and was dressed in a presentable Sun Yat-sen jacket.1 His expression shows a reserve, a maturity, a serenity that belie his age. Youguang was the third of three brothers and the only one to receive a modern education. This is how his life is described in the 1990 edition of the local gazetteer of Xingan County:

姚洋, “在祖父的遗像前,” Tianya 天涯, December 2009. 1 Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) led the revolution against the Qing dynasty and is regarded as the founding father of Republic of China (1911–1949). Both Kuomintang and the Communists claim that they are the successor of Sun’s revolutionary ideas.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Y. Yang, China and the West, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1882-9_6

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Yao Youguang (1906-1927), male, was born on October 24, 1906 in Hujiangbei village, Yijiang township. His father, Yao Zhefu, was a Qing dynasty scholar who spent his life as a ‘poor teacher’ in a rural elementary school…In July of 1924, Yao Youguang attended a summer course organized by Zou Nu, a member of the Chinese Communist Party in the Xingan county town, where he read revolutionary books and journals such as ‘New Youth,’ ‘Guide,’ and ‘Red Light.’ In August of that year, he joined the Communist Youth League.

In March of 1926, Yao Youguang joined the Chinese Communist Party, becoming a member of the Xingan County branch; in May, he became the head of the youth section of the Xingan County Peasant Association. In January of 1927, Yao Youguang was elected to the executive committee of Xingan county branch of the Kuomintang, and was transferred to the peasant movement seminar of the Provincial Peasant Association for further studies. Later, he served as the special commissioner to the peasant movement in the three counties of Xinjian, Xingan, and Xiajiang, and personally led the peasant mass movement many times, helping to establish the peasant revolutionary armies known as the Peasant Self Defense Army in the three counties. After the Shanghai massacre on April 11, 1927, Yao Youguang received the order to transfer to the Provincial Peasant Association. For reasons of safety, he made his way from Renhe market in Xiajiang to Nanchang on a raft, cleverly hidden in a bag of peppers, thus evading the efforts by the Xingan Kuomintang to arrest him and successfully completing his transfer. On August 1 of that same year, Yao Youguang participated in the Nanchang Uprising, known the world over, and subsequently obeyed the organization’s order to stay in Nanchang to carry out underground revolutionary activities. In early November, Yao Youguang was unfortunately arrested by the right-wing Kuomintang, and was shot dead in secret at dawn on November 21. The next day, the Lingnanbao published the news that Yao Youguang, a leader of the land revolution in Jiangxi, and seven others were executed by firing squad. Before his execution, Yao Youguang vehemently shouted: ‘I will die for communism, but millions of communists will appear after my death!’. While Youguang was fighting against local tyrants and dividing the land among the farmers, my family back in the village heard about it and became very worried. My great-grandfather Yao Zhefu had been appointed magistrate of Qingjiang County (now Zhangshu City) by the

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national government, but died before taking up his post. My family was no longer wealthy by the time Youguang and his brothers were young men. His brothers could not understand grandfather’s “rebellion,” so they sent his next older brother Dichang to walk the 30 li to the county town to warn him that “rebellion means death,” which unfortunately turned out to be true. After Youguang was killed in Nanchang, his brothers suffered as well. When the revolution failed, local landlord militias were organized back home to take revenge, and his two brothers Zhichang and Dichang had to go into hiding in the mountains for three years. Youguang’s wife took their one-year-old son and went into hiding, and the child died as they were trying to escape. In order that Youguang’s family line not to be extinguished, our family decided to pass Youguang the oldest brother’s third son, who became my father. In early 1983, I saw for the first time the long list of names of the revolutionary martyrs from Jiangxi in the Memorial Hall of the Martyrs of the Revolution in Nanchang, and tried to imagine the faces of those martyrs for whom only their names remain—and sometimes not even that—and to say that I was “moved” is an understatement. Youguang was one of the lucky ones, and the same photograph of him hangs in the memorial hall. I stood in front of his portrait for a long time, not wanting to leave. Although the same picture had always been in the hallway back in the house in the village, I had never taken much interest in him because, first, I was just a kid, and my family did not talk about him too much either, aside from offering sacrifices before his picture at New Years. It was only in 1983, when I was about the same age as my grandfather when he died, that I really began to think about him and try to understand the meaning of his short life. Now that I am more than twice my grandfather’s age when he died, I still ponder the meaning of his young life. Was his sacrifice worth it? Did what he was seeking come to pass? How would he feel if he saw today’s China? Is this the China he would have wanted? It’s true, after 22 years of extremely difficult struggle, his comradesin-arms defeated their enemies at home and abroad and established their ideal, a people’s republic, and he would be happy about that. It’s true, the farmers got their land, and the local tyrants and evil gentry are no more, and he would be happy about that. It’s true, China is no longer invaded by foreign troops, and is much more respected in the world, and he would be happy about that. It’s true, people’s living standards have improved dramatically, and no one is having trouble getting enough to eat, and he

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would be happy about that…But still, many things have occurred over the past 60 years that he would have a hard time understanding. Mao Zedong’s “On New Democracy,” which he wrote in the early 1940s, defined the nature of the Communist-led revolution as a “new democracy” and imagined that this policy would remain in place for some time after the victory of the revolution. Thereupon we saw land reform, in which the farmers received land, realizing Sun Yat-sen’s ideal of “land to the tiller.” In the cities, except for the nationalization of monopoly capital, most of the private industries and businesses were left untouched and were allowed to continue to function in the years immediately following the revolution. However, the course of history did not follow Mao’s original vision, and socialist transformation came quickly. Private industry and commerce were either bought out or put into public–private partnerships; the farmers had to give up their newly acquired land and join people’s communes. Although ideologically defined as the path to communism, in reality the communes were one of the means adopted by the state to control the farmers. In order to quickly achieve the goal of industrialization, the state had to seize the agricultural surplus in order to accelerate the accumulation of capital. However, the organizational costs of seizing the surplus were high in an economy dominated by decentralized small farmers, and the economic managers of the time were not experienced in using and managing markets, so they opted for the communes. If the communes had been better organized, we would not have seen the disasters that occurred between 1959 and 1961; instead, the hysteria of the Great Leap Forward caused irreparable damage to the country and the people. The unprecedented famine became a scar on the history of the People’s Republic that will not heal. However, the destruction of the Great Leap Forward, though painful, was temporary. In contrast, the devastation caused by the Cultural Revolution cannot be recovered in one generation. If my grandfather had lived through the period of history between 1956 and 1976, I believe he would have shared much of the incomprehension of most of his comrades. But I also believe that he would have done what most of his comrades did, as long as he did not perish during the persecution of the Cultural Revolution—he would have given the Party another chance. In contrast, he would probably prefer not to see China as it is today. Yes, the people’s standard of living has greatly improved, and almost every house in our small village has a TV set, or

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a landline in the house, or cell phones. However, there are some things that do not fit with his ideals. Although the peasants are richer than they used to be, their social life is in chaos. No one takes care of public business, and the formerly harmonious village architecture has been disrupted by a chaotic mixture of houses. Young people have gone off in droves to Guangdong and Zhejiang to work, but what they bring back is a sense of disappointment and helplessness. The gap between urban and rural areas has widened greatly in the past thirty years and will not narrow in the foreseeable future. In addition, some Party cadres are corrupt and the power in their hands is not used to serve the people, but to fill their own pockets. All of this is a betrayal of grandfather’s ideals. Perhaps what would be most incomprehensible to Grandfather is that China seems to have gone full circle over the past 60 years: the revolution to which he devoted himself was originally intended to create an egalitarian society based on public ownership, but China today, in terms of its economic and social system, seems to have returned to 1956, or even to pre-revolutionary times. Surely it is not that the revolution wasn’t necessary? I ask this question both for my grandfather and for myself. After several years of reflection, my answer is that “the revolution was indeed necessary.” The starting point for understanding my answer is to put the Chinese revolution in the context of modern world history. The history of the past three or four hundred years is the history of mankind’s emergence from traditional society and evolution toward modern society. In traditional societies, dictatorship was the norm, and what controlled people’s behavior was often not reason, but prejudices and superstition; by contrast, modern societies are marked by freedom, democracy, and reason. The two are opposed to each other. In the transition from traditional to modern societies, revolutions have occurred in almost all of the countries in which the transition originated: in England, in France, in Japan, Russia, and Spain. Revolutions were necessary because traditional societies created interest groups and ideologues that benefited from them materially or spiritually and did not want to lose their past privileges or beliefs. Looking at China from a world perspective, it is necessary to understand our history since 1840 as a whole. Before that, China lived in a

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world of tianxia, not a world of nations.2 China’s national identity was forged in the process of resisting imperialist invasion. The political ideas behind the 1911 Revolution, the May Fourth Movement, and the New Democratic Revolution were all very different, but their starting point was anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism. Although the century following 1840 was full of slaughter, China nonetheless completed the construction of a nation-state and the transformation from a traditional to a modern society. From a larger historical perspective, such a transformation takes at least a century; the ideological battles involved are less important than the great transformation. If we carefully compare the mainland and Taiwan in the 1950s, we might be surprised to find that the two places were very similar in every way except for the differences in the ruling parties. Both places carried out a thorough land reform; both places emphasized the importance of developing heavy industry; both places engaged in staterun enterprises, while both allowed the development of private industry and commerce; both places took advantage of the price gap between industrial and agricultural products to extract surplus from agriculture, and so on. There may be many reasons for this, and there are many differences between the two places, but what the two share is that both the Communist Party and the Kuomintang recognized the importance of social equality for social development and economic construction. Moreover, it is also precisely because both places created an equal society that both governments were free to pursue economic growth; in particular, land reform gave the peasants rights in land and increased their motivation to produce, so that the government could take the surplus from the peasants without provoking their resistance. In terms of egalitarianism, our history between 1956, when the socialist transformation occurred, and 1978, when reform and opening began, was not without significance. True enough, the suffering of the 2 Translator’s note: Tianxia/天下, which literally means “all under heaven,” is best understood as China’s world view prior to the fateful arrival of the West in the nineteenth century. From a tianxia perspective, China stood at the center of a moral universe, and the force of civilization diminished as one moved from the center toward the peripheries. That said, even distant “barbarians” could become more “civilized” by engaging with and imitating China, in part through the rituals of the tribute system. China did of course understand the rules of realpolitik and pursued her own “national” interests, but the idea of equal nation-states was not part of the tianxia perspective.

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Chinese people during those twenty some-odd years greatly exceeded their happiness, and the thirty years since the reform and opening seem to have gone full circle, bringing China back to the pre-1956 period; but in those twenty years we made remarkable achievements in strengthening social equality, empowering the people, and building their civic consciousness. In terms of equality, the commune system and the public ownership system in the cities almost completely deprived the population of the right to accumulate personal and family wealth, thus producing extreme equality in income distribution. This egalitarianism had a tremendously negative effect on the economic development of the time, but it also served to level Chinese society completely. In addition, the massive participation of women in employment greatly enhanced the status of women in the family and in society. In terms of empowering the population, the government vigorously advocated literacy campaigns, universal basic education, and universal basic medical care, which allowed China to be better equipped in terms of human resources by the beginning of reform and opening. When comparing the economic development of China and India, the Indian economist Amartya Sen (b. 1933), a Nobel laureate in economics, has repeatedly emphasized China’s advantage in human development as the main reason for China’s faster growth.3 In terms of building civic consciousness, various organizational efforts have launched the process of transforming the population from natural people to political people. This process is not yet complete, but it is an essential part of the construction of the Chinese state. The world of nation-states differs from tianxia in that from the tianxia perspective, a person or a small group can exist apart from others, whereas in the world of nation-states everyone is a member of the state as a community. Therefore, the world of tianxia is made up of natural people, while in the world of nation-states people must become political people, i.e., citizens, which is the process that human beings must go through in their transformation from traditional society to modern society. In this way, we can understand Liang Shuming’s (1893–1988) comments toward the end of his life in Has Man a Future? in which he

3 Armatya Sen, Development as Freedom. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

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criticizes himself for challenging Mao Zedong shortly after the revolution.4 Liang and his contemporaries in the rural construction movement during China’s Republican period had taken an approach that did not conform to the movement of history. What history needed was not for the farmers to return to tradition, but instead to be involved in the process of nation-building, becoming part of modern society. Today, the task we face in the countryside remains the same, and rebuilding the countryside around village democracy is the best option. The egalitarian social structure and the increased capacity of the population provided the basis for the high economic growth of the People’s Republic in the last thirty years. The contribution of the people’s increased capacity to economic growth is easy to understand, so I will focus here on the relationship between an egalitarian social structure and high economic growth. An egalitarian social structure means that there were no powerful interest groups in China, which meant that government economic policy could focus on the country’s long-term economic development rather than on the short-term interests of certain groups of people. We can do a thought experiment where we imagine that we were the ruler of a country, forced to make choices in either an egalitarian society or in an inegalitarian society. In an egalitarian society, no social group is powerful enough to challenge our rule, and no social group is wealthy enough to bribe us, so our rational choice would be to not pander to the interests of or ally with any particular group. I call such a government a “disinterested government”—it does not favor any social group as if it were free of any emotional attachment to any social group.5 Because of its unbiased posture, such a government is free to adopt policies that encourage economic growth, even if those policies hurt some groups. In contrast, in an unequal society where some groups are strong enough to 4 Translator’s note: Liang famously clashed with Mao in 1953 over the government’s policy in the countryside. Mao believed that farmers had to be brought into the country’s industrialization process, making contribution to capital accumulation. Liang opposed and believed that modernization should not be at the expense of peasants. Has Man a Future? is a dialogue taken in 1980 between Liang and historian Guy Alitto on Liang’s life and thought. See Shu Ming Liang and Guy Alitto, Has Man A future? New York: Springer, 2013. 5 Yang Yao. “The Disinterested Government: An Interpretation of China’s Economic Success in the Reform Era.” In Augustin Fosu, ed., Achieving Development Success. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

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overthrow us or rich enough to buy us off, our rational choice would be a biased government that looks after the interests of powerful groups more than the overall economic development of the society. Because of the absence of powerful interest groups in Chinese society, the Chinese government has become a disinterested government in the past thirty years. Looking back at this history, we can see that the government’s economic policies have been selective—special economic zones, opening up to the outside world, enterprise reforms, joining the World Trade Organization, etc.,—all of these were initiatives that were conducive to long-term economic growth but hurt the interests of some people. However, government policies have not favored the interests of particular groups of people over time, nor have they hurt the interests of particular groups of people over time; in the long run, even at the policy level, all groups of people have been treated fairly and equally. For this reason, in my view, the last thirty years in China have not been a simple return to the pre-1956 period, but rather an upward spiral. I am not sure, however, that my grandfather would be entirely satisfied by my answer. He might agree with my general assessment of the Chinese revolution, although he might still consider the ideological battle between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang important; perhaps he would agree with my assessment of the first thirty years of the People’s Republic, although he might still consider socialist transformation necessary. But he would surely persist in asking: “Why is the gap between rich and poor now so much larger than before 1956? Why is the urban–rural divide becoming wider?”. As an economist, I can certainly blame the market for this. Indeed, the market naturally widens the gap between rich and poor. But I know this doesn’t answer my grandfather’s question. As a socialist country, we could do better. I still have not completely thought this question through, but what I can tell my grandfather with certainty is that, since I first stared at his picture 26 years ago and began to think seriously about the meaning of his short life and that of my coming life as an adult, I have arrived at some answers about the Chinese revolution and the successes and failures of contemporary China. Sixty years ago, in his inscription for the Monument to the People’s Heroes, Mao Zedong wrote: “Eternal glory to the heroes of the people who laid down their lives in the people’s war of liberation and the people’s revolution in the past three years! Eternal glory to the heroes of the

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people who laid down their lives in the people’s war of liberation and the people’s revolution in the past thirty years! Eternal glory to the heroes of the people who from 1840 laid down their lives in the many struggles against domestic and foreign enemies and for national independence and the freedom and well-being of the people!” The Monument to the People’s Heroes will be immortalized for all time because of this inscription, and grandfather will be immortalized for having been one of the countless known and unknown people’s heroes who “struggled against domestic and foreign enemies and for national independence and the freedom and well-being of the people.” One evening in early autumn, my wife and I were taking a walk in Houhai, the lake in the center of old Beijing. We avoided the busy commercial sections, and followed the small lakeside paths to an area where there are compounds occupied by many households, which was quieter and closer to nature. Suddenly we heard the sound of a group singing with musical accompaniment not far away, and followed the sound to a pavilion where we saw a group of middle-aged and elderly men and women performing with abandon, surrounded by a crowd of spectators. When we got there, they were singing the revolutionary song “The Red Blooms of the Wild Lilies 山丹丹开花红艳艳.”6 The singers were some ten women in their fifties and sixties, and the leader was a brightly dressed old lady who sang at the top of her lungs in a high and loud voice, with energy to spare; the accompanists were six or seven men of the same age, with all kinds of instruments, both Chinese and Western, and everyone was completely into it. Everyone—the singers, the musicians, the audience—was completely mesmerized, it was such a happy scene! I couldn’t help but tear up. My grandfather would surely be gratified. I would like to dedicate this article to the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.

6 This song was composed in 1971, and celebrates the arrival of the Red Army in the Yan’an region, one of the cradles of the Communist revolution. It is included in the corpus of “China’s one hundred most patriotic songs.” You can view a performance on Youtube here.

“My View of Revolutionary History” (2019)

The three preceding essays reflect my thought on the role that the revolution played in China’s modernization. There are many interpretations of the Chinese revolution. Some people hold unconditional support for the revolution in each period. While I feel sympathetic about some of their ideas, I am afraid that those who support the Cultural Revolution have lost their minds. There is a definite verdict on the Cultural Revolution, as stated in the Party document entitled “Resolution on Certain Issues in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China.”1 I wrote “The Vanishing Town” to tell everyone that the Cultural Revolution destroyed the hearts and minds of the people as well as whatever elite elements remained in the countryside. Those who support the Cultural Revolution lack a deep sense of history, and only see inequality and class divisions that have emerged over the past 40 years, like those students from the Marxist Research Association at Peking University who noted growing inequalities between rich and poor, as well as

姚洋, “我的革命史观,” The Pen 澎湃 Wechat channel, April 1, 2019. The material presented here is the first part of an interview taken with a reporter from The Pen. 1 This resolution was passed by the CCP central committee on June 27, 1981. It provided official assessments for the party’s important decisions and events since 1949.

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other issues. But the problem cannot be solved by going back to the Cultural Revolution, and using those same methods once again, because we all know the results the Cultural Revolution produced.

Revolution Is a Tool for Modernization Of course, some people completely deny the revolution, arguing that it was not necessary at all, or even want to return to the 1908 Outline of the Imperial Constitution put forward by the Qing court. They praise the Empress Dowager Cixi for having promulgated this document, and say that had she lived a few more years, China might have established a constitutional monarchy. Such people also lack a sense of history; there was no possibility of modernizing the Qing dynasty. First of all, the Qing dynasty was so corrupt that it was beyond repair. The last emperor Puyi was very young when he abdicated, the abdication edict was signed by the Empress Dowager Longyu, and the next day when this same empress dowager went to the court to conduct government business, the civil and military officials were not there. She asked the eunuchs why the officials had not come, and they told her that the document she signed the day before had put an end to the Qing dynasty. Only then did Empress Longyu realize the meaning of the document she had signed. When the dynasty had become this corrupt, there was no possibility that it could continue to exist and modernize. In fact, the Qing dynasty could no longer exist even in a biological sense, because the last few generations of Qing emperors were infertile, mostly because of inbreeding, so it would have been strange had the Qing not died out. At the same time, since the Qing rulers were Manchus, nationalist sentiments were at play as well. At the outset, Sun Yat-sen launched the revolution with the slogan “Expel the Tartars and restore China.” Had the regime been led by Han Chinese, there might have some possibility to turn things around. But how could the people continue to tolerate a Manchu regime as corrupt as this one? So the 1911 Revolution was inevitable. But what was the meaning of the Chinese Revolution? Might there be a neutral way to explain the Chinese Revolution?

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Sometimes foreigners can see the Chinese Revolution more clearly from their stance at the sidelines. The American historian John King Fairbank (1907–1991) wrote a book in the 1980s called The Great Chinese Revolution 2 and he started talking about the Chinese revolution from 1840. It was only after reading this book that I understood what Mao Zedong meant by his inscription on the Monument to the People’s Heroes: “Eternal glory to the heroes of the people who from 1840 laid down their lives in the many struggles against domestic and foreign enemies and for national independence and the freedom and well-being of the people!” Mao, who had a deeper view of history than his colleagues, wrote the inscription because he realized that China was in the process of moving from a traditional society to a modern one, and that he was merely a tool in China’s modernization. Mao was constantly examining himself, and when he entered Beijing on the eve of victory in 1949, he said to premier Zhou Enlai (1898– 1976) that “we are entering the city to take the test,” a way of reminding himself that “we have to be different from the emperors.” I read the memoirs of one of Mao’s staff, who wrote that when Mao finished writing his final commentary for the 1956 collection Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside 3 it was already 4:00 a.m. His personal doctor took a walk with him, and said to him, “Chairman Mao, our revolution has been successful, and you should get your rest.” At the time Mao was in his 60s, and his face fell. He answered: “We must continue the revolution because we are in danger of returning to feudalism.” This shows that he was self-conscious and wanted to discipline himself not to become an emperor in the process of China’s journey toward modernization. From the moment when China was forced to begin to modernize down to the present day, we still have not completely modernized, and we, the people, are still the instruments of China’s modernization. This is how we should understand the Chinese revolution, which is not only the revolution led by the Communist Party, or the revolution led by Sun Yat-sen, or the Hundred Days Reform in 1898, or the sacrifice of Tan 2 John Fairbank, The Great Chinese Revolution. New York: Harper & Row, 1986. 3 Translator’s note: Yao gives the name of the document as 掀起社会主义建设的新高

潮, which does not seem to exist, but Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside was a large volume of documents with Mao’s commentaries, which is surely what Yao is referring to. The memoirs are surely those of Li Zhisui, Mao’s personal physician, available in English translation as The Private Life of Chairman Mao (Random House, 1994).

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Sitong4 (1865–1898) and company. All of these revolutions were striving to accomplish one thing: to change China from a traditional society to a modern one.

The Inevitability of Revolution Some people may say that the process of revolution is too cruel, but revolution is inevitable. If we talk about cruelty, all revolutions, past and present, have been cruel. The modernization of England began with the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which was preceded by nearly a century of war. It was at a time of the Little Ice Age and all of Europe was in famine, and there were incidents of cannibalism. China, too, was in the midst of a violent moment of dynastic change and people were also starving. Compared to Europe, the Chinese revolution was much more difficult. China is a huge country and Chinese civilization had not experienced the ruptures we see in Europe, which meant that revolution was difficult in a cultural sense, and even more difficult politically. The object of the revolutions in both China and the West was at first the power of the monarchy, but Europe was more fortunate in that the European monarchies were not as powerful as the Chinese emperors. In addition, religion was a check on monarchical power in Europe, which meant that religion and the revolutionaries could make a common cause to oppose monarchical power, or revolutionaries could simply launch their revolution under the banner of religion. During the reign of the Catholic king Charles I from 1625 to 1649, a conflict broke out between Catholics and Protestants, and many of the rich merchants in the English Parliament were Protestants, which meant that religion joined together with the rising bourgeoisie, and led the king to the executioner’s block. So the English revolution had a dominant force, and their revolution was easier than China’s, but the process was also very violent, and the war lasted almost a century. From this perspective, the Chinese revolution was not an alliance. China had no religion to speak of, and civil society was very weak. The

4 Translator’s note: Tan Sitong was a well-known reformer in the late nineteenth century, identified with Kang Youwei’s and Liang Qichao’s Hundred Days’ Reform in 1898. Tan and five others were executed after a coup returned the conservative faction to power in the Qing court.

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Chinese revolution had multiple tasks to carry out, including not only human liberation and political liberation, but also ideological liberation. China has a long history of imperial power. Since the unification of the empire in 221 BCE by China’s first emperor Qin Shihuang, China entered the imperial era, which was not feudal. Feudalism in China refers to the Western Zhou period (1045–771 BCE), the Spring and Autumn period (770–446 BCE), and the Warring States period (445–221 BCE), and Marx’s description of China’s feudal society is incorrect. Marx did not understand China or East Asian culture, and his “Asiatic Mode of Production” is not altogether accurate. The imperial monarchy was more powerful than the feudal monarchy, so the influence of monarchy on China was deeply rooted. Chinese civilization reached the peak of the world’s agrarian civilization in the Song dynasty (960–1279), and in the absence of the cooling of the planet, we would have probably have had a breakthrough, quite possibly 1000 years ago, and achieved an industrial revolution. At that time, half of Kaifeng’s population was burning coal, and China was technically prepared; muskets and looms had been invented, and the emergence of steam engines was entirely within the range of possibilities. However, because of the cooling in the northern hemisphere, nomads from the north took turns invading the south, and in the process destroyed the great Song civilization. In the face of natural disasters and barbarian invasions, Chinese culture began to become conservative during the late Northern Song (960–1127) and Southern Song (1127–1279) dynasties. The Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi5 blamed human greed for the turmoil, so instead of encouraging resistance against the foreign enemies, they pushed Confucianism to the extreme and turned it into a conservative doctrine. The stagnation of China during the Ming-Qing (1368–1911) period was the dual result of the barbaric rule of the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) and Chinese civilization’s move toward conservatism. This influence was far-reaching and continues even today; in terms of their general mindset, I am afraid that most ordinary people in China today are still stuck in the nineteenth century.

5 Translator’s note: The Cheng brothers were Cheng Hao (1032–1085) and Cheng Yi (1033–1107) who, together with Zhu Xi (1130–1200), are considered the founders of Neo-Confucianism.

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Therefore, China’s modernization had no allies; our modernization has been difficult because the forces of tradition are too strong. That is why Tan Sitong said that “reform in all countries begins with bloodshed. No one has yet shed blood for China’s reform, which is why our country is not flourishing. Please start with me.”6 When he said this, Tan had already taken refuge in a foreign embassy, but he left the embassy in order to die. He wanted to use his death to show everyone that national progress requires bloodshed. To engage in counterfactuals for a moment, the only shortcoming of the Chinese revolution is that if Sun Yat-sen had not died so early, Chinese history might have taken a different turn, and perhaps our revolution would not have been so tragic. Because Dr. Sun handed over the reins to the wrong person, the revolutionary process became very tragic indeed. Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975) was a gangster from the Shanghai Bund, but after he studied at a military academy in Japan, his dumb loyalty earned Sun’s appreciation. Still, he had no historical vision. Chiang Kai-shek usurped the power of the Kuomintang through his military might, and his rise to power was tantamount to usurpation. Wang Jingwei (1883–1944) was no match for Chiang Kai-shek and he ultimately had to recognize Chiang’s authority.7 If Sun Yat-sen had chosen Wang Jingwei as his successor, imposed a strict organization on the Kuomintang, somehow continued Sun’s policy of “uniting with Russia and supporting the Communists,” and kept the military under control, then the Chinese revolution might have turned out differently. In a sense, the later revolution led by the Communist Party was inevitable but accidental. Mao Zedong played a very important role in the Communist-led revolution. He was an intellectual who was determined to change the world through military action, and his personal history is the history of the Communist Party’s striving for success.

6 Translator’s note: The Chinese quote is “各国变法, 无不从流血而成。 今中国未闻有 因变法而流血者, 此国之所以不昌者也。有之, 请从嗣同始.” Yao paraphrases the quote, which is somewhat confusing for the reader not already familiar with what Tan said. 7 Translator’s note: Yao actually says that Wang had no choice but to accept the merger of the Nanjing and Wuhan governments 宁汉合流, a reference to factional divisions within the Kuomintang prior to the establishment of the Nanjing government in 1927. Wang, one of Chiang Kai-shek’s chief rivals at the time, is better known—and generally despised—for his collaboration with the Japanese invaders.

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Mao’s success was the result of many fortuitous events. He was captured by the militia in Jiangxi, and he bribed them with a few silver dollars and got out of danger. If he had died there, the revolution would have been over. At the beginning of the Long March, Otto Braun’s (1900–1974) group of three heeded Zhu De’s (1886–1976) plea8 before bringing Mao Zedong along, otherwise the Long March would also have failed. After the Zunyi Conference9 in January 1935, the CCP continued the Long March, climbing snowy mountains and crossing the swamps, and if the Red Army had gone straight to the Soviet Union, the revolution would have been over, because the Ma Family Army10 was waiting in the Northwest, and the exhausted Red Army would have known the same fate as the Western Expedition,11 which was defeated in the Northwest. It was only because Mao Zedong had picked up an old newspaper that he knew Liu Zhidan12 (1903–1936) was in northern Shaanxi, so Mao temporarily changed his mind and went to Yan’an. The later Xi’an Incident13 in December 1936 was also fortuitous, otherwise it would have been difficult for the Red Army to establish itself. So, without these chance events, the Communist revolution would not have succeeded.

8 Translator’s note: Otto Braun was a German Communist, sent by the Komintern to China, who played an important military role in the Jiangxi Soviet and at the beginning of the long march. Zhu De was Mao’s ally and commander of the Firs Red Army. Many details about the Long March remain in dispute. 9 Translator’s note: Held in the first months of the Long March, the Zunyi Conference is often portrayed as the moment when Mao Zedong first established his authority in the Communist movement, although recent research has called this into question. 10 Translator’s note: The reference is to a coalition of Muslim militarists in the Ninxia region Many Muslims surnamed Ma in that region. 11 Translator’s note: Part of the Red Army that was sent to occupy Ningxia and Gansu, but was subsequently defeated by local militarists. 12 Translator’s note: Liu Zhidan is often portrayed as the founder the Shaanxi–Gansu– Ningxia Base Area in north-west China, which later became the Yan’an Soviet, although recent research called this into question. 13 Translator’s note: In the Xi’an Incident, Kuomintang troops originally from Manchuria—occupied by the Japanese since 1931—were sent to Yan’an to confront the Communists, but the Communists convinced them that Chinese should join together to resist the Japanese, and the Kuomintang forces refused to engage. Chiang Kai-shek flew from Nanjing to Xi’an to resolve the crisis, but was kidnapped by Manchurian troops, and only released when he agreed to change his policy. The Xi’an Incident was an important moment leading to the Second United Front between the Kuomintang and the CCP.

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But we can’t just look at chance events; the revolution led by the Chinese Communist Party was also a necessity in a certain sense. It was the Communist Party, and not the Kuomintang, that inherited the Chinese revolution started by Sun Yat-sen. All along, there were many opportunities for the Nationalists and Communists to cooperate and to accelerate the modernization of China without the need for a fierce and bloody civil war, but all of these opportunities were missed. My grandfather was a Communist martyr, but he also worked for the Kuomintang county committee in Xingan County. In my view, he belonged both to the KMT and to the CCP, because this was a United Front period and cross-membership was allowed. Up until 1945, when the peace talks between the two parties failed, there was always a chance for the Communist Party to cooperate. Mao Zedong at one point wanted to move CCP headquarters to Huaiyin so that it would be convenient for him to go to Nanjing for meetings, because the Communist Party wanted to be part of the government. But Chiang Kai-shek did not have much historical perspective and made another mistake by fighting the civil war. He believed that it was the Xi’an Incident that had kept him from wiping out the Communists in 1936, and that ten years later, here was another opportunity that he could not miss, so he once again chose the wrong side of history. Chiang Kaishek was not a great man in terms of military ability, organizational talent, or strategy. Why did he fail when he had such a powerful army? It was because he had no organizational skills and those under him did not listen to his commands. Chiang Kai-shek missed the opportunity to become the instrument of China’s modernization, and handed the opportunity to Mao Zedong. In “Before My Grandfather’s Portrait” I reflected on the Chinese revolution and came to the conclusion that we are all tools of Chinese modernization. Returning to the historical situation at the time, modernization was not possible without sacrifice. The English revolution was extremely tragic, beginning with the beheading of Charles I. After Charles’s son retook the throne, Oliver Cromwell’s body was exhumed, and his corpse hanged, meaning that he was humiliated even after his death. I used to teach in a Peking University-Cambridge University program, and I asked the British students whether this passage was included in their textbooks. They said no. I guess it was too cruel for that. The French Revolution was similar in that the revolutionaries killed each other, and it was also very brutal. But the revolution brought results, and

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Napoleon started a war to protect the achievements of the French Revolution, affecting many countries throughout Europe, but all the places Napoleon’s army invaded developed faster than other places in the next century or two.14 Therefore, for old countries, especially countries with a long history like China, to move from the old society to the modern society, Enlightenment alone is not enough, and there must also be a bloody revolution to completely eradicate the old forces and finally achieve modernization.

14 The economist Daron Acemoglu and his coauthors provide empirical evidence. See Daron Acemoglu et al., “The Consequences of Radical Reform: The French Revolution,” American Economic Review 101, no. 7 (2011): 3286–3307.

The Path of Chinese Modernization and Its World Significance (2022)

At the juncture of the centennial of the CCP’s founding, how to understand the relationship between the Party and China’s modernization remains an important issue for contemporary Chinese intellectuals. This essay examines the centennial history of the CCP within the framework of the modernization of late-developing countries, and explores the path of Chinese modernization pioneered by the Party and the significance of this path for the world, especially for other late-developing countries. In all countries, modernization consists of two dimensions: transition and development. In terms of transition, modernization means the abandonment of the rigid and oppressive social, political, and economic systems of traditional societies and their replacement by the more open and freer systems of modern societies; in terms of development, modernization means the continuous increase in people’s income and national strength. The two do not always go together and may indeed constrain one another. The challenge is even greater for late-developing countries, which have to complete their transition and development in an even shorter period of time, given their duals goals of catching up with the

姚洋: “中国现代化道路及其世界意义,” Journal of Modernization Studies 国家 现代化建设研究, 2022, Vol. 1, No. 3: 17–31. References in Chinese are removed for easy reading. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Y. Yang, China and the West, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1882-9_8

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social, economic, and political development of the developed countries as soon as possible, while at the same time having to face the challenges and perhaps even invasions of those same developed countries. The CCP was born in the process of Chinese intellectuals’ search for a total solution that would allow China to achieve transition and development, with the initial aim of changing the political, social, and economic structure of China by means of class struggle and thus creating a new and equal society. In the first thirty years after the founding of New China, the Party led the people of the entire nation in a dual process of socialist revolution and socialist construction, setting the pace for China’s transformation and development. After reform and opening, the Party reconciled with Chinese tradition in terms of practice, drawing on the best elements of that tradition to provide important philosophical and institutional guarantees for China’s economic takeoff. In so doing, the Party has led China on a unique and globally significant path toward modernization. Specifically, the world significance of this path is made up of four aspects. First, China managed to carry out a process of peaceful transition and development in a large late-developing country, pioneering a new path toward modernization for the world; second, this path prioritized human development and improved the education and health of the general public; third, the path was pragmatic and down-to-earth in its engagement with economics and institution building; fourth, the ruling party has been broadly representative, relatively neutral in its relation to society, and concerned with the long-term development of the country as a whole.

The Birth of the Chinese Communist Party If we start with England’s Glorious Revolution in 1688, world modernization has been underway for more than 300 years; if we take the post-World War II era as the endpoint of Western modernization, Western modernization had also been going on for more than 200 years. However, the modernization of late-developing countries cannot go through the same lengthy process, because the results of modernization are staring them in the face. In terms of economic development, the point is to catch up. The developed economies essentially got where they are by following a basic script, relying on a market approach to build their economies, but late-developing countries hoping to catch up with the living standards of the developed world may well have to think outside the box.

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Still, catching up is very hard to do. In the 70 years following World War II, only eleven economies were able to leave behind their status of middle-income or low-income countries and join the developed world. This includes Japan and certain countries in Southern Europe. The only economies to have genuinely transformed poor economies into developed economies are the Four Asian Tigers (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore). This suggests that catching up in economic terms is an extremely difficult process, with a small probability of success. Alongside the challenge of economic development is that of social and political change, which is even greater. Traditional societies were hierarchical societies, and the upper classes were in no hurry to give up their privileges. Traditional societies were also intellectually rigid societies, and those classes enjoying intellectual dominance would not easily abandon their positions. Although traditional Chinese society was marked by a high degree of mobility, its institutions and ideas were still rigid. Of course, the most important features of modern societies are their open systems and freedom of thought, and the conflict with traditional societies is inevitable, and the transition from traditional to modern society is bound to be very painful. In European history, countries such as England or France, large countries at the start of these historical processes, went through revolutions before starting the modernization process, while countries that did not experience revolutions suffered in other ways. Germany, for example, was the most successful economy of the nineteenth century in terms of catching up with England and France, but this occurred in the absence of a social revolution, and Germany’s eventual slide toward militarism had much to do with this. Japan, the Germany of the twentieth century in economic terms, had the same problem. China began its trek toward modernization in 1860. In the words of Li Hongzhang (1823–1901), a high official who had much involved in this process, China, at the end of the nineteenth century, experienced its greatest change in three thousand years. Chinese civilization, which has a written history of some three thousand years, had never encountered such a huge challenge as that of Western civilization. The other major foreign challenge China had faced was the introduction of Buddhism, which took China roughly one thousand years to completely digest. The impact of Western civilization was even more vast and penetrating than that of Buddhism, and Chinese scholars at the time worried that it would take even longer for China to completely absorb it.

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Between 1860 and 1919, China’s modernization went through three stages. The first stage was the Foreign Affairs movement. The Foreign Affairs Movement was not without its successes, one mark of which is that, on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, China had the largest fleet in Asia, the Beiyang Fleet. China’s defeat in the war led those with a vision to realize that technology alone was not enough, and that the system had to be changed, which led to the second stage of modernization. At this point two different forces appeared, one advocating revolution and the other reform. The former was led by Sun Yat-sen and his Revive China Society, and the latter was led by Kang Youwei (1858– 1927) and his Hundred Days’ Reform. The reform ended in failure, and the revolution ultimately ended with the establishment of the Republic of China. The victory of the revolution did not achieve the expected results, however, as Yuan Shikai (1859–1916), the interim president, sought to proclaim himself emperor, militarists divided the country between them, and the foreign powers continued their abuse and oppression. Around the time of the Hundred Days’ Reform in 1898, Social Darwinist ideas began circulating in China, the result of Yan Fu’s (1854– 1921) translation of Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics and Liang Qichao’s (1873–1929) writings in newspapers such as Qingyi Bao and Xinmin Bao, printed in Japan, and became one of the dominant trends among Chinese intellectuals for more than a decade. Since the revolution had not allowed China to take its rightful place in the world, intellectuals had to come up with something else. This was the background of the New Culture Movement in the 1910s and 1920s. The third stage began. Given that technological development and institutional reforms had both failed, intellectuals who launched the New Culture Movement decided that the problem was China’s culture, so they began to focus on the transformation of the people’s minds and culture, and one of the themes was opposing tradition, whence the slogan “Down with Confucius.” The May Fourth Movement further radicalized the New Culture Movement, and radical intellectuals such Chen Duxiu (1879–1942) and Li Dazhao (1888–1927) began to introduce Marxism into China. The victory of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 made them realize that a socialist revolution might offer a total solution for building a strong China. Having experienced the First World War, Western intellectuals began to entertain pessimistic views about Western culture, a trend which also influenced Chinese intellectuals. Marxism emerged as the antithesis of

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mainstream Western culture, which merged well with the critical attitude of Chinese radical intellectuals toward the West; the cultural revolution already underway in China was in need of a radical doctrine to take command, which means that Marxism came in at just the right moment. The sinification of Marxism began at that point. The Chinese Communist Party’s acceptance of Marxism was both idealistic and instrumental, the latter becoming more important in the course of practice. Class struggle was the Party’s tool for social transformation, and whenever the situation permitted, the Party attempted to carry out social transformation through class struggle. From the point of view of modernization, the class struggle of that era was a means to an end in the transition toward modernization and transformation. The objects of class struggle were those in power who represented the political, social, and economic order of the traditional society, and the outcome of the class struggle was the establishment of a new modern order. Why did the Nationalist Party—the Kuomintang—fail to shoulder the responsibility of China’s transition to modernity? Because from the outset, the Kuomintang did not have such qualities and abilities. For Sun Yatsen, revolution started out with nationalism, but he later came up with the Three People’s Principles with an eye toward merging the Tongmenghui with the later Kuomintang. During the United Front period, when Sun allied with the Communists between 1923 and 1927, he believed that his principle advocating the “people’s livelihood” was consistent with Communism, because both were about improving the lives of the common people, which meant that the Three People’s Principles could accommodate Communism. He used this explanation to convince rightists in the Kuomintang to cooperate with the Communists. But Sun was always strongly opposed to the idea of class struggle in China, because he believed that there were basically no differences between the classes in China. Here we see that Sun lacked historical vision, and did not realize that the CCP’s advocacy of class struggle actually meant to use this struggle as a weapon to overthrow the old system. Sun’s successor Chiang Kai-shek initially supported Soviet Communism, and was sympathetic to the Russian Revolution, and once led a study tour to Russia. His transformation away from this stance was a complicated process. First, there was the conflict with the CCP over the Canton Coup of 1926, when Chiang purged certain Communist members in the Nationalist army. Second, his victories in the Northern Expedition in 1927 fueled his desire for power. Third, the CCP’s land

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reform in the countryside and power grabs in the cities stirred his conservative instincts. The Shanghai Massacre of April 12, 1927, allowed Chiang Kai-shek to finally take control of the Kuomintang and eliminate the Communists from its ranks, but in the long run, it also made the Kuomintang into a counter-revolutionary movement, which cost them the support of progressive youth, who yearned for something else. So, by the Yan’an period (1936–1945), patriotic young people flocked to the Communist headquarters in Yan’an instead of the Kuomintang capital in Chongqing. Those who went to Chongqing went to escape the war, while those who went to Yan’an were seeking a glorious and completely new China. In the eyes of the progressive youth, the Kuomintang was already corrupt. In this sense, the Kuomintang had lost its status as the leader of the Chinese revolution and the promotor of Chinese modernization. According to Li Zehou1 (1930–2021), the period from 1919 to 1949 was marked by the two themes of Enlightenment and national salvation, and national salvation ultimately won out over Enlightenment. However, characterizing this period as “Enlightenment” seems incomplete; instead, we should look at it from the perspective of modernization. Enlightenment is merely one part of modernization; and the revolution, the goal of which was to start a social transformation, was the more important part. Consequently, national salvation not only won out over Enlightenment, it also won out over revolution. The revolution could only be completed once New China was established.

The Socialist Revolution and Its Significance After setting up its new regime, the CCP began to try to realize the original ambitions of the early period of the PRC, which meant carrying out a socialist revolution whose contents included land reform (and the later collectivization, including the People’s Communes set up during the Great Leap Forward), the socialist transformation of industry and commerce, the emancipation of women, and the construction of a new socialist culture. In addition, the Party was committed to universal education and the improvement of public health. All of these changes greatly advanced China’s modernization process, although the collectivization of 1 Translator’s note: Li Zehou was a philosopher who focused on aesthetics and ethics, as well as a public intellectual who had an immense impact on China’s “second Enlightenment” in the 1980s.

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agriculture and the transformation of industry and commerce served the ends of building socialism more than modernization, as discussed in the next section. Land Reform Some people have used partial data to argue that land relations in old China were not all that problematic. However, according to a survey conducted by the National Resources Commission in the early 1930s, the percentage of farmers who owned and worked their own land was only 41.7% nationwide, and was even lower in the south, at 27.2%. Among the farmers who did not till their own fields, there were more hired laborers in the north and more tenant farmers in the south. This suggests that land relations in old China were very problematic indeed. The significance of breaking these archaic land relations was twofold. The first point was to liberate the productive forces. There were two reasons that the land situation constrained these forces. First, the peasants had no control of either the land or the fruits of their labor, and thus were less motivated to produce. The hired laborers had no land at all and lived on the pitiful wages paid by the landlord, so they naturally had little motivation; tenant farmers generally had to give 50% of their harvest to the landlord, which also affected their incentive to work. Second, tenant farmers have very little wealth and have very little ability to assume risk, but they have no choice but to bear the risk of natural disasters, especially under fixed lease contracts, according to which they bear all the risks of a reduced harvest, which is a blow to their work incentive. Carrying out a program of providing “land to the tiller” would completely eliminate the efficiency loss due to the first factor and also greatly reduce the efficiency loss due to the second. The second element is that the old land relationships created personal attachments. Both hired laborers and tenant farmers had relationships of personal dependency on the landlord, as in the case of Bai Jiaxuan and his long-time worker Lu San in the novel and television drama “White Deer Plain.”2 These various political, social, and economic relationships of personal dependence are the very opposite of modernization. In an agrarian society, land is the most basic factor of production, and land 2 Translator’s note: White Deer Plain is a novel written by Chen Zhongshi, published in 1993. Anhui TV developed into a television series, broadcast in 2017.

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relations determine other social relations; consequently, breaking the old land relationships is a crucial step toward the modernization of an agrarian society. Studies have shown that land reform is a significant determinant of a country’s (or a region’s) long-term economic growth. The extremely unequal distribution of land in Latin American countries, where agriculture is dominated by large plantations, and where the early politics of these countries were dominated by the owners of these haciendas, severely hindered the development of these countries. In contrast, South Korea and Taiwan both experienced thoroughgoing land reforms that greatly contributed to industrial development in both places. Land reform in mainland China was much deeper and extensive, and played a crucial role in increasing food production and promoting the modern transition in rural areas. Women’s Emancipation In almost all traditional societies, the status of women was very low. Women’s liberation in developed countries followed a long path, with most countries not granting women the right to vote until after World War I. Late-developing countries needed to achieve women’s emancipation in a much shorter period of time. The CCP accorded considerable importance to women’s emancipation in the early period of the regime. During the Soviet period3 between 1927 and 1936, the Party mobilized women to participate in labor to make up for the labor shortage created by men’s participation in the war. During the Yan’an period from 1936 to 1945, women’s liberation focused on women’s literacy and political participation. Research has shown that these measures have had a longterm impact, in that counties that belonged to Soviet areas had a more balanced gender ratio and higher female labor force participation rates

3 Translator’s note: After the rupture of the United Front between the Nationalists and

the Communists in 1927, most Communists abandoned China’s cities, where they had been attempting to organize the working class, for the countryside, where they founded “Soviets” and sought to mobilize the peasants. This choice, forced on them by the Nationalists’ decision to end the United Front and brutally purge the Communists, led to a fundamental change in the nature of the CCP.

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than other surrounding counties several decades after, and in the Shaanxi– Gansu–Ningxia border area, the female educational level was higher than the male education level in the present day. After the founding of New China, the Party advanced the cause of women’s emancipation through revolution. Even before the Constitution was promulgated, the Marriage Law was enacted, which abolished the evil customs that had damaged the status of women in the past, such as foot-binding, arranged marriages, and concubinage, thus using legal means to establish equal rights for men and women within the family. On the other hand, women were mobilized to participate in local political activities, which greatly improved women’s social status and had a long-term impact. In counties with a high percentage of female Party members in the 1950s, women’s education levels were higher and there was a more balanced gender ratio even in the 1980s. Under the commune system, female labor force participation rates increased substantially, a tradition that was retained even after the implementation of the responsibility system during reform and opening. Although the female labor force participation rate has declined somewhat over the past two decades, it remains over 60% today, well above the world average of 50%. Building a New Socialist Culture Traditional Chinese society was a society based on place and blood ties, and with the exception of the literati, the vast majority of people interacted within the boundaries of the relationships determined by place and kinship. As the anthropologist Fei Xiaotong pointed out, the social relations of Chinese people are like the ripples created by a stone thrown into a pond, the stone in the middle representing the individual, whose relations to the “ripples” is determined according by their proximity in terms of locality and kinship. Chinese social relations were centered on the individual, and beyond the ties of place and kin, traditional Chinese society had few functioning social organizations. This is very different from the West. In the West, religion occupies a central place in people’s lives, and the role of religious groups is very clear in the connections people make with one another. Religious beliefs touched a much wider range of people than place and kinship, creating a greater possibility that even strangers could come together as a community. China was different. For the vast majority of people, “China” had only a cultural meaning, not a political one. At the

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grassroots level, social governance relied entirely on village and kin ties, and the role of the state was merely to defend against foreign invasion and to maintain domestic peace. For this reason, Chinese “collectivism” is collective in the Hobbesian sense: the state is a Leviathan that protects the people’s tranquility, and the people approve of what the state does. The common people did not see the state as an organic part of society, but as an external authority to which they had to submit. Modern society is the polar opposite of traditional Chinese society; modern states can contain any number of cultures, and ties between people grow out of a common political identity and a unified government built on the basis of that identity. One of the major tasks of Chinese modernization has been to mold the political identity of the Chinese people and to build the country according to a unified popular idea of politics and government. The CCP accomplished this task by building a new socialist culture and forging a national identity of the Chinese people within the framework of socialism. The institutional changes brought about by the socialist revolution were themselves part of this process. Never before in Chinese history had there been a radical social transformation like that produced by the socialist revolution. The Party reached into every corner of society through its tight organization and brought all Chinese into the process of modernization. In his comparison of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the historian Ray Huang (1918–2000) profoundly pointed out that the Kuomintang governed the country in a top-down manner, while the Communist Party did so in a bottom-up manner. The Party-led socialist revolution overturned the soil of Chinese society, radically changing the structure and function of society at the grassroots level, greatly advancing the political identification of the Chinese general public with the state. On this basis, the Party further strengthened the people’s national political identity through the propaganda system, the educational system, and literature. The following is a discussion of how the Party constructed people’s political identity through literary works, using the film “The Five Jin Huas”4 as an example.

4 Translator’s note: The title of the film is an untranslatable play on words: the literal meaning is “five bouquets of golden flowers,” because the translation of the female lead’s name—Jin Hua—is “golden flower,” and there are five characters named Jin Hua that appear in the story.

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“The Five Jin Huas” is a technicolor film made in 1959 about a young man of the Bai ethnic minority group named Ah Peng, who is looking for his beloved, a woman named Jin Hua. One year, Ah Peng is on his way to the Third Month Fair and meets the beautiful Jin Hua at the Butterfly Spring. The next year, Ah Peng comes to the Butterfly Spring once again, bringing the love pledge given to him the previous year by Jin Hua, and searches in vain for her throughout the Cang Mountain and Er Lake areas around Dali, Yunnan. In the course of looking for her, he meets other four young women, also named Jin Hua, each of whom is an activist in her commune, before finally finding his own Jin Hua, who is the vice president of the commune. The lovers finally marry and the film ends happily. The film is beautifully shot, and some of the songs are still sung to this day. For the purpose of this essay, what is most important is the political message the film conveys. First of all, the film’s two main characters are both Bai, and the film’s message promoting China’s multi-ethnic family is obvious. The southwestern region had long been under the rule of the Tusi kingdoms and had a very weak identification with the Chinese state. The scenery of Dali, the strong Bai boy, and the beautiful Bai girl in the film give the audience from the rest of China a good impression of the minority region and naturally inspire the people’s enthusiasm for ethnic unity. Secondly, as it follows Ah Peng’s search for Jin Hua, the film presents the joyful changes brought by the people’s communes to people’s lives. Regardless of the context of the time, such a presentation subconsciously brings the audience to identify politically with the country. Third, the five Jin Huas Ah Peng meets are all active members of the commune, highlighting the depth and breadth of women’s emancipation in ethnic minority areas. The constraints on women in ethnic minority areas are not as severe as those in Han areas, and each of the five Jin Huas in the film is cheerful and lively, far more daring and open than Han women. Although such a portrayal romanticizes ethnic minorities to a certain extent, the romanticism plays a positive role in promoting women’s emancipation. Women’s emancipation is an important part of socialist cultural values, and the film promotes the idea of women’s emancipation in a romantic form that has significance beyond women’s emancipation itself and has a catalytic effect on the country’s political identity. In the process of socialist revolution and construction, interpersonal relationships have undergone significant changes. The fact that strangers

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came to address one another as “comrade” can be seen as a representative manifestation of these changes. “Comrade” is used by people who share the same ambition and vision, and originally was used only within the Party. The use of the term “comrade” among strangers meant that strangers shared a common ideal or goal, which at that time was to build a socialist China. The use of “comrade” thus became an important expression of national political identity at the individual level. Today, strangers rarely use “comrade” to address one another, which might also be a sign that China’s national political identity is complete.

Socialist Construction Industrialization With the founding of New China, the Party’s socialist revolution was accompanied by a vigorous campaign of socialist construction, establishing a path of industrialization led by heavy industry. There were various reasons for choosing this path at the time. One was the lesson of history. Beginning with the Foreign Affairs Movement, several generations of Chinese intellectuals and leaders firmly believed that underdevelopment invited exterior aggression, and that to avoid this required building China’s own industry. Mao Zedong was no exception. Second, the international environment at the time was not conducive to China’s participation in the worldwide division of labor. The West imposed an embargo on China, which left China’s economy largely isolated from the West. At the same time, the Soviet Union tried to position China as an agricultural country within the socialist camp, which Mao firmly opposed, and he ultimately convinced the Soviet Union to provide assistance for China’s industrialization. Third, the popular advice to developing countries in international academic and policy circles at the time was also to implement a policy of import substitution, allowing them to develop their own industries. Development economics had just taken shape as a discipline, and one of its central concerns was economies of scale in industrial development. This logic suggested that enterprises need to reach a minimum scale of production in order to survive, which gave rise to the policy known as “protection of infant industries.” At the same time, the economist Raúl Prebisch’s (1901–1986) center–periphery hypothesis emphasized the differences between central countries, which are dominated by

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manufacturing, and peripheral countries, which are dominated by the production of raw materials. According to general principles, technological progress in manufacturing in the center should improve the terms of trade of the peripheral countries, thus benefiting them, but Prebisch did not find this to be the case. This hypothesis later developed into dependency theory, meaning that peripheral countries fall into the trap of producing raw materials and over time come to be dependent on the central countries. New China, being at the forefront of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism, readily accepted such a theory. Soviet aid to China played an important role in China’s industrialization in the 1950s, and the 156 Soviet-aided civic projects laid the foundation for China’s heavy industry, some of which continue to play an important role today. But domestic capital accumulation was even more important. Soviet aid to China was mostly in the form of loans, and China itself had to accumulate the capital needed for industrialization. Circumstances at the time dictated that the only possible source of capital was the rural areas. As the Soviets had done before, China took the approach of depressing the prices of agricultural products. This was an important part of the background leading to collectivization and unified purchase and marketing. Given that farming was decentralized, it was difficult for the state to control agricultural production and prices; collectivization unified agricultural production, and unified purchase and marketing centralized the purchase and sale of agricultural products, thus controlling prices. Once capital was available, its use had to be concentrated in strategic sectors approved by the state, and the socialist transformation of industry and commerce was meant to serve this purpose. In general terms, China’s industrialization strategy was focused on an unusual degree of catching up. What should we make of this strategy? In 2008, my Ph.D. student Zheng Dongya and I published a quantitative simulation study to answer this question. The starting point for our research is that heavy industry has technological externalities affecting other industries, and technological progress in heavy industry can reduce production costs in other industries. Given the existence of such externalities, the government should subsidize heavy industry. We calculated the optimal subsidy rate and the optimal amount of time the subsidies should continue, and found that the optimal subsidy rate is 33%, while our model showed that the actual rate in practice was 36.7%, which is not a big difference; however, we calculated that the optimal subsidy time was 12 years, while in reality subsidies continued for 25 years, which is a big

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difference. This means that there was nothing wrong with the catch-up strategy itself, rather the problem was that the policy was followed for too long. Moreover, in the process of carrying out the catch-up strategy, the Party also made rash mistakes like the Great Leap Forward, which should serve as lessons for future generations. Human Development While promoting economic construction, the Party also focused on universal access to education and public health improvements. Studies show that the correlation between the education level of people born in the late 1940s and 1950s and that of their parents is the weakest among the birth cohorts between 1930 and 1985, suggesting that the focus of attention in the first three decades of the New China was to spread education to the general population and enhance intergenerational educational mobility. In terms of public health, the commune-based primary health care system made basic medical care available to the general population, reduced infant mortality, and patriotic health campaigns and vaccinations eradicated many infectious diseases and steadily increased the life expectancy of the people. Comparisons of China and India in 1978.5

Per-capita GDP (constant 2000 dollars) Adult literacy rate (%) Tertiary school enrollment (% gross) Life expectancy Infant mortality rate (‰) Share of manufacturing in GDP (%) Share of manufacturing in employment (%)

China

India

155 65.5 0.7 66 54.2 40.0 17.3

206 40.8 4.9 54 106.4 17.0 13.0

Notes China’s literacy rate is for 1982 and India’s literary rate is for 1981

The table above offers a comparison between China and India in roughly 1978, which gives a good indication of China’s achievements in promoting modernization. China and India are comparable in many 5 The table is from Yang Yao, “The Chinese Growth Miracle,” in Stephen Durlauf and Phillip Agion, eds. Handbook of Economic Growth, Chapter 7, Vol. 2B: 943–1032, 2014, North Holland.

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ways. India gained independence in 1947, while New China was established in 1949, and the two countries have almost the same population. In addition, like China, India implemented import substitution policies and developed its own industries. However, the table tells us that, with the exception of per capita income and enrollment in higher education, India lagged significantly behind China in terms of literacy, infant mortality, life expectancy, and industrial development. The fact that India’s per capita income was higher has to do with to China’s lower starting point and the concentration of most of China’s accumulation in heavy industry. By 1992, China’s per capita income surpassed that of India. That India’s rate of enrollment in higher education was much higher than China’s had to do with the fact that college entrance exams had just been reinstated in China, but it also showed that India was more concerned with higher education, while China was more concerned with basic education. Given the low income levels and high illiteracy rates in both countries at the time, basic education should clearly have been a national priority, and with hindsight it is clear that the development of basic education in China played an important role in the development of export-oriented economy after reform and opening, while India’s lower level of education has been a constraint on its industrial development.

Reform and Opening: Reconciling with the Chinese Tradition The socialist revolution took China by storm and transformed it, bringing the country to the threshold of modernization. The purpose of the revolution was to build a better country, and the revolution prepared the conditions for national construction: the hierarchical structure of Chinese society was destroyed, social and political equality reached high levels, and the national political identity of the population was enhanced; at the same time, socialist construction laid the foundation for industry and improved the education and health of the population. After the beginning of reform and opening, the Party shifted its focus to economic construction, and abandoning the radical ideas and practices of the socialist revolution became the obvious choice. At this point, the Party also began to re-examine its relationship with tradition. Two factors deserve attention here. First, the socialist revolution functioned primarily at the political, social, and economic levels without touching the family and the private sphere associated with the family. In rural areas,

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the family raises poultry and livestock on the land allocated to it; in urban areas, although the family does not have its own property, it is still, as in rural areas, a complete social unit. Traditional Chinese culture is carried forward by the family. Economic construction requires motivating individuals; respect for traditional culture and the individual behavior patterns derived therefrom is a necessary condition for such motivation. Second, having abandoning radical ideas and practices, the Party had to find new intellectual resources and practical models in which to anchor its actions. Being in China, it was a natural thing to turn toward the best parts of the Chinese tradition. The Party returned to the best of Chinese traditions in three specific areas: pragmatism, meritocracy, and the market economy. By combining these traditions with the long-established theories and practices of a Marxist party, the Party laid the philosophical and political foundations for the economic takeoff that followed reform and opening. Pragmatism At the ground level, the most striking feature of Chinese culture is pragmatism. From the daily life of the people to political practice, pragmatism was the most prominent feature of traditional China. The most important reason for the emergence of pragmatism in China is that China had no indigenous religion; our ancestors were concerned with the life as lived on earth from the very beginning. The Book of Songs is a product of the early Western Zhou period, and shows that our ancestors were already singing about love, while Greece at the time was still in what we call the mythological age. The Battle of Troy was fought over a kidnapped woman, while our ancestors had already established a model of peaceful living in the same territory where they sang of love and of life on earth. This is a particularity of Chinese civilization. On a philosophical level, pragmatism expresses itself in two basic principles. First, desirability of the ends to be achieved reasonably lends legitimacy to the means to be employed. One of the prerequisites of revolution is to distinguish enemies from friends which, dictates an emphasis on the means, hence the slogan “I would rather have socialist grass that capitalist seedlings.” Pragmatism starts from ends, and as long as the end can be achieved, the means may be justified. Deng Xiaoping (1904– 1997)’s theory that “It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice” is a graphic description of this principle. Here reason

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is very important. When inferring the legitimacy of the means, a person must think in terms of his own knowledge system, moral standards, and logic, otherwise unscrupulous things will result. Second, there is no eternal truth, and practice is the sole criterion of truth. The Chinese do not believe in eternal existence, and a very important idea in traditional Chinese philosophy is that the only constant law in the universe is that everything is in flux. The Chinese believe that practice produces true knowledge, and that only practice can determine whether knowledge is true knowledge. The Chinese word shijian is generally translated as “practice,” but this is inaccurate. “Practice” means that a model already exists, and that you train yourself according to this model until you become skilled. Shijian is different. It involves a cycle of “explore - build a theory - apply the theory – explore again,” for which there is no exact equivalent in English. Pragmatism opens the door to reform and drives the process forward. Imagine if we were still stuck in the middle of debates over “isms” and “truths”—which of our reforms would have gotten off the ground? Whether we are talking about rural reforms, reform of state-owned enterprises, or price reform, all are at odds with the theoretical truths held in the past. Deng Xiaoping’s stance of “let’s not debate” led the Party to a results-oriented philosophy of action, under which the legitimacy of a system is no longer determined by how the system is labeled, but by whether it can promote the development of productive forces and the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. This is what made institutional reforms possible. Meritocracy China has a long tradition of meritocracy. As early as the Western Zhou period, there was already an “Imperial Academy 太学” whose purpose was to nurture talent. Meritocratic practices were institutionalized under Emperor Han Wudi (156–87 BCE); the Sui dynasty (581–618) invented the imperial examination system, providing the sons of the common people with a vehicle of social mobility. The philosophical foundation of meritocracy is found in the pre-Qin Confucian view of human nature. Unlike the Western view which sees human nature as fixed, preQin Confucianism believed that human nature was diverse, fluid, and malleable, and that the level of merit one could achieve depended on one’s efforts and the surrounding environment. Since political positions

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are limited and economic development needs to incentivize the population, the political structure must adopt the principle of selecting the worthy and the economic structure must reward merit. At the practical level, the Mohists6 made an even greater contribution to meritocracy. By the time Confucianism became dominant in the Western Han period, Confucianism had absorbed Mohist ideas and eventually, through the doctrines of Dong Zhongshu7 (179–104 BCE), meritocracy became a constitutional principle of the Chinese bureaucratic empire. From today’s perspective, this constitutional principle can serve as an alternative to the vote as practiced in electoral democracies, correcting some of the problems of these systems, particularly its tendencies toward populism and the creation of demagogues who incite the people for their own selfish purposes. During reform and opening, the Party took up this meritocratic tradition. Beginning in the early 1980s, with the launch of policy of the “four transformations,”8 the Party has emphasized the training and selection of cadres. Many studies have shown that the Party’s cadre selection system is in line with meritocratic principles. More capable officials are more likely to be promoted and to achieve more over the course of their careers; the Party also attaches importance to cadre training, among other measures by assigning cadres to different positions to enhance their abilities over time. Meritocracy as a constitutional principle also has a significant theoretical and practical significance today. The Chinese Communist Party is composed of pioneering members of China’s population, according

6 Translator’s note: Mozi (470–391 BCE) was a thinker during China’s “axial age” who opposed Confucius’ emphasis on family and hierarchy and preached instead that “one ought to be concerned for the welfare of people in a spirit of ‘impartial concern’ (jian’ai) that does not make distinctions between self and other, associates and strangers, a doctrine often described more simplistically as ‘universal love.’” For more information, see here (https://iep.utm.edu/mozi/). 7 Translator’s note: Dong Zhongshu (179–104 BCE) was a scholar-official credited with having convinced emperor Han Wudi to adopt Confucianism as China’s state ideology. 8 Translator’s note: The “four transformations” aimed to train cadres who were more

“revolutionary,” younger, better educated, and more specialized. The idea was to produce a new corps of public servants more in line with a modernizing China, and to replace both the stereotypical Maoist cadre—a poorly educated worker or peasant—as well as those ideological opportunists who joined the Party or the government during the Cultural Revolution.

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to meritocratic principles, which lends constitutional legitimacy to the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. The Party puts forward major policies and legislative ideas, and the People’s Congress is the place where the Party generates consensus. The sovereign role of the People’s Congress is carried out when this body deliberates and votes on the Party’s personnel nominations and major political policies, as well as when it passes legislation based on the Party’s proposals. The Return to the Market Economy Deng Xiaoping said that the market economy is not unique to capitalism. Nor is the market economy unique to the West. China had already built a market economy by the time of Northern Song dynasty at the latest. By that point, China’s market economy was already relatively complete, with the development of private land ownership, industry, commerce, and a commodity economy—and even the invention of paper money and securities trading, which marked the beginnings of finance. The main characteristic of Western capitalism was not the market economy, but steam-powered mass production and the almost unconstrained accumulation of capital that resulted therefrom. When China began to embrace the market economy after reform and opening, it seemed at the time that it was copying the West, but in fact it was returning to the Chinese tradition. To a great extent, China’s market economy has distinctly Chinese characteristics, highly related to our stage of development and the cultural psychology of the population; in other words, the Party led the nation toward China’s own version of a market economy. The market economy carries out factor-based distribution,9 rewards diligence and punishes laziness, and ensures the survival of the fittest, which are necessary principles to ensure the efficiency of the market economy. This is also consistent with China’s meritocratic traditions, and at the same time, it does not contradict the principle of “to each according to his labor.” On the one hand, factor-based distribution includes “to 9 Translator’s note: “Factor-based distribution 按要素分配,” opposing “to each according to his labor 按劳分配” drived from Carl Marx’s labor theory of value, is part of the discourse of China’s “early stage of socialism,” in which the productive forces must be encouraged to produce the material base necessary to achieve a “moderately prosperous” country. In practice, what this means is allowing the entrepreneurial to become wealthy, and allowing the wealthy to accumulate more wealth, before proceeding to a more equitable distribution of income once society is richer.

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each according to his labor” because labor is a productive factor; on the other, factor-based distribution is, in the end, “to each according to his labor,” because capital is essentially also a product of labor. The Meaning of the Revolution Reexamined When future historians write about Deng Xiaoping’s historical achievements, they will naturally talk about reform and opening, but scholars with a sense of historical depth will surely emphasize that his main contribution was to bring the Party back to China. The birth of the Party was a product of the West’s coming to China, a party constructed by radical Chinese intellectuals during the May Fourth period who chose radical Western ideas; as described earlier, the Party consciously became an instrument of Chinese modernization, bringing China into the modern world in a great tumult. Here we meet the great issue of Chinese culture’s absorption and integration of Western culture. During the revolutionary period, the Party was to a great degree practicing a Western theory of revolution, but as a political party rooted in the soil of China, the Party had to eventually face the great issue of the integration of China and the West. At present, this issue is unfolding within the framework of the sinification of Marxism, but more important for future historians will be that Deng Xiaoping led the Party back to China, initiating the process of China’s casting off a century of cultural importation. In terms of “techniques,” reform and opening sought to learn from the West, but in terms of China’s “path,” reform and opening initiated the process leading to our return to Chinese tradition. It should not be forgotten that the planned economy also came from the West, so reform and opening meant merely a switch from copying one Western thing to copying another, but in the learning process of reform and opening, the Party’s guiding ideology and mode of behavior have been completely Chinese. In this sense, we are returning to the stance of “Chinese learning for substance, Western learning for application 中体西用.” For a civilization with three thousand years of written history, it is a perfectly understandable and perhaps inevitable choice to cling to one’s “substance.” However, China’s current “substance” is different from that of more than a century ago, having separated the wheat from the chaff, adopting value systems and behavioral logics appropriate to the times in the process of “applying” Western learning. Consequently, since reform

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and opening, “Chinese learning for substance, Western learning for application” must be a fusion of Chinese tradition and modern Western value systems, instead of the two completely different entities as understood during the Foreign Affairs movement. This leads to yet another question: given this final return to China, was the twentieth-century revolution a mistake? The answer is no. First, the revolution sped up the modernization of China, bringing it from a stubbornly traditional society to the threshold of modernity in a relatively short period of time. Second, the return to Chinese tradition today is a return at a higher level. The revolution swept away the corrupt parts of Chinese tradition, allowing today’s return to lighten the load and select the best parts of the tradition to be inherited and carried forward. Third, international comparisons reveal that those late-developing countries where no revolution occurred have had a very difficult transition to modernization that has delayed their economic catch-up. A typical example of this is the Philippines, whose per capita GDP in 1980 was more than five times that of China, while by 2020, China’s per capita GDP was almost four times that of the Philippines, a huge reversal in merely four decades. How did the Philippines fail? Since the fall of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986, Filipino democracy has continued uninterrupted and seems to have the capacity to correct mistakes, as witnessed by the impeachment of President Estrada. However, Filipino democracy is still based on an unchanged social structure, as several Filipino scholars have lamented: “Thus has emerged the great Philippine paradox: an extremely lively play of electoral politics unfolding above an immobile class structure that is one of the worst in Asia.”10 The Filipino class structure is based on the plantation economy left behind by the Spanish colonizers, with big plantation owners being the dominant economic and political force, and to this day Filipino politics still bears strong traces of family politics, where party affiliation is unimportant and loyalty to the politically powerful is all that matters. Since 1988, with the exception of the impeached Estrada (a famous actor before his election) and one more president (a former defense secretary), the other presidents have had deep family backgrounds, with the recently elected president being the son of Marcos Sr. and the vice president 10 Walden Bello, Marissa de Guzman, Mary Lou Malig, and Herbert Docena, The AntiDevelopment State: The Political Economy of Permanent Crisis in the Philippines. Manila: Zed Books, 2005, p. xvi.

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being the daughter of the recently departed Duterte. This is exactly the kind of clientilistic politics that the political scientist Francis Fukuyama believes has led to the downfall of democracy, the latter being one of the main obstacles to economic growth because it leads to nepotism in the economy and allows a small number of people to monopolize economic opportunities and resources. Revolutions are painful, but short-term pain can be traded for longterm peace. The vast majority of late-developing countries have a history of colonization, and the colonizers left them with tools of electoral politics, meaning that they have had no choice but to transform their societies within the framework of democracy ever since. Democracy always results in compromise among various forces, while social transformation means depriving certain powerful groups of their power and interests. The two are in conflict, so social transformation in post-colonial countries is exceptionally long and difficult. For example, land reform in the Philippines was started under US occupation, but was not completed until the first decade of this century, and the land was sold—rather than given—to landless peasants. Land reform in India has proven to be even more difficult. The Land Reform Act was passed in India immediately after independence, but it was barely implemented for seventy years, and even in West Bengal, where the Communist Party has been in power for decades, more than 30% of farmers are still landless. One of the great paradoxes of modern transformation is that a genuine social transformation must be completed through violence to be successful in the short term. China is an example of success, while many post-colonial countries are examples of failure.

The World Significance of the Chinese Path Returning to the dilemma of transition and catching up raised at the beginning of this essay, it would seem that the Chinese path provides an answer to this dilemma. From the perspective of the interaction between transition and catching up, we can identify three types of countries in the past two hundred years: for the first type, transition lagged behind catching up; in the second, the two occurred together; and in the third, there was neither transition nor catch up. Germany and Japan before World War II are typical examples of the first category of countries. Germany was the most successful catch-up country in the nineteenth century, and Japan was the most successful

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catch-up country in the twentieth, but both countries eventually moved toward militarism because they did not succeed in carrying out a transition. In fact, their economic success was a major reason for delaying their failure to achieve political and social transition. Germany’s economic as well as military successes ignited a sense of German national pride. For the Germans, Russian culture was base, French culture was corrupt, and British culture was at best sly; only German culture represented the sublime and the glorious, which meant that Germany should be the master of Europe. The Germans were angry at the European “disrespect” for Germany, and this is particularly true of Kaiser Wilhelm II. He coveted the wealth of Paris on the one hand, and at the same time resented the contempt of his mother’s country of birth, England, for Germany, and hoped through war to take Paris and earn the respect he “deserved.” In essence, Japan followed exactly the same path as Germany. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan’s power increased dramatically, and it easily defeated its former teacher, China, in the Sino-Japanese War, as well as Russia, the “steamroller of Europe,”11 in the Russo-Japanese War. Japan subsequently thought it could represent the yellow race in a war against the white race, and went so far as to see itself as the true representative of Chinese civilization, while China was no better than “Shina 支那.”12 In the end, both countries ruined themselves in war. The reason for this is that while they had joined the front ranks of the modern economy, in terms of ideas, politics, and society, they remained somewhere between tradition and modernity. When the most advanced technology is harnessed to the logic of pre-modern thinking and behavior, the result will certainly be anti-modern. The Four Little Dragons, especially South Korea and Taiwan, are representatives of the second category of countries (or regions). Japan intentionally suppressed the industrial and commercial elites of Korea and Taiwan during the colonial period, and both regions implemented agrarian reform after World War II, resulting in very egalitarian societies, eliminating powerful groups that impeded change, and providing the political and social conditions for the government to initiate economic 11 Translator’s note: Russian military power was greatly overestimated by certain European nations in the early twentieth century, chiefly due to the impressive size of Tsarist armies. The nickname “Europe’s steamroller” came from this. 12 Translator’s note: This was a pejorative, racist term used by Japan to refer to China, particularly during the Sino-Japanese War.

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growth. Singapore is a city-state, and coupled with Lee Kuan Yew’s rational and intelligent governance, the social structure was rapidly modernized and transformed, greatly contributing to economic growth. What these examples have in common is that social transformation came first, creating the basis for a neutral exercise of government power. Most developing countries fall into the third category. In these countries, slow political and social transformation is the main reason why they cannot catch up quickly enough. Most developing countries were European and American colonies, and prior to colonization were traditional, or even primitive, societies. Instead of changing their traditional or primitive social structures, the colonizers took full advantage of them and exploited them for their own ends, thus solidifying the social and political structures of these countries. When the colonizers departed, they left these countries with a modern system of electoral democracy, which greatly reduced their space for social change. They could only hope to achieve social and political change through market forces in the process of development, but in so doing, these countries entered a close-end cycle: the lack of political and social transformation constrained economic development, and lack of economic development, in turn, constrained political and social transformation. However, Germany and Japan seem to be two counterexamples. The reason may be that both Germany and Japan had a strong state that could accumulate resources to accomplish economic catch-up in the short term, while most developing countries have not produced such a state. In developing countries, transition and economic catch-up must both evolve out of the process of social development, and both will demand a long historical process. China is more like the Four Little Dragons, where transition and catch-up occurred simultaneously. But China is a large country, and its modernization path has greater global significance. In concrete terms, the Chinese path has the following meanings. First, it made the transition from tradition to modern relatively quickly. The British Revolution lasted more than half a century, and the French Revolution and the shocks it released lasted more than a hundred years. If we do not count the period of the Japanese invasion, the twentiethcentury Chinese Revolution (including the socialist revolution) also lasted half a century, which is not long in comparative terms. Just as the British Revolution and the French Revolution brought those countries into the modern era, so did the Chinese Revolution.

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In terms of economic catch-up, the revolution allowed China to establish an egalitarian society without class distinctions, providing a necessary guarantee that China could achieve economic takeoff. Although we do not expect other developing countries to complete their political and social transition through revolution, they must make the promotion of equality a central task of political reform, otherwise they will have difficulty achieving long-term and stable economic growth. Second, focus on human development. As the summary of the table in section ‘Socialist Construction’ shows, during the period of socialist revolution and construction, the Party focused on improving the educational level of the general population and the health of the entire population. In comparing the different economic performances of China and India, Amartya Sen particularly emphasized that China was better prepared than India in terms of human development. People are the first productive force, and education and health are the main measures of people as productive forces; to improve education and health is to improve human productivity. Compared to other developing countries, China has placed greater emphasis on the education and health levels of ordinary people, which both reflects the egalitarian philosophy of the CCP and is consistent with the general logic of economic development, meaning that in the early stages of economic development, improving the capabilities of the majority is more likely to promote economic growth than improving the capabilities of a minority. Third, make pragmatism the basic philosophy guiding your actions. National pride is an important intellectual source of national unity, but many developing countries take it to the extreme and reject actions that would lose “face” for the nation. In terms of economic development, this is reflected in the refusal to develop labor-intensive industries and the pursuit of high-class industries, because the elites of developing countries believe that labor-intensive industries are undignified and exploitative, and that the development of high-class industries is the only way to put their countries on a par with developed countries. In terms of institution building, they are unwilling to compromise with national conditions and insist on what they call the “best” systems, whether they work or not. China is different. In the early period of its economic takeoff, China readily accepted labor-intensive industries outsourced from the developed economies, thus accumulating capital and technology and paving the way, building up one of the world’s largest and most resilient manufacturing systems, and finally entering the world’s forefront in many technological fields. In terms of institution building, we did not pursue a perfect

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system, but adopted a gradual approach, first establishing a “useful” system, and then improving it in practice. As a result, China’s institutional transformation has avoided the painful institutional transformation of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and has provided the conditions for smooth economic development. China’s pragmatic attitude and successful experience thus have an important meaning in the global context. Fourth, the ruling party plays the role of the backbone of society. With its broad representation and now 90 million members from all walks of life, the CCP has become the place where social consensus is forged. Guided by the principle of democratic centralism, the Party brings together the views of different classes and representative groups of people to form the country’s general policies. As a result, the Party and the government can stand above the interests of other social groups, remaining disinterested and impartial in the face of possible conflicts of social interest, and working for the long-term development of China as a whole. In other developing countries, governments tend to be biased, either swayed by interest groups or held hostage by populism, and resources are not allocated to where they are most effective. Although most countries do not have a strong ruling party like the CCP, this does not mean that they cannot learn from China’s experience of disinterested government, which is possible to construct through rational institutional arrangements even in electoral democracies. The neutrality of the state is something that Adam Smith began to emphasize in his Wealth of Nations, and the Chinese state is a state in Smith’s sense, which is why the sociologist Giovanni Arrighi (1937–2009) gave the title Adam Smith in Beijing to his magnum opus on the world system. China is still following the path toward modernization; the next thirty years will be a sprint to modernize China. If, by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the founding of New China, we can complete our political and social transformation and catch up with the income levels of developed countries, we will have not only completed the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, but will have also created a modernization path that both is Chinese and has significance for the world. So far, China is the only large country that has not engaged in external expansion when it hastes to modernize, and when future historians write this chapter of history, they should pay particular attention to this fact. In the future, China will adhere to the path of peaceful development and continue to make greater contributions to the world.

New Wine in an Old Bottle: A New Interpretation of Confucianism

The Confucian State: An Ideal Type of Governance for China? (2020)

As the coronavirus has developed into a worldwide pandemic, China’s political system has become a hot topic in major Western newspapers and social media. The Chinese government’s initial slow moves to recognize the virus in Wuhan has been taken as evidence for an authoritarian regime’s inclination to cover up bad news, and its strict quarantine measures afterward as proof of the cruelty of such a regime. As a Beijing resident, I myself have first-hand experience of those harsh quarantine measures. However, in this article I will not talk about their pros and cons. They can only be fully judged once the pandemic is over. Instead, I will step back and offer an interpretation of China’s political system. Specifically, I will compare it with the Confucian state, the ideal type of governance built on Confucian teachings that are, despite their differences with liberal ideas, consistent with China’s long traditions as well as the psychological inclinations of ordinary Chinese. I believe that this comparison will help the West make a better judgment about China’s

An article written in the fall of 2020 and published by Robert Bosch Academy of which I am a fellow. The original version can be found at http://www.rob ertboschacademy.de/content/language2/html/57754_58763.asp.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Y. Yang, China and the West, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1882-9_9

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political system and, taking a bolder step, I hope this comparison will enable the West to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of liberal democracy.

The Confucian World Democracy as practiced around the world is all built on an ideal type of governance, namely liberal democracy, that can be traced back to the contractual theories of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Hobbes started with the natural state in which every man is endowed with a set of natural rights, among which self-defense is the most unalienable. But every man is also driven to possess more, so the state of nature becomes a world of man against man. To obtain peace, people enter into a social contract to surrender part of their natural rights to an omnipotent government: the Leviathan. Locke revised Hobbes’ state of nature by imposing natural laws on each person. The laws allow individuals to possess property, but also put limits on how much: individuals do not possess more than what their livelihood requires. The only inconvenience in this state of nature is that individuals are not assured that other people will obey the laws of nature. As a result, they form a society to become citizens and jointly agree to set up a government under their control. The autocracy tolerated by Hobbes is ruled out because it is worse than the anarchy in the state of nature. To Locke, accepting Hobbes’ autocracy is like “tak[ing] care to avoid what mischiefs may be done by polecats or foxes, but [being] content, nay, think[ing] it safety, to be devoured by lions.” In sum, liberal democracy is a humanely constructed social contract involving self-interested individuals. The Confucian state has a different starting point. For Confucius (551– 479 BCE), people are born with different natures. Some are smart and some are dumb. The smartest and the dumbest change relatively little, but those in between can be changed through learning and practice. In the end, society is made up of superior people (junzi) and petty people (xiaoren). Superior people care about things beyond their own welfare, and petty men care only about themselves. Rephrased in today’s words, what Confucius believed is that human nature is a complex combination of attributes ranging from self-interest to noble causes. This belief is consistent with the scientific observations of homo sapiens’ two close cousins, chimpanzees and bonobos, as related in the vivid stories told by Frans de Waal in his renowned book Chimpanzee Politics. It is also

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consistent with what we observe in our daily life. For Hobbes and Locke, human nature is a construct and is only defined by individual rationality. The implications of this difference are considerable.

Confucian State vs. Liberal Democracy First of all, liberal democracy believes that all people are created equal, but the Confucian state does not. The Confucian denial might sound alarming, but “all people are created equal” is a normative assessment (an “ought statement”), not a positive description of reality (not an “is statement”). The Confucian denial only acknowledges reality. However, this does not mean that a Confucian necessarily denies the pursuit of equality. In fact, many modern Confucians vehemently defend equality and personal freedom. In this sense, Confucianism is a kind of positive realism—acknowledging that the world is imperfect, but vowing to make it better. Second, society should be organized hierarchically, and people should possess the appropriate qualities for the role they play. This is not an idea uniquely held by Confucians. The United States’ founding fathers had similar thoughts. In his famous Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton asserted bluntly that the presidency is not meant for a person without imminent qualities, and the American constitution assigned the right to vote for the president to an Electoral College that was supposed to be filled by elites recommended by local communities. The contemporary Confucian philosopher Daniel Bell distinguishes between good hierarchies and bad hierarchies. Bad hierarchies, such as the caste system, cement social divides and are oppressive; good hierarchies allow for upward mobility and encourage people to improve themselves. While acknowledging that people are born differently, Confucians encourage people to better themselves by self-restraint and self-learning. In fact, historical China was one of the traditional societies with the highest degrees of upward mobility because of the imperial examination system. Third, qualifications instead of political platforms or policy agendas are the criteria by which leaders should be selected. For a Confucian, the ultimate pursuit of a leader is to achieve virtuous rule, or ren. This is not dependent on their accountability to the people, as in liberal democracy. It rather depends on their own quality as a virtuous ruler.

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On the Virtuous Ruler How to become a virtuous ruler? It is through learning. Since Han Wudi (156–87 BCE, the seventh emperor of Han dynasty) adopted Confucianism as the ideology of the state, every Chinese emperor spent his lifetime learning Confucianism. A Confucian teacher was assigned to him when he was young, and he had to regularly took classes conducted by Confucian scholars after he assumed the throne. The requirement was not limited to the emperor; officials in his government also needed to perfect themselves by learning Confucianism. The examination system was designed to discover talents among young people. Prior to the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), the prime minister was the head of the government. In the words of a Confucian scholar in the Song dynasty, the prime minister should be judged by how well he was able to keep peace in the country, and the emperor should be judged by how well he learned his Confucian lessons. In summary, in the Confucian world, everything is based on merit. Chinese people have long realized that they have to rely on themselves, not the government, to improve their personal life. That is why Jack Ma and Pony Ma,1 the two richest men in China today, are heroes for young Chinese. Chinese are not as collectively oriented as the Chinese themselves or foreigners have long believed. They tend to leave the public sphere to the authorities and obey them. This makes the Chinese look more collective than Western people. In return, the authorities are required to take a proactive role in the public sphere to better the collective welfare. Responsibility, not accountability, is the driving force behind Chinese politics.

The Selection of Political Officials In the Confucian world, the state is run by officials selected on the basis of virtue and ability. Who, then, is qualified to select those officials? In a democracy, this is done by popular vote. The underlying assumption

1 Translator’s note: Jack Ma (Ma Yun, b. 1964) is the co-founder and former executive chairman of the Alibaba Group, a multinational technological conglomerate; Pony Ma (Ma Huateng, b. 1971) is the chairman and CEO of Tencent, a massive Internet company with fingers in many pies.

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is that the proper collective wisdom can be found by aggregating citizens’ votes. Hamilton rejected this assumption on the basis that voters can be easily swayed by opportunistic politicians. The Confucian rejects this assumption on a similar basis: people have different levels of achievement on their road toward virtuous personhood, and some are more capable than others in making the right judgment. Therefore, the task of selecting officials should be assigned to people who possess high levels of virtue and ability themselves. In traditional China, high-ranking officials and ultimately the emperor himself took on this task. In today’s China, the task falls to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). That is, the Confucian state requires a central authority to assume the role of selecting government officials. This centralized selection system has pros and cons. Its most significant advantage is to insulate officials from popular demands that in many cases could be short-sighted. In a large country like China, it also gives the center a powerful tool to control local officials. From the time when Emperor Qin Shihuang (259–210 BCE) first unified China, the central government has had to give local officials a considerable degree of autonomy. To prevent officials from building their own political bases, the center moved them to a different locality every few years. This practice continues today, allowing the center to effectively control local officials. But the concentration of power also comes with a disadvantage. The system can easily become rigid with every official waiting for an order from above. In addition, the road to the top is so long that after many rounds of selection, some officials can come to feel that they are no longer moving forward. Although it improves the quality of officials by providing training throughout their career, the system may overlook talent outside of the system who are good at solving certain problems that the country faces. The most serious challenge faced by the Confucian state is the lack of accountability of the central authority. Accountability is a built-in component of liberal democracy. Can accountability be developed out of the theory of the Confucian state? I think there are two arguments for a positive answer. First, the ultimate goal of the Confucian state is to realize ren, or virtuous rule. Thus, the ruler (central authority) should be willing to grant final judgment of his policies to the people because he believes that what he is doing is good for the people. Second, the ruler cannot eliminate people’s doubts only through verbal promises. By sharing power with the people, the ruler and the people obtain mutual assurance: the people

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make sure that the ruler wants to conduct virtuous rule, and the ruler assumes that the people will not overthrow him. Therefore, the Confucian state, in its modern form, should give sovereignty to the people.

Performance of China’s Current Political System China’s economic success since 1978 has been made possible by the CCP’s return to the Chinese tradition in which the Confucian state is at center stage. In pure economic terms, China’s success can be explained by its adoption of neoclassical economic teachings: high savings, capital accumulation, and human capital development. For an economist studying political economy, however, the more fascinating question is why the Chinese government and the CCP have been able to adopt those teachings. It is worth remembering that before 1978 the CCP was preoccupied by class struggle, a recipe recommended by Karl Marx as a necessary step toward building a classless society. The CCP was created in 1921 as a result of the spread of Marxism to China. Throughout its history until 1978, the Party took a stand against the Chinese tradition that it saw reactionary and backward. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping put an end to class struggle and, relying on his instincts as a pragmatic Chinese leader, reoriented the Party toward the Chinese tradition. The Party underwent “sinification” under his leadership.

Two Changes Were the Most Significant One change was replacing Marxist dogma with the Chinese philosophy of pragmatism. China does not have its own indigenous religions. Secular life has long been the focus of Chinese civilization. Joy, love, anguish, and suffering—the range of human experiences in life on earth—were the constant subjects of poems, verses, and folk songs from the beginning of China’s recorded history. Chinese people are thus down-to-the-earth and pragmatic. In its present-day version, Chinese pragmatism has two distinctive features. One is that there is no permanent truth, and every claim to truth has to be tested by practice. Without this idea, it is unimaginable that the CCP could have undertaken all of the reforms that went against orthodox Marxist practices, mostly created and advocated by the Soviets. The other feature is that the legitimacy of the means can be reasonably justified by the desirability of the results. In Deng’s words: “It does not

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matter whether a cat is white or black; it is a good cat as long as it catches mice.” For Deng, the “mice” were China’s great rejuvenation, and the “cat” was whatever means that could help realize that goal. For example, because the market can allocate resources more efficiently than planning, China should adopt it despite the fact that it was invented by capitalism. The other change was to re-introduce political meritocracy into the party. Deng set up the retirement rule and cleared the path for young people to move up in the party hierarchy. In the early 1980s, he proposed four criteria for promotion in the party. Leaders had to be revolutionary, young, knowledgeable, and professional. One of the greatest promotions at the time was the promotion of Zhao Ziyang (1919–2005) to the post of premier. Zhao was merely the Party Secretary of Sichuan province before the promotion. He was appointed as premier solely because he had taken the lead in rural reform. This tradition of merit-based promotion was carried out by the central leaders after Deng. In the 1990s and 2000s, economic performance was a significant criterion for promotion. On the theoretical front, though, changes have been slower. The Party leaders in the 1980s and 1990s increasingly recognized that Marxism alone could not fully describe what the Party had done, particularly those reforms that contradicted dogmatic Marxist practices, such as economic planning and public ownership. But on paper, Marxism had to be the orthodox ideology because this is what defined the Party’s ideological legitimacy. What the leadership did was to put wrap Marxism in a new ribbon that defined the Party as an “all people’s party.” Now, the Party represents not only the working class, but also other people in China. By doing so, the Party has become a disinterested central authority that does not defend the interests of particular social groups. This has allowed the Party to avoid the state capture that has plagued the politics of many developing countries, and the Chinese economy has been able to grow without suffering much from the group-based misallocation of resources. This is the essence of the political economy behind China’s economic success.

Why the International Discourse on China Is Too Simplistic The prevailing discourse in the international public sphere depicts China’s political-economic system as one of political and economic exclusion and tight state control of everything. Indeed, it is now a standard practice

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to regard China’s system as diametrically opposite to the Western system of free markets and democratic government. However, this is an overly simplified and misleading characterization of the Chinese system. First of all, the CCP is not a closed political entity. It is open to all individuals who believe in and are able to contribute to China’s great rejuvenation. Joining the Party requires discipline, but this cost allows the Party to screen out opportunists. The Party plays the role of the central authority in the Confucian state, such as selecting officials for the country. Officials at all levels are engaged in a constant competition for promotion. Although personal connections play a role, empirical studies have shown that merit is the key determinant for promotion. The impression that China’s political system is closed has largely been a result of seeing China through the lens of competitive democracy—there is no other party competing with the CCP, so the system is closed. The CCP is not a Western-style political party; it is the central authority in the Confucian state. Second, on the economic front, the Chinese economy is not dominated by the state sector. Inside China, the contribution of the private sector is conveniently summarized by the term “56789,” which means that the private sector contributes 50% of tax revenue, 60% of national GDP, 70% of innovations, 80% of employment, and more than 90% of the number of companies. The key to China’s economic success is not state capitalism, but rather the expansion of the private sector. State capitalism itself is a myth. While the government does influence the market, it is far-fetched to conclude that the government controls everything in the Chinese economy. Serious scholars have to be aware that calling China’s economic model state capitalism may well be a strategy to discredit China’s economic achievement. Third, on the social front, the Party’s control is also exaggerated. To be sure, there is censorship in China, but the regime is definitely far from George Orwell’s depiction of dictatorship in his dystopic novel 1984. Take the social credit system as an example. Most Western commentators see it as evidence of China’s digital despotism. This view misses the reality that cheating is a serious threat to decent business and daily life in China, a country that is undergoing a rapid transition from a traditional society of acquaintances to a modern society of strangers. The social credit system aims at punishing cheating and rewarding honesty. It does create inconvenience for honest people, but it is perhaps a necessary cost for China’s fast transition to a rule-based modern society.

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The quarantine measures China has taken to combat the coronavirus have also been taken by Western commentators and social medias as evidence for China’s despotism. In fact, some even argued not to introduce quarantine measures in their own countries exactly because they wanted to avoid following China’s despotic approach. But this argument misses the fact that other countries and regions in East Asia also introduced either tight quarantine measures or digital tracking to curb infections. East Asia could do this not because it shares China’s political system but rather because the countries and regions there share the same collective culture.

Introducing Checks and Balances into China’s Political System To be sure, China’s political system is not perfect, even when compared to the Confucian state. But this should not be surprising; after all, not all democracies live up to the standards set by its ideal type: liberal democracy. Every political system is on its way to perfection. The fundamental gap between China’s political system and the Confucian state is the lack of accountability of the central authority. However, competitive elections are probably not the right solution to fill the gap. Instead, we should introduce checks and balances into the system. The essence of constitutional rule is the division of power, and the checks and balances that develop therefore. But this should not be a unique feature of liberal democracy; any rational polity should have a division of power because otherwise it is impossible to carry out rational rule in a modern society characterized by complexity. It is unfortunate that checks and balances, a governing technique in their own right, have become so ideologically loaded in both the West and the East that rational discussion about them has been made impossible without first invoking judgment about the political system. Is it possible to introduce checks and balances in China when the CCP is the only political power in the society? In this regard, the “emperor’s oath” in the Northern Song dynasty provides an enlightening example. The first emperor of the dynasty erected a secret stone stele inscribed with an oath that demanded that future emperors not kill officials or people who criticized them. Every new emperor had to read the oath in secrecy. None of the emperors in the dynasty violated the oath. Self-restraint could lead to a sustained pact between two parties with asymmetric power.

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Behind the pact was a common belief in Confucian doctrines. The CCP aims at China’s great rejuvenation, a goal shared by the Chinese people. Therefore, the two arguments for assigning sovereignty to the people in the Confucian state also apply to China’s current political system.

The CCP Should Complete Its Sinification There are various reasons why checks and balances are not fully implemented in China. However, the most significant reason is the lack of consensus about the Confucian state as an ideal type of governance for the country. The Party is not ready to complete its course of Sinification and the public is dominated by the narrative of democracy. As a result, Chinese politics is filled with a tension of double anxieties: the public, particularly intellectuals, are anxiously hoping for China to transition to democracy, and because of that the Party becomes anxious about its power. Censorship largely derives from the second anxiety. The CCP should take the lead to break this spell of anxiety. Completing its Sinification is the only way out. Marxism does not explain what the Party has done right since 1978; neither does it make peace with the worldview of Chinese people. Acknowledging the Confucian state as its ideal type, China’s political system lays a solid philosophical foundation that is congruent with the psychological inclination of ordinary Chinese. In addition, it will help the CCP when it deals with the West. Liberalism values human worth, but the system is not without drawbacks, particularly in the areas related to individualism and abstract equality that serve as the hotbed for the politics of populism. Confucianism offers a remedy exactly in those areas. In addition, the idea of the Middle Way—meaning peaceful coexistence in the political arena—allows Confucianism to accept many liberal values. It also allows China to argue for political diversity in the world.

Go Beyond Liberal Democracy: Insights from Confucianism (2017)

As early as 1989, Francis Fukuyama proclaimed that liberal democracy was the endpoint of mankind’s history. More than twenty years later, Fukuyama himself has come to doubt the certainty of his assertion. In his book, Political Order and Political Decay, he notes the decline of democratic politics and identifies the chief culprit as cronyism. Cronyism refers to the quid pro quo relationships that politicians establish in order to gain political support by giving favors to specific groups of people, which corrupts politics, polarizes society, and ultimately makes a society ungovernable. However, using cronyism to explain the decline of democratic politics is a technical criticism that fails to get at the essence of democratic politics. The philosophical foundation of contemporary democratic politics is liberalism, which is a utopian ideal based on the idea of the value of the individual, which emphasizes the absolute equality among individuals while ignoring differences between them, leading to extreme individualism when pushed too far.

姚洋、秦子忠, “超越自由主义民主: 儒家的启示,” Southern Views 南风窗, 2017, No. 2. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Y. Yang, China and the West, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1882-9_10

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When the elitist system was still viable, democracy could function normally. However, under the impact of the new wave of democratization beginning in the 1990s, the contradictions created by liberalism have continued to grow, thus leading to the decline of contemporary Western democracy. Trump’s election, the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union, and the chaos caused by the refugee problem in Germany can be seen as concentrated expressions of this process of decline. For this reason, we need to return to the foundations of Chinese political philosophy. When the West took the first steps toward the creation of a modern society more than 200 years ago, Western intellectuals looked to the origins of their own civilization for the resources needed to rebuild politics; we should similarly start from the sources of Chinese civilization to rebuild Chinese political philosophy. In so doing, once we reread the classics of our Axial Age thinkers, we may well be surprised to find that Confucianism can provide us with a more reliable foundation for political philosophy than liberalism. Confucians’ understanding of human nature is not a utopian judgment of what “ought to be,” but instead a realistic description based on everyday observation of human nature as it is. Although Mencius famously said “every man can become a Yao or Shun [ancient sage kings],” Confucianism is well aware of the fact in any group of people one finds both “superior” and “petty” people, for which reason the ideal politics of Confucianism is a hierarchical politics, and each level of hierarchy comes with certain requirements as to morality and ability. Confucianism rejects absolute egalitarianism, but is fully compatible with the value of the individual and individual self-determination, and in this sense, Confucianism is capable of guaranteeing the freedom of the individual. In its essence, contemporary Chinese politics conforms to the Confucian political tradition. From the perspective of state governance, a major role of the CCP is to select and appoint officials, and academic research shows that more capable officials receive more opportunities for promotion. The CCP system is a meritocratic system that selects and appoints the best, a development and extension of the Confucian tradition. In addition, the Party is open to all outstanding people who identify with the CCP system and who are interested in the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Given a certain number of improvements, the CCP system is capable of guaranteeing individual freedom and individual selfdetermination.

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The Contradictions of Liberal Democracy Liberalism is an anti-feudal political philosophy that emerged in the West during the early process of modernization, and its core concepts include three major values: the value of the individual, individual selfdetermination, and egalitarianism. The rise of liberalism represents the awakening of human nature and the individual, and it played a positive role in the process of opposing feudalism. Acknowledging the value of the individual prioritizes the individual over society and other social organizations, and requires society to promote the value of the individual as its ultimate end. Individual selfdetermination gives individuals the right to determine their own fate and rejects unreasonable restrictions imposed on them by society. Egalitarianism recognizes that everyone has equal value and thus requires society to treat all people equally in all aspects—including the realm of political participation. In modern society, these values undoubtedly have a strong moral and rational appeal. However, by its very nature, liberalism is an individualistic philosophy, and if it is used as the philosophical basis for a political regime, it must address the question of how individuals carry out collective decision-making. The answer provided by Friedrich von Hayek (1899–1992), the great liberal thinker, is that the competition between individuals pursuing their own self-interested motives will produce a “spontaneous order,” and institutions are the “accidental outcomes” of the play of these interests. Some contemporary political economists assert that the sole task of political economy is to find ways to achieve this spontaneous order. In the context of democratic institutions, the economist1 Kenneth May (1915–1977) demonstrated in 1952 that in a situation where a society makes a choice between two alternatives, only a process based on the majority principle of one-person-one-vote can accommodate the arbitrary preferences of all members of society, can treat all members equally, can treat both candidates equally, and can respect the unanimous choice of all members. This outcome later became known as “May’s theorem,” which proved that democracy and liberalism were natural allies.

1 Translator’s note: May was a mathematician, not an economist. May’s Theorem is written into standard advanced economics textbooks.

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In reality, however, people often have to choose among more than two candidates, and democracy often fails to protect liberal values. This is not only because the majority principle often results in the tyranny of the majority over the minority, but also because the decisions of the majority do not always lead to good governance and thus do not guarantee the implementation of liberal principles. A legitimate system of government must not only guarantee the equal rights of individuals, but must also be able to make effective political decisions, promote social welfare, and maintain social order. However, one person-one vote often fails to do this, especially when societies are increasingly divided, as in the United States and Europe at the present moment. Nor can one person-one vote guarantee the realization of Hayek’s spontaneous order. The economist Amartya Sen long ago identified liberalism’s internal contradictions. A central corollary of Hayek’s and other liberals’ theories is that society must respect individual rights. However, because rights involve relationships between and among people, guaranteeing rights to some people means requiring others to respect those rights, and therefore to sacrifice some of their rights. For example, for society to guarantee the rights of the owner of a piece of land, it must prohibit the right of others to use that land, and in some special cases—such as residential land—even prohibit others from “trespassing” on that land. Ultimately, society must reserve a private domain for the individual, and within that private domain, society does not have the right to interfere with the freedom of the individual. The question, however, is who defines the private domain of the individual? Western Enlightenment thinkers, such as John Locke, tended to answer this question in terms of natural rights. But “natural rights” has a clear religious connotation, and is not a conclusion that can be reached on the basis of any secular argument. In a short but thought-provoking essay published in 1970 (“The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal”), Amartya Sen demonstrates that the private domain and the Pareto principle—if all members of a community agree on something, society should follow—are in contradiction with one another. One of the implications of the Pareto principle comes down to saying that everyone’s opinion is equally important, which means that it is a byproduct of egalitarianism, which suggests in turn that the private domain, or individual rights, is in contradiction to egalitarianism. In seeking to

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define the private domain, society must resort to ideas such as natural rights or to a non-egalitarian political decision-making mechanism, and cannot simply rely on the play of private interests between individuals.2

The “Democratic Decline” Brought About by Liberalism For a long time, the Western solution to the contradiction between liberal ideals and the realities of state governance was to adopt mixed institutions. The US Constitution is a typical example of this. The President of the United States is much like a monarch; the Senate is the equivalent of the ancient Roman Senate and is aristocratic; the House of Representatives represents public opinion and is a symbol of democracy; and finally, the Supreme Court is responsible for the interpretation of the Constitution and has powers independent from other institutions. The President is not elected by a popular one-person-one-vote mechanism, but rather by electors chosen by the individual states; the members of the Senate were originally elected by the state legislatures; the judges of the Supreme Court are nominated by the President and approved by the Senate; and only the members of the House of Representatives have always been directly elected by the voters of their constituencies. In the eyes of the founding fathers, the United States was not a democracy, but a republic with a mixed system. However, over the past 240 years, democratic components have strengthened at the expense of elite elements in the United States, as is true elsewhere in the world. The partisanship that the founding fathers were wary of began to become prevalent in the early nineteenth century; for a long time now, the electoral system does not serve its original purpose, outside of protecting the interests of small states; and direct election of members of the Senate began in the early twentieth century.

2 Translator’s note: The original expression Yao used is 一致性认同—consensus view. Yao used this expression to avoid explaining Pareto principle to the Chinese audience (Southern Views is magzine read by ordinary learned Chinese, many of which are government officials). Yao’s—and Sen’s—basic point is clear: liberalism and its emphasis on individual choice is not compatible with egalitarianism, at least not in a formal sense, and often in real life. Taking this contradiction seriously presents us with any number of uncomfortable choices.

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The third wave of democratization, which began in the 1990s, pushed simple one-person-one-vote democracy to the extreme. This wave led to the democratization of the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and some Asian countries (or regions). These newly democratized countries (or regions) invariably copied the US system, but were unable to incorporate the American system of checks and balances of the US system, and wound up solely with one person one vote. At the same time, Western democratic societies underwent similar changes, with elite democracy being replaced by mass democracy, and even the US Supreme Court, which has always prided itself on its ideological neutrality, has unconsciously begun to cater to social trends. The world has thus entered a phase of “democratic decline:” once this kind of democratization kicks in, democratic reflexes are pushed to the extreme, and the democratic system inevitably degenerates from a collective organism to an atomized machine of political struggle. The political culture of tolerance, rationality, and pluralism that the West has built up over the past 200 years is being challenged as never before. The inequality brought about by globalization is merely an external change, and the democratic decline caused by liberalism itself is the root cause of the atomization of politics in Western societies. Under the wave of democratization, the idea of liberalism has been driven to extremes. The value of the individual has been magnified out of proportion, individual self-determination has evolved into simplistic anti-establishment and anti-tradition positions, while egalitarianism has degenerated into a pretext for street politics. In this context, it is necessary to take Sen’s criticism of liberalism one step further. Sen’s criticism reveals the contradiction between liberalism and collective decision-making. From the point of view of Confucianism, which will be discussed below, the contradiction of liberalism arises from overly optimistic assumptions concerning human nature. Liberalism defines itself both in terms of individual rights, emphasizing the value of the individual and individual self-determination, but also defines itself in terms of social relations among these individuals, emphasizing egalitarianism and imagining that the two are embodied in the same person. However, in reality, human beings are born unequal, and individuals have different life circumstances due to intellectual, family, social, and geographical factors, and thus inevitably arrive at different levels of

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individual value and individual self-determination. In this sense, egalitarianism stands in contradiction to the value of the individual and individual self-determination. Liberalism is a utopian ideal conceived for the advancement of humanity, not a realistic judgment of individuals as they exist. Applying a utopian ideal to reality is bound to create problems. In the context of state governance, liberalism requires that everyone’s opinion be given equal weight in political decision-making, but in reality there are differences in the amount of information available to individuals and in their ability to judge, and treating everyone’s opinion equally is likely to produce a dysfunctional politics. When the non-democratic elements of Western democracy were still functional, these contradictions could be managed through certain instrumental, institutional arrangements that acknowledged inequality; however, the election of Donald Trump, Brexit, and populist movements throughout Europe suggest that such times are over and that the West will have to accept atomized politics for the foreseeable future. Under such circumstances, there will be a huge question mark over whether liberal democracy can continue to achieve good governance.

What Confucianism Can Teach Us The deeper reason why liberal democracy is showing signs of decay is that its entire political system is built on an unreliable understanding of human nature. As mentioned earlier, liberalism on the one hand portrays individuals as self-interested, atomized individuals, while at the same time assuming that each individual has equal value. In contrast, Confucianism’s description of human nature is a realistic judgment based on an observation of how people act in society, and is therefore more realistic than liberalism. In concrete terms, Confucius noted the differences between people and believed that there exist both “superior” and “small” people, as when he said “The junzi [superior man] is free and easy, the small man always careworn.”3 In today’s context, the “superior man” is someone who is moral, disciplined, and public-spirited, while a “small” person is someone who cares only about personal gain and loss.

3 Robert Eno, The Analects, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 35.

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Confucius argued that these differences are partly innate, i.e., as suggested by his remark that “Only the wisest and the stupidest do not change.”4 But he also believed that the average person could become a sage by submitting to ritual and studying with an eye to greater achievement. Unlike Confucius, Mencius believed that everyone has the potential to become a sage, or, as he put it, “every man can become a Yao or Shun,”5 which Xunzi echoed, saying “anyone on the streets can become a Yu [another ancient sage king].”6 However, whether or not an individual will eventually become a sage depends less on innate capacities, and more on the cultivation and effort made by the individual. As Mencius said: “The body has parts that are of different value, and greater and lesser parts. One should not harm a greater part for the sake of a smaller, or a more valuable part for the sake of one of lesser worth. Those who nurture the smaller parts become small men; those who nurture the greater parts become great men.”7 Xunzi further developed the ideas of Mencius. He said: “If ordinary men in the street and the common people accumulate goodness and make it whole and complete, they are called sages. They must seek it and only then will they obtain it. They must work at it and only then will they achieve it. They must accumulate it and only then will they be lofty. They must make it complete and only then are they sages. So, the sage is the product of people’s accumulated efforts…The sons of craftsmen all continue their fathers’ work, and the people of a state are comfortably accustomed to the clothing of that area—if they live in Chu they follow the style of Chu, if they live in Yue they follow the style of Yue, and if they live in Xia, they follow the style of Xia. This is not because of their Heavenly-given nature, but rather because accumulation and polishing have made it so. Hence, if people know to be diligent about practice, be careful about habituation, and esteem accumulation and polishing, then they become gentlemen. If they give in to their inborn dispositions and

4 Robert Eno, The Analects, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 94. 5 Robert Eno, Mencius, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 115. 6 Eric L. Hutton, Xunzi: The Complete Text, pp. 65–66. 7 Robert Eno, Mencius, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 113.

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nature and do not sufficiently question and study, then they become petty men.”8 From a contemporary perspective, the appeal of Confucianism lies not in the egalitarian affirmation of the value of the individual, but in the affirmation of the human propensity to seek self-improvement. In contrast, liberalism views human nature as natural and static, equivalent to what Confucianism calls man’s “innate nature,” while Confucianism places more emphasis on the part of human nature that is acquired through effort, which is dynamic. If we respect this Confucian insight, we should not abstract human nature and view it as a fixed objective point from which to deduce other things, but instead should see it as the product of any number of variables, and hence construct political systems accordingly. Of course, defining human nature according to one particular aspect and equating this aspect with human nature as a whole would simplify theoretical analysis, but such simplification does not mean that it is desirable in reality. As discussed above, the signs of the decline of liberal democracy are closely related to its distortion of human nature. Seeing all people as the same may be appealing, but it implies a uniformity that, by ignoring the facts, inevitably leads us to “cut off the feet to fit the shoes,” which is an undesirable outcome. In contrast, Confucianism recognizes the differences and plasticity of human nature. Because the variability and plasticity of human nature is determined by a combination of factors such as natural endowment, the environment in which one grows up, and individual effort, human nature from a Confucian perspective is not a fixed constant, but a function that varies with its constituent elements and their relationships. Therefore, by analyzing human nature from the Confucian perspective, we can focus both on changes in human nature at the individual level, and on changes in human nature at the aggregate level, after which we can construct political systems that will deal with the variability of human nature and with various problems in human nature that threaten our common life as human beings. Basing ourselves on the Confucian view of human nature, the political system we build will be a hierarchy in which the level of virtue and ability of the members corresponds largely to their position in the hierarchy.

8 Eric L. Hutton, Xunzi: The Complete Text, pp. 65–66.

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Because all people possessing the necessary virtues and abilities have the opportunity to enter the system, the system is open, or in other words, it is open to those with the proper merits. At first glance, this restricted openness may seem less appealing than unrestricted openness, but in the politics of public affairs, merit-based restrictions may be extremely necessary. Public affairs are matters of fundamental interest to all of us, but not everyone has the virtue or capacity to handle them, and even if they do, there are differences in their virtues and capacities. Thus, if the number of positions in the political system is limited, and fewer than the number of qualified and competent people, then the political system, which is open and hierarchical in nature, will accordingly be competitive. This competitiveness manifests itself in two ways. On the one hand, there is a self-competition, expressed in continual efforts of selfcultivation, what Confucius meant when he said “being benevolent proceeds from oneself,”9 and what Mencius meant when he said “He who exhausts his mind knows his nature; to know one’s nature is to know Tian [the heavens].”10 On the other hand, because everyone’s self-cultivation is affected both by their own efforts and by the external environment, some people are more virtuous and capable than others. Broadly speaking, the second aspect of competition is competition with others. When these two kinds of competition are projected into the political sphere, the meaning is what Confucius referred to when he said “Raise up the straight and set them above the crooked and the people will obey. Raise up the crooked and set them above the straight and the people will not obey,”11 or “If you raise up the straight and place them over the crooked, they can make the crooked straight.”12

9 Translator’s note: The longer passage from which Yao chose this quote is: “Yan Yuan asked about ren [benevolence]. The Master said, ‘Conquer yourself and return to li [ritual]: that is ren. If a person could conquer himself and return to li for a single day, the world would respond to him with ren. Being ren proceeds from oneself, how could it come from others?’ Yan Yuan said, ‘May I ask for details of this?’ The Master said, ‘If it is not li, don’t look at it; if it is not li, don’t listen to it; if it is not li, don’t say it; if it is not li, don’t do it.” See Robert Eno, The Analects, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 59. 10 Robert Eno, Mencius, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 124. 11 Robert Eno, The Analects, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 7. 12 Robert Eno, The Analects, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 64.

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The Han public recommendation system and the post-Tang imperial examination system are typical representatives of the practice of Confucian political philosophy. In the Western Han dynasty, a strict system of selection and examination of officials was already in place, with grassroots officials and gentry having the duty to recommend young candidates with both virtue and talent, while the central government examined the ability of lower-level officials to govern, including their capacity to recommend young talent. By the Eastern Han dynasty, the public recommendation system evolved into a system of powerful families, which eventually gave rise to the imperial examination system in the Sui dynasty. After this system was improved during the Tang dynasty, China became the first country to establish a bureaucratic system for selecting and appointing talented officials. The idea of “plowing fields in the morning and entering the imperial court in the evening” was no longer an intellectuals’ pipe dream, but a desirable reality; traditional China thus became the most mobile society in the ancient world. However, the Confucian hierarchy expanded in traditional society, being found not only in the political sphere, but also in the social, familial, and interpersonal spheres. From a contemporary perspective, these hierarchical relationships constrained human nature and individual freedom. Therefore, we should be selective as we seek to carry forward Confucianism. This is not a betrayal of tradition, but a development of it. At the level of state governance, Confucianism, as a political philosophy, is based on a realistic description of human differences and an advocacy of a hierarchical politics of merit. This political philosophy does not naturally reject the value of the individual and individual self-determination; what it does reject is abstract egalitarianism. In politics, equality is based on merit; those who without certain virtues and abilities are not entitled to enter certain political arenas. However, the point of this is not to divide people into an arbitrary number of classes, but to motivate each person to achieve the virtue and ability required by a certain hierarchy through individual efforts. In this respect, even Confucius did not reject the improvement of individual ability, and his demand for society was that “There is a teaching;

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there are no divisions.”13 Liberalism raises humanity to a glorious level, recalling the positive energy of the movie Zootopia,14 but in reality it saps the individual’s motivation for self-improvement. Confucianism’s claims may seem less exciting, but when applied to reality, they can stimulate the potential of the individual and enhance the value of society as a whole.

Contemporary Chinese Practice The contemporary CCP system has carried forward the political tradition of meritocracy from Chinese history. From the perspective of political selection, the CCP can be seen as a system that replaces the electoral mechanism in a democracy. In a democracy, politicians compete with each other for voter preferences; in China, the Party selects and appoints officials, and officials at all levels are in a perpetual promotion tournament, where promotion is achieved through fierce competition. The Party is no longer a political party in the Western sense of representing a particular interest or ideological group, but an institutional arrangement with constitutional responsibilities. Loyalty to the party is one important criterion for cadre selection. However, since the Party is no longer a political party in the traditional sense, the loyalty here is to the Party-centered constitutional framework and to the CCP system. If China’s unique system of selection can be consensually agreed upon by the entire population, and thus constitutionally agreed upon, then loyalty to the Party is loyalty to the polity, and the legitimacy of the Party as a state structure is transformed into the legitimacy of the polity. An important criterion here is whether the party’s selection system satisfies the characteristics of openness, competition, and recognition of merit. The skeptical negativity of the mainstream Western opinion on this question has to do to their inherent bias. However, if we analyze the CCP’s selection system carefully, we will find that it indeed satisfies these three characteristics.

13 Robert Eno, The Analects, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 87. 14 Translator’s note: The plot of the movie revolves around the eventual triumph of

Judy Hopps, the main character, to be recognized for her talents, despite discrimination and other challenges. I assume the movie was showing in China when Yao was writing this essay.

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First, the CCP system is an open system based on merit, and the Party is open to all outstanding individuals who recognize the CCP system and are interested in the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Membership in the Party is a prerequisite for those aspiring to enter the national hierarchy, just as winning the imperial examination was a prerequisite for entering the ruling class in traditional China. As advocated by Confucianism, the openness of contemporary China’s hierarchy is conditional on possessing certain virtues. This is very different from a democratic system. Democracies do not have a strict qualification system, which affords access to the core of state governance for Trumplike opportunists. Second, the CCP system is a highly competitive system. This competition is not between parties or factions, but between individual officials. The Party itself is a mechanism of interest aggregation, and the expression of society’s interests need not be presented through individual officials. Consequently, competition among officials has evolved from a contest over the representation of interests to a contest over the competence and virtue of individual officials. Although the Party’s official documents never mention the connection between the Party and Confucianism, the Party’s practice fully embodies Confucian political thought. Third, the CCP system is also characterized by its meritocratic selection system. The reason why merit is an important feature of a legitimate system of government is that otherwise, cronyism would become a staple of political life and corruption and ungovernability would become the norm. Some case studies have found that cronyism does indeed exist in the management style of cadres in some parts of China. However, case studies often do not reflect the full picture; to get the full picture, one must base the study on the analysis of large data samples. Some of these studies suggest that competence is indeed an important selection criterion in the Chinese selection system. An early and influential study can be found in a 2005 article by Li Hongbin and Zhou Li’an: “Political Turnover and Economic Performance: The Incentive Role of Personnel Control in China,” published in the Journal of Public Economics.15 The authors studied how relative economic growth rates affected the probability of provincial leaders 15 Li, Hongbin and Li-an Zhou. “Political Turnover and Economic Performance: The Incentive Role of Personnel Control in China,” Journal of Public Economics, 89, no. 9–10 (2005): 1743–1762.

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moving to the central government and found that if the economic growth rate of an official’s province was one standard deviation above the average during his tenure, the official’s probability of promotion would increase by 15%. A 2015 paper by Yao Yang and Zhang Muyang16 looks at municipal officials and uses a more refined econometric approach to measure the ability of officials to grow the local economy, and found that for officials over the age of 49, the more capable officials were more likely to be promoted, with the most capable officials having a 30% higher probability of being promoted than the least capable officials. Considering that economic growth has been the Party’s main focus for a considerable period of time, it is not surprising that the selection of officials takes the ability to develop the economy as a key criterion. In order to adapt to changing economic and social conditions and respond to popular demands, the Party is also trying to establish a more comprehensive cadre inspection system that adds other indicators to the assessment. Selecting the best and the brightest sets China’s selection system apart from other non-democratic systems. It attracts ambitious young people into the system and enhances popular confidence in current institutions. Sociological research shows that most Chinese believe in the concept of “desert.” Projected onto the political sphere, people naturally expect highly capable officials to stand out in the system. The selection system fulfills this expectation and thus enhances its legitimacy. The CCP system has returned to Chinese tradition in practice; what the Party lacks is a new narrative about this practice. For a fairly long period after its founding, the CCP was a revolutionary party that followed Marxist-Leninist guidance; Marxism was the theoretical source of the Party’s orthodox narrative. However, since the Party’s focus shifted to economic construction in the late 1970s, the Party has entered a new era. The Party’s task is no longer to destroy the old system, but to build a new one with the goal of creating a better life for the Chinese people and achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. As practice evolves, the Party’s theory needs to evolve with the times. At the same time, the CCP system must also face the challenges of the 16 Yao, Yang, and Muyang Zhang. “Subnational Leaders and Economic Growth: Evidence from Chinese Cities,” Journal of Economic Growth 20 (2015): 405-436.

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contemporary democratic narrative. This narrative occupies not only pride of place elsewhere in the world, but the same is also true in China. The decline of Western democratic politics suggests that we should reject a blind, unthinking embrace of the existing democratic narrative, and this essay’s discussion of the inner contradictions of liberalism further rejects the internal logic of liberal democracy as currently practiced in much of the world. We need to find a new model of state governance outside of today’s democracy, and a modern version of Confucian politics may be an alternative. The CCP system offers a promising template for the implementation of this program. What Party theorists need to do is to provide a new mainstream narrative for this template that combines the Confucian tradition and Party practice.

Confucianism and Liberalism (2021)

How Do Confucians View Equality? By today’s standards, Confucius’ political views are deeply unequal, reflecting strong hierarchical notions grounded in calls to “obedience.” However, Confucius’ ideas are no more inclined to uphold a fixed hierarchy than the ideas of his contemporaries (e.g., the ancient Greeks). As the historian Xu Fuguan (1903/04–1982) once argued, in the context of Western Zhou society, Confucius’ thought was distinguished by its egalitarianism: “In the history of Chinese culture, it was Confucius who truly discovered the idea of humanity. In other words, he destroyed all unreasonable boundaries between human beings and recognized the idea that as long as we are human, we are the same, and equal.” Confucius’ discovery of the universal idea of humanity can be explained through the following three points. First, Confucius destroyed class restrictions in society and politics, and transformed the traditional class distinction between the superior and the small person into a moral distinction between the two, which meant that both were the result of

姚洋, 秦子忠, “谁反而最有可能解决‘不平等’问题?” (Who Will Finally Be Able to Resolve the ‘Inequality’ Problem?) Beijing Cultural Review 文化纵横 Wechat channel, June 13, 2021. A new title is used here. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Y. Yang, China and the West, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1882-9_11

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individual efforts, after which the superior person changed from being a class oppressor, and became the symbol of all those who strive for improvement. Second, Confucius destroyed the political myth that to overthrow an unreasonable ruler is equivalent to rebellion, and pulled the ruler down from his position of privilege so that he would be judged according to the same conscience and reason as the common people. Third, Confucius destroyed not only the localism of the Warring States era, but also the racial views of his time, giving equal treatment to those known as ‘barbarians.’ Mencius was even more enlightened than Confucius, and his saying that “every man can become a Yao or a Shun [ancient sage kings]” meant that everyone had an equal opportunity to become a saintly and virtuous person. This is the starting point for equality. Although not all people wind up becoming saintly and virtuous, this is less due to an inequality in their basic status and social position and more to an inequality in terms of effort and practice: some people give their all, while others do not, and the resulting inequality is the product of accumulated effort. What distinguishes the person who strives to become a sage—and succeeds—from an ordinary person is their sense of moral character, in that the sage is the model personality of one who “is benevolent and loves others,” and “who puts himself in the place of others.” In this respect, this inequality is not oppressive, but instead, as Amartya Sen says, is the very foundation for the enforcement of unilateral obligations. Sen writes: “A perspective that looks at the unilateral obligations arising from the inequality of power is not only broadly used in human rights activism today, but can also be seen in the early struggles for freedom and human rights associated with freedom.” For Mencius, the worthy person willingly chooses to take on more responsibilities and duties, and the resulting inequality is not a substantive inequality. Xunzi, who followed Mencius, returned to Confucius’ theory of differences in human nature, but we can also deduce ideas of equality from his thought. His saying that “anyone on the streets can become a Yu [another ancient sage king]”1 suggests that everyone can become a man like Yu 1 Translator’s note: The longer passage from which this quote is taken is: “Anyone on the streets can become a Yu. How do I mean this? I say: that by which Yu was Yu was because he was ren, yi, lawful, and correct. Thus, ren, yi, lawfulness, and correctness have patterns that can be known and can be practiced. However, people on the streets all

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through constant “accumulation of deliberate effort 积伪” or by cultivating goodness in himself. This is similar to Mencius’ idea that “every man can become a Yao or a Shun.” On the basis of classical Confucian thought, today’s Confucians can develop the modern concept of relational equality.2 In fact, issues in contemporary Western political philosophy are experiencing a shift from atomic equality 元素平等 to relational equality. As a result, the richness of relational ideas accumulated in the Confucian tradition finds itself in the spotlight. Formally speaking, identity 同一性 [i.e., the idea that we are all the same] and symmetry 对称性 [i.e., the idea that we should receive similar treatment despite our differences] are two aspects of equality, and in the scholarly tradition can be traced back at least to Aristotle’s notions of quantitative equality and proportional equality. During the Enlightenment, identity achieved great success as a critical weapon against hierarchy, but at the same time symmetry suffered, i.e., proportional equality declined along with hierarchy. In reality, however, what was destroyed was the entrenched hierarchy, not the idea of hierarchy. Setting aside the stickiness of history, hierarchies are necessary even at the abstract level. First, societies with a certain population size must have a certain level of hierarchy in their political structure, otherwise they cannot be governed effectively; second, as long as we recognize the diversity of human nature and the differences in abilities, then the system must allow for a certain level of hierarchy. The key

have the material for knowing ren, yi, lawfulness, and correctness, and they all have the equipment for practicing ren, yi, lawfulness, and correctness. Thus, it is clear that they can become a Yu.” Eric L. Hutton, trans., Xunzi: The Complete Text. 2 Translator’s note: “Relational equality ideals are often coupled with the ideal of equal democratic citizenship. On this view, in an egalitarian society, all permanent adult members of society are equal citizens, equal in political rights and duties, including the right to an equal vote in democratic elections that determine who shall be top public officials and lawmakers responsible for enacting laws and public policies enforced on all. An ideal of social equality complements political equality norms. The idea is that citizens might be unequal in wealth, resources, welfare, and other dimensions of their condition, yet be equal in status in a way that enables all to relate as equals. On this approach, an egalitarian society contrasts sharply with a society of caste or class hierarchy, in which the public culture singles out some as inferior and some as superior, and contrasts also with a society with a dictatorial or authoritarian political system, accompanied by socially required kowtowing of ordinary members of society toward political elites.” See the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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here is not the presence or absence of a hierarchical system, but the degree of upward and downward mobility permitted within this system. Traditional Chinese culture is rich in ideas of quantitative and proportional equality. The Enlightenment, which rejected proportional equality and promoted quantitative equality, spread to China in recent times, and modern Confucianism has been able to draw on the equality ideas of the Confucian doctrinal tradition on the basis of a more comprehensive interplay of Chinese and Western theories. The Confucian theory of relational equality can be naturally derived and developed from Confucianism’s abundant relational ideas and symmetry-oriented ideas of proportional equality (such as the correspondence between virtue and blessing, good being rewarded with good, and evil being rewarded with evil, etc.). Concretely, Confucian relational equality is an equality based on quality, meaning that those with similar quality are politically equal. Certain levels of the Confucian political structure are not open to all, but only to those who possess the quality required to enter that level, including competence and virtue (hereafter referred to as a “competency set” for simplicity’s sake), to those who meet the hierarchy’s requirements. This is clearly different from the abstract equality promoted by liberalism. For the sake of illustration, let us imagine a simple social structure that contains a three-tier political structure, from low to high, with each tier corresponding to an opportunity set we will call “opportunity one,” “opportunity two,” and “opportunity three.” We can imagine that the first tier includes the basic constituent units of society, such as schools, businesses, social groups, etc., and the corresponding rights enjoyed by those units; the second tier includes basic activities of political participation, such as elections and representation; and the third tier includes the offices required to run the state and the corresponding rights attached to those offices. According to the logic of liberalism, all opportunities are open to all. In contrast, Confucianism treats the three tiers of opportunities differently. Concretely, “opportunity one” is open to all. Because everyone has the potential to become a sage, opening this opportunity opens the door to sagehood for all. At this lowest level, modern Confucians, like liberals, recognize the formal freedom and equal rights of all people. Since everyone has equal value, each person therefore has the freedoms that correspond to this value, including freedom of choice, freedom of speech, and so on.

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As for political participation, people can choose to enter this level or not. If they choose to enter, they must possess the appropriate attributes. This requirement is not excessive, just as a person must pass certain exams in order to attend college. But those who choose not to enter are not considered to be inferior; the political hierarchy is only one part of life, and there is a huge space outside of politics for people to pursue excellence. Thus, “opportunity two” and “opportunity three” are open to those with the appropriate qualifications, and the latter is more demanding than the former. In reality, people have different sets of competencies, and higher positions correspond to higher responsibilities (and influence), and therefore require corresponding sets of abilities. In this respect, the Confucian concept of equality is defined by symmetry, in the form of the age-old proportional equality common to both Eastern and Western cultures. Compared to the liberal view of equality, the Confucian view of equality can better deal with the issue of individual responsibility. The liberal view of equality is prescribed by identity/sameness, and the issue of individual responsibility is the central problem that the post-Rawls liberal left has had to grapple with.3 Ronald Dworkin’s (1931–2013) solution was to distinguish between resources and preferences. For Dworkin, resources (including impersonal resources such as social environment, family background, etc., and personal resources such as an individual’s gender, height, personality, etc.) exist objectively and individuals are not responsible for them, so egalitarian assistance should be provided to those who lack resources; by way of contrast, preferences are subjective and are the responsibility of individuals, so inequality resulting from preferences should be allowed. 3 Translator’s note: “The theory of justice pioneered by John Rawls explores a simple idea—that the concern of distributive justice is to compensate individuals for misfortune. Some people are blessed with good luck; some are cursed with bad luck, and it is the responsibility of society—all of us regarded collectively—to alter the distribution of goods and evils that arises from the jumble of lotteries that constitutes human life as we know it. Some are lucky to be born wealthy, or into a favorable socializing environment, or with a tendency to be charming, intelligent, persevering, and the like. These people are likely to be successful in the economic marketplace and to achieve success in other important ways over the course of their lives. However, some people are, as we say, born to lose. Distributive justice stipulates that the lucky should transfer some or all of their gains due to luck to the unlucky.” Richard Arneson, “Rawls, Responsibility, and Distributive Justice.” The question Yao and Qin raise is: what is the responsibility of the individual if society owes them distributive justice?

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Through this distinction between resources and preferences, Dworkin does focus on the issue of personal responsibility within a liberal egalitarian framework, but in terms of resources, the development of an individual’s character and abilities is not purely objective; and in terms of personal ambitions, we cannot exclude objective factors, which means that the shaping of personal preferences and goals cannot be entirely subjective. Therefore, Dworkin does not completely resolve the issue of personal responsibility. By way of contrast, Confucian relational equality is defined by symmetry, and therefore it deals with the issue of personal responsibility in a very rational way. Relational equality focuses directly on the correspondence between elements and gives a normative expression to this correspondence. The Confucian tradition is not only full of ideas focusing on relationality and symmetry, but is also deeply concerned with ethics, as we see in Confucius’ statement that the benevolent “cherish people,” or Mencius’ notion of the “moral sense that cannot bear the suffering of others,” as well as Xunzi’s counsel that “the five types of handicapped people should be received by their superiors and nurtured… Take in those who are orphaned or widowed.” From these ideological resources, we can develop the relevant principles of a Confucian relational equality. To deepen the discussion, let us consider a relational equality that includes the four elements of endowment, opportunity, effort, and utility. Relational equality contains two elements of symmetry. The first aspect of symmetry is that the correspondence between each person’s endowment, opportunity, effort, and utility follows the same set of rules (a set of rules expressed in the form of constitutional law, etc.), which in turn relates to the question of whether the individual as a person is treated fairly. A lack of symmetry in this respect would mean that members of society are in an unequal or unjust social relationship, so it can be expressed as the overall principle of relational equality. Accordingly, if opportunities one, two, and three as discussed in the previous section are not open to all according to the law based on equality of attributes, then the principle of wholeness is not met. The second aspect of symmetry is an interpersonal comparison of the individual’s endowments, opportunities, efforts, and utilities at the elemental level, which is related to the equivalence of the elements that make up a person, and the absence of symmetry at the elemental level would imply a certain inequality, but this inequality is different

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from the overall inequality, and it can be corrected by the principle of compensation, i.e., if a person’s endowments, opportunities, efforts, utilities, etc., are lower than some corresponding given value, the person is compensated accordingly. This second aspect of symmetry requires more explanation. First, Confucian relational equality not only recognizes interpersonal differences in individual endowment, opportunity, effort, and utility, but also allows for the expression of such differences in the social structure. This seems to clash with the value of equality, but in fact it does not. Unlike left-wing liberals such as Dworkin, who advocate the elimination of differences in individual endowment, Confucianism recognizes and distinguishes between the differential nature of individual endowments. In our view, the differences in individual endowments are objective and unchangeable, and the differences in individual endowments neither necessarily lead to unreasonable inequality nor deny the possibility of individual sainthood and virtue, unless one believes that there is only one path to sainthood and virtue. However, it is undeniable that (1) those who receive excellent endowments are more capable of becoming sages with the same level of effort; (2) for those who receive average endowments, they need to put in more effort to achieve the same level of achievement; (3) as for those whose endowments and family backgrounds are deficient, unless these misfortunes are corrected on the basis of human dignity and other values, it will be difficult for them to realize their life value. Together, these three situations demonstrate asymmetry (i.e., de facto inequality) at the level of endowment; and, if left uncorrected, they undermine values such as human dignity, and thus the principle of compensation applies. The question is how to determine the threshold of the compensation principle. In these three cases, although there is some difference between (1) and (2), this difference does not constitute an obstacle to the realization of life values, so the threshold should not be drawn between (1) and (2); what really constitutes an obstacle to the realization of life values is (3), so the threshold should be drawn between (2) and (3), and thus the compensation principle only needs to apply to (3), for example, improving the conditions of people with disabilities, the education and living conditions of children from poor families, etc., in order to enhance the level of realization of their life values. This division is in line with the spirit of Sen’s theory of capability; it does not demand a complete equality of capabilities, but an equality that leads to capability building.

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How Do Confucians View Individual Value and Self-Determination? For Confucianism, individual values are part of social values. However, in Mencius’ discourse, the people are at the forefront, and the equivalence of individual values in the sense of benevolence is emphasized, so that assassinating an immoral ruler is like killing an ordinary person. Despite this, we must admit that Mencius was not aware of the distinction between the group and the self. The same is true of Xunzi’s idea to “make clear social divisions and so employ the masses.” But we shouldn’t be too hard on the ancients; after all, in their time, no one could put the individual above society, which is true in both China and the West. From the perspective of Confucianism, which attaches importance to the cultivation of the individual, the value of the individual includes a component of individual effort, and society should support the individual, as we see in expressions such as “there is a teaching; there are no divisions,” “regulating the people’s production,” and “collecting the widows and orphans, and compensating the poor.” Furthermore, Confucianism does not require individuals to make sacrifices for society, but only that each individual should have his or her own place in the social order. Thus, Confucianism can accept a thin version of the theory of individual value. Confucianism explores the issue of individual self-determination in two relational dimensions, one of which is the relationship between the individual and the social organization. In this dimension, Confucianism favors the denial of individual self-determination in the following sense: each individual is constrained by the rites. The rites define the proper relationship between old and young, high and low, all of which leave little room for individual self-determination. The second dimension is the relationship between individuals. In this dimension, Confucianism respects individual self-determination. This is best exemplified by the saying “not to do to others as you would not wish done to yourself;” the same is true of the doctrine of the Middle Way 中庸. The Middle Way means to act according to common sense and not to go to extremes, so that one can tolerate the different opinions of others. However, unlike classical liberals who emphasize only negative freedom, Confucianism affirms the act of guiding individual choices based on high moral principles, as expressed in the phrase, “wishing to be enhanced himself, he seeks also to enhance others.”

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The balance between the principle of not imposing on the other and the principle of enhancing the other is something that modern Confucianism must achieve. Having absorbed the modern theory of rights, we explain the Confucian attitude toward individual self-determination as follows: morally, the principle of “not imposing” and the principle of “enhancing others” are of equal importance, but institutionally, the principle of “not imposing” takes precedence, and the establishment of the principle of “enhancing others” presupposes the establishment of the principle of “not imposing.” Confucian equality can be divided into two levels. First, at the level of individual comparison, Confucianism affirms that everyone has an equal right to pursue sainthood; second, at the political level, equality is based on attributes, i.e., only those who meet certain qualifications can compete equally among themselves for political positions, which takes the form of symmetry between individual ability sets and corresponding political positions. Here, we draw on modern equality theory and develop the Confucian view of equality from the perspective of social relations to obtain a kind of relational equality, and thus outline the meaning of its principle of equality in a preliminary way. Confucianism’s relational equality is defined by symmetry, of which there are two kinds. The first kind of symmetry concerns whether the individual as a whole is treated fairly, which regulates the overall principle of relational equality; the second aspect of symmetry concerns whether the elements that make up a person are equal, which regulates the compensation principle of relational equality. In sum, Confucianism has two different approaches to liberalism: at the individual level, there is considerable overlap between Confucianism and the principles of liberalism; at the political level, Confucianism emphasizes that individual values and choices must be subordinated to order, and that equality among individuals can only be based on attributes. This notion of relational equality unifies two seemingly contradictory traits of the Chinese: in private life, the Chinese uphold individualism; in political life, the Chinese uphold collectivism. Our work further develops Confucian liberalism, articulating it as a liberalism based on order and attributes, and demonstrates that the part of Confucian liberalism that cannot be reduced to Western liberalism constitutes the very foundation of the survival of Chinese culture. Moreover, the concept of harmony, which is nurtured in Confucianism’s Middle Way, has a clear advantage in dealing with the conflicting interpersonal

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relationships and the imbalance between human beings and nature caused by Western liberalism. Accordingly, Confucian liberalism can contribute to the peaceful co-prosperity of humankind.

Confucianism and Common Prosperity (2023)

In the past few decades, Confucianism has been widely misunderstood as a doctrine that upholds hierarchy and order and opposes egalitarianism. In many ways, this is related to the social climate of reform and opening, which has affirmed entrepreneurship and the pursuit of wealth, thus striking a blow against egalitarianism. At the same time, entrepreneurship and the pursuit of wealth have also increased economic inequalities, thus leading for calls to restore “common prosperity,” one of the great debates of our time. The point of this essay is to argue that there are resources within Confucian thought that address both of these issues in pragmatic, helpful ways, focusing both on macro-level goals (such as the notion that “where there is even distribution there is no such thing as poverty”) and microlevel social functions, such as the role of merit. My argument is that Confucianism may help to solve the fundamental tension in Chinese society, i.e., egalitarianism at the macro-level versus merit at the microlevel, by suggesting that we “level the playing field” by increasing the individual’s earning capacity, but at the same time insist on merit and hierarchy as a reward for talent and hard work.

姚洋, “儒家与共同富裕,” Research on Confucius 孔子研究, 2023, No. 2. References in Chinese are removed for easy reading. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Y. Yang, China and the West, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1882-9_12

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An Analysis of “Worry not About Scarcity/ 寡 but About Uneven Distribution/不均” The locus classicus of Confucius’s discussion of “uneven distribution” is found in Chapter 16 of the Analects, quoted here in the D. C. Lao translation: The head of a state or a noble family worries not about underpopulation but about uneven distribution, not about poverty but about instability. For where there is even distribution there is no such thing as poverty, where there is harmony there is no such thing as under-population and where there is stability there is no such thing as overturning. It is for this reason that when distant subjects are unsubmissive one cultivates one’s moral quality in order to attract them, and once they have come one makes them content.1

The ambiguity in the citation from the Analects comes from the understanding of the words gua (few 寡) and jun (even 均). In a literal sense, gua means “few people,” and the term was commonly used in this sense in pre-Qin texts. But this reading seems inconsistent in its pairing with jun/even. Generally speaking, jun/even refers to the equal distribution of objects or money, which is inconsistent with gua/few and its reference to people. As a result, Dong Zhongshu, in his Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals, reversed the position of gua/few with that of pin/贫/poor, so that the key sentence now reads “The head of a state or a noble family worries not about poverty but about uneven distribution, not about underpopulation but about instability.” This makes Confucius in favor of “equalizing the rich and the poor.” However, to my mind, this misreads Confucius. To “equalize the rich and the poor” means to equalize the income and wealth of the rich and the poor, which usually involves overturning or at least drastically modifying the existing system, and Confucius’s support for order is something everyone understands, so it is hard to believe that he would be in favor of achieving an “equal” society by revolutionary means. One possibility is that for Confucius, “equality” is a description of a good society in a philosophical sense. In fact, he never discussed how to achieve an equal society. Thus on reflection, it seems unnecessary to follow Dong Zhongshu’s reinterpretation,

1 The Analects, D. C. Lao translation, online edition, 16.1.

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because for some two thousand years the vast majority of people have understood gua/few in a broader sense, i.e., referring not only to “few people” but to “few things.” This understanding is even more widespread in contemporary times, so most modern-day commentators have focused on a new interpretation of jun/even in an effort to understand what Confucius meant. Zhang Lianshun (b. 1962), a professor of philosophy, has studied the etymology of the character jun/均/even, and argues that in the pre-Qin era and before, jun/均/even was the same as jun/钧/similar. For Zhang, jun/均 does not mean “average,” or “equal,” but something greater, the idea of the absence of inequality, of fairness, and of justice. In other words, in this reading, jun/均 is elevated above concrete ideas of “taking the average of things” to abstract principles of fairness and justice. Seen in this light, Confucius’s statement—“The head of a state or a noble family worries not about underpopulation but about uneven distribution”—immediately takes on a modern meaning, close to the claims of libertarians, who are indifferent to whether a country is rich or poor, because as long as procedural justice exists, that a state is poor is irrelevant. But such a reading is surely too far-fetched. Confucius never addressed issues of fairness and justice; these issues only emerged in the West after the Enlightenment. Contemporary scholars Han Tao and Zhang Zihui follow Zhu Xi’s Commentary on the Analects, and argue that “jun/均” means “each person gets their share,” in other words, that each person accepts the role assigned to him by society and receives the share that comes with that role. Han Tao further points out that Confucius’s jun/均 has a political sense, suggesting that the rulers are adept at adjusting the consumption of social wealth and at balancing economic interests, minimizing the polarization between rich and poor through taxation, land equalization, and other means. But this is tantamount to admitting that Confucius entertained the idea of “equalizing rich and poor,” which flies in the face of the idea that “each one gets their share.” Zhu Xi’s interpretation is close to that of Zhang Lianshun, and even closer the original pre-Qin meaning. Confucius’ lifelong goal was to restore the Zhou system and establish a hierarchical society in which high and low knew their place and each received their due. From today’s point of view, his ideal society is too hierarchical, with obvious elements of injustice.

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By way of contrast, Li Hengmei’s (b. 1942) interpretation of jun/ 均 is even more far-fetched. He relies on the Kong Anguo’s (156–74 BCE) commentary, who argues that the Ji invaded Zhuanyu2 because they wanted the latter’s land, and therefore jun/均 should refer to the equal distribution of land. However, Confucius never mentioned land at all, and no matter how we read the locus classicus, gua/寡 never refers to land. The reading of jun/均 Li Hengmei came up with after reading the dialogue is clearly designed to make mischief by whitewashing what Confucius meant by the term. Other commentators argue on the basis of Confucius’s general outlook that he could not have entertained the idea of “equalizing the rich and the poor.“ Li Hengmei is one of these. He cites four points illustrating that Confucius’s thought conflicts with this idea. First, this notion is incompatible with Confucius’ idea of hierarchy. Second, it is incompatible with his ideas about “wealth and honor being decided by heaven.” Third, it is contrary to Confucius’ view of wealth: “Wealth and high station are what men desire… Poverty and low station are what men dislike”3 ; “It is a shameful matter to be poor and humble when the Way prevails in the state”4 ; “If wealth were a permissible pursuit, I would be willing even to be a cart driver holding a whip.”5 Fourth, “equalizing the rich and the poor” contradicts Confucius’ view of a country’s wealth. (For example, Confucius’ view on government priorities as expressed in Chapter 13 of the Analects is first, to be sure a state has enough people, second, to make them rich, and third, to educate them.) Confucius’s idea of hierarchy and his understanding of wealth are well understood, and he probably had no idea of “equalizing the rich and the poor.” The problem is that Li Hengmei insists on imposing such ideas on Confucius, or perhaps he has simply conflated “equalizing” with “equalizing wealth and poverty.” If the latter is the case, then the use of Confucius’ idea of hierarchy and wealth to deny his idea of “equality” may simply not work. As we 2 Translator’s note: The chapter from the Analects in which Confucius made his remarks about jun/均 is known as the “Ji family (or surname or clan)” chapter, and refers to an important family in the state of Lu, capable, in the context of the Warring States period, of invading other territories. “Zhuanyu”was a small state in the region which Ji was planning to attack. 3 The Analects, D. C. Lao translation, online edition, 4.5. 4 The Analects, D. C. Lao translation, online edition, 8.13. 5 The Analects, D. C. Lao translation, online edition, 7.12.

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know, Confucius “transmitted but did not create,” and the Analects is a record of his disciples’ conversations with him, so there are inevitably inconsistencies. More importantly, there may be opposing ideas in Confucius’ thought, and we cannot deny one because we affirm the other. A moral system must be able to guide every aspect of human activity and must therefore be complete; however, according to Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, no complete system can be self-consistent.6 In the age of Confucius, there was no professional division of labor, and every sage had to construct their own complete system, and thus there must have been cases of non-self-consistency, and we moderns need not make amends for them. So finally, how should we understand Confucius’ statement that: “The head of a state or a noble family worries not about underpopulation but about uneven distribution, not about poverty but about instability?” In my opinion, the key is hidden in the relationship of several key concepts contained in this sentence, namely: “均/equality,” “贫/ poverty,” “和/harmony,” and “寡/underpopulation.” The phrase that follows this sentence is: “For where there is even distribution there is no such thing as poverty, where there is harmony there is no such thing as under-population and where there is stability there is no such thing as overturning.” This is meant to explain the first sentence, and since ancient Chinese scholars are not known for their logic, we do not need to get hung up on the order of the two sentences, but should instead to analyze the two sentences together in order to accurately understand the meaning of the first one. First, “where there is even distribution there is no such thing as poverty” means that “even distribution” is the cause of “no poverty,” or that “evenness” and “poverty” are opposites. Next, the statement “[worry] not about poverty but about instability” suggests that “instability” is a greater concern than “poverty,” in other words, that as long as a society is stable, it does not matter if it is a bit poor. In addition, “peace” and “harmony” are the same, which means that “where there is 6 Translator’s note: “Gödel’s two incompleteness theorems are among the most important results in modern logic, and have deep implications for various issues. They concern the limits of provability in formal axiomatic theories. The first incompleteness theorem states that in any consistent formal system F within which a certain amount of arithmetic can be carried out, there are statements of the language of F which can neither be proved nor disproved in F. According to the second incompleteness theorem, such a formal system cannot prove that the system itself is consistent (assuming it is indeed consistent).” See the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy online edition.

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harmony there is no such thing as under-population” tells us that “peace” can eliminate “under-population” (in the sense that if country is stable, its population will increase). In other words, “peace” and “without underpopulation” have the same value. Third, according to “[worry] not about underpopulation but about uneven distribution,” “uneven distribution” is a greater concern than “underpopulation,” which suggests that “uneven distribution” is a greater concern than “a lack of peace.” Based on the above analysis, we can “recover” Confucius’s original logic: “equality” is more important than “under-population” (“worry not about underpopulation but about uneven distribution”); “lack of underpopulation” is equivalent to “peace” (“where there is harmony there is no such thing as under-population”); “peace” is more important than “not being poor” (“worry not about poverty but about instability”); and the way to eliminate “poverty” is through “equality” (“where there is even distribution there is no such thing as poverty”). In other words, Confucius’s order of ranking the good and bad social orders is: “even distribution” leads to “peace” which leads to “no underpopulation,” and that “even distribution” is the cause of “peace” and “lack of poverty.” The Confucian Analects is a complex system of dialogues, recording different occasions, discussing different issues. Confucius was both an idealist and a pragmatist. He could act pragmatically on various occasions (e.g., in the stories concerning Zigong’s redeeming of slaves7 ), and thus there is reason to believe that he would have expressed similar ideas differently in different circumstances. The best way for contemporary readers to interpret the Analects is to take a matter-of-fact approach, focusing only on the literal meaning of each chapter, rather than trying to interpret everything in terms of some notion of Confucius’s overall thought. Accordingly, there is only one interpretation of the key passage of the Analects we have been dealing with: Confucius believed that “even distribution” or the idea that 均无贫/“where there is even distribution there is no such thing as poverty” is the fundamental element of an ideal society, and that if society reaches a state of equality, there will be no unrest and no poverty. However, Confucius’s idea can only be understood on

7 Translator’s note: The state of Lu, where Confucius lived, had a policy that rewarded Lu residents that redeemed Lu people who had been enslaved in other kingdoms. Zigong, a disciple of Confucius, bought back such slaves, but refused the compensation. Confucius criticized him for setting a bad example, because less people would rescue slaves if they felt compelled to follow Zigong’s example and refuse the reward.

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a philosophical level; in the same way that we understand contemporary political philosophical theories, Confucius’s “equality” is a description of an ideal society. Consequently, for Confucius, “equality” is different from “equalizing rich and poor,” which is a way of implementing “equality” that Confucius would not have accepted. I will develop this point further below.

Social Function at a Micro-Level: The Role of Incentives After admitting that Confucius embraced the idea of “equality,” we have to face the four conflicts that Li Hengmei referred to. As already noted, it is not proper to use these conflicts to reject Confucius’s idea of equality. A better approach would be to take equality as a transcendent ideal and his affirmation of wealth as a prescription for how society should work on the ground, because even if Confucius valued equality, he also recognized the importance of incentives for society to function. In the story of Zigong’s redeeming slaves, Confucius argued that Zigong’s refusal to collect the reward offered by the ruler of Lu seemed at first glance noble from a moral point of view, but it in fact discouraged others from doing as he had done, and was therefore undesirable. Of course, Confucius knew nothing about the results of contemporary economics research on incentives, but he had already intuited the heart of these results, which is that people will respond to external incentives, that the proper incentives can lead people to do what is good for society, and that improper incentives prevent people from doing what is good for society. In short, the idea is to reward virtue. The basis of rewarding virtue is the recognition of the value of the individual. It is generally argued that Confucianism denies the value of the individual, and even those who identify liberal elements in Confucian thought, especially Song and Ming Confucians’ reflections on freedom, affirm Confucian liberalism from the perspective of personalism. However, to the extent that Confucianism affirms individual effort, it should not be an overstatement to conclude that Confucianism recognizes the value of the individual. Although Confucius believed that all men are born different, he also affirmed that “the average man can be educated.” Mencius went even further with his “four sprouts” idea, which suggests that every person has the potential to become a sage. We have no call to claim that Mencius was the first person to put forward the slogan “all men

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are created equal,” but in terms of his affirmation of human potential, it is undeniable that he already possessed some of the basic elements of liberal thought. More importantly, Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi all affirmed the possibility of individual effort and rewarded it, as when Confucius said: “Is benevolence really far away? No sooner do I desire it than it is here”8 ; or when Mencius said: “every man can become a Yao or Shun [ancient sage kings]”9 ; or when Xunzi said: “anyone on the streets can become a Yu [another ancient sage king].“10 A comparison of the ideas of Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi with Christian notions will highlight their value even further. Christianity does not see man as an individual with agency, but as a sinner who carries out the will of God. Human agency was affirmed in Western culture only after the Enlightenment, two thousand years after pre-Qin Confucianism. In this sense, Chinese culture is genetically individualistic or, given the place of the family in the Chinese mind, individualistic in a family-centered sense. Chinese collectivism is collectivism in the Hobbesian sense: everyone gives part of his power to the emperor in order to avoid the natural state of “man against man,” and, like Hobbes’ attitude toward Leviathan, trusts the emperor unreservedly. Individualism guided the daily actions of the Chinese people, and collectivism was the means by which to achieve order. Instead of individualism, Confucianism insisted on the Aristotelian principle of proportionality11 in the distribution of social status and wealth. The principle of proportionality means that what a person receives should be proportional to their intelligence and the effort they invest. Confucius not only promoted wealth, but also taught monarchs to appoint people with talent and to keep away from treachery: “Raise the straight and set them over the crooked. This can make the crooked 8 The Analects, D. C. Lao translation, online edition, 7.30. 9 Robert Eno, Mencius, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 115. 10 Eric L. Hutton, Xunzi: The Complete Text, online edition, p. 254. 11 Translator’s note: “The general principle of proportionality (means end rational review with strict scrutiny for suspect classes) represents a key aspect of contemporary legal thought. It is the methodological capstone of the current post-positivist, neo-naturalist perspective on law, which unites both positive and natural law. Aristotle saw the coexistence of a universal natural law, valid in all places and times, alongside positive national laws which hold true in one land but not in another. As Aristotle pointed out, positivism and natural law are complementary, not dichotomous.” See Eric Engle, “The History of the General Principle of Proportionality: An Overview,” p. 2.

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straight.”12 Mencius was even more explicit, “If a ruler honors the worthy and employs the able, placing outstanding men in office, then the gentlemen of the world will all appreciate him and wish to find a place at his court… When worthy men have high position and able men are in office, and the ruler seizes times of peace to make clear his policies of state and the penalties of his laws, even great states will certainly be in awe.”13 Conversely, Mencius argues that: “If men of virtue and ability be not confided in, a state will become empty and void”; and “If one does not employ worthy men one’s state will perish.”14 Xunzi absorbed Mohist ideas and was even more specific about the idea of selecting the virtuous and appointing the capable: “ Assigning rank by judging virtue, awarding official positions by assessing ability, and in each case making it so that the right person undertakes the right tasks and each gets what is proper for him, with the highest worthies employed as the three dukes, the next worthiest employed as feudal lords, and the lowest worthies employed as grand ministers and officers—this is how to elevate and employ people.”15 The reason why the principle of proportionality was recognized by Aristotle and pre-Qin Confucianism is surely related to the long-term evolution of human society. In the early days of human society, inter-clan fighting was the norm, and a clan’s ability to defend itself against other clans depended on whether the clan had stronger men. Strong men had to be trained, and young people especially needed adults as role models. Moreover, the brave needed to be rewarded, or no one would want to be on the front lines of a battle. With the emergence of states, conflicts became larger, and in addition to manpower, a state needed sufficient resources to conduct large-scale warfare, so that encouraging the production of goods also became an essential condition for a state to flourish, as the minister Shang Yang (390–338 BCE) proved in the case of the state of Qin. In a market economy, the principle of proportionality becomes a necessary condition for the market to function properly. An important principle of the market is voluntary participation, and if a person’s efforts are not rewarded, then they will stop trying and the market will collapse.

12 The Analects, D. C. Lao translation, online edition, 12.22. 13 Robert Eno, Mencius, An Online Teaching Translation, pp. 42, 43. 14 Robert Eno, Mencius, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 118. 15 Eric L. Hutton, Xunzi: The Complete Text, online edition, p. 123.

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Meritocracy, based on proportionality, is one of the central elements of Chinese culture. Setting aside the historical examples built on this concept, such as recommendation system and the imperial examination system, meritocracy is also a key to understanding contemporary China. After reform and opening, one of the major shifts of the Chinese Communist Party was to draw on Chinese tradition to put together a basic system based on meritocracy in politics and survival of the fittest in economics, which have been the most crucial factors in China’s economic takeoff. However, we have also seen that rapid economic growth has been accompanied by a widening income gap, and the micro-level functioning of society has indeed led to results that contradict Confucius’ macrolevel goal of “where there is even distribution there is no such thing as poverty.” This is the reason why promoting the goal of common prosperity has been so controversial in society. There are those who have called for the promotion of common prosperity by equalizing rich and poor, or even by returning to the planned economy, but such voices have not been generally acknowledged by society. After more than forty years of practice, the principle of proportionality has already returned to Chinese society and indeed taken deep roots. We need to find a new way to build a bridge between micro-level incentives and macro-level ideals.

Invest in the People’s Income Capacity This new way should be to invest in the people’s earning power. Although success through luck is not uncommon and connections always help, in general, the amount of income one can earn in the marketplace depends on one’s ability and effort. Inherited wealth can provide a stable income for a certain period of time, but is not sustainable; as the saying has it: “Wealth does not survive three generations.” Today, China has entered the era of knowledge-based economy, and it is no longer wealth that can generate lasting income for individuals, but their own knowledge and skills. Effort is a matter of personal choice, and in most cases beyond the government’s ability, but the individual’s earning power can be improved with government help, through education, training, and assistance. However, there is always the question of degree. Each individual is born with different abilities and thus will need different government help; what should be the benchmark for society as a whole to improve the abilities of the population?

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Here, Amartya Sen’s theory of basic capabilities provides us with a solid foundation. By basic capabilities, he means the combination of functions that a person must possess to achieve a worthy goal. “Worthy goals” are socially acceptable goals at various stages of life, such as getting a decent job, making use of one’s abilities, maintaining a family, raising children, supporting elderly parents, and so forth. To achieve these goals in contemporary society, one must have a certain educational level and skills, freedom from fear of unemployment and illness, and the ability to move freely. Unlike the equality of opportunity advocated by Dworkin and others, Sen’s doctrine of capabilities focuses on the different needs of each individual. Sen notes that the basic capabilities needed by each person may be different due to different situations. For example, the ability to move freely does not mean much to a healthy person, but it is a primary challenge for a disabled person. Society and government should therefore focus on each individual’s set of capabilities and provide what is needed to members of society on an individual basis. The goal of society is to create “capable people,” i.e., people who have the necessary abilities to take control of their own destiny and realize their potential. Sen’s theory of basic capabilities is consistent with Marx and Engels’ vision of the ideal society as expressed in the Communist Manifesto. For Marx and Engels, a fundamental characteristic of a communist society is the freedom and all-round development of human beings. To be “free” means that each person controls his own destiny, i.e., becomes a capable person; “ all-round “ means to fully develop the potential of each person, which in the eyes of Marx and Engels meant to be a fisherman at daylight, a farmer in the morning, a worker in the afternoon, and a philosopher at night. Following the line of pre-Qin Confucian thought, which affirms the value of the individual, contemporary Confucians will certainly agree with the ideas of Marx, Engels, and Sen to invest in the individual’s ability to achieve the ideal of “ where there is even distribution there is no such thing as poverty.“ Individual ability is a part of an individual’s value. Although pre-Qin Confucians regarded individual effort as the primary means of realizing an individual’s value, there is no reason to believe that they would oppose the enhancement of each individual’s capabilities. Confucius, despite his belief that all people are different, insisted that all people should be taught according the principle that “in instruction,

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there should be no separation into categories.”16 In his time, the state was so weak that he could not imagine the state investing in building the people’s capabilities. In contemporary times, however, the state does have this capacity, and “instruction” should thus include the state’s investment in the people; moreover, because “there should be no separation into categories,” the state’s investment should be non-discriminatory and treat everyone equally. Such an idea would have been even easier for Mencius to accept, because he believed that everyone has the same potential for good, so the state’s investment should not of course undermine this equality. Logically speaking, narrowing the gap in people’s earning power is the only conceivable way to achieve the social ideal of “where there is even distribution there is no such thing as poverty “within a Confucian framework. On the one hand, the only other ways to achieve this are through redistribution or revolutionary expropriation, both of which conflict with Confucianism’s preference for preserving the existing order and affirming individual effort. By contrast, raising people’s incomes by improving their capabilities can be fully compatible with Confucian notions of hierarchy and order and with the principle of meritocracy. Indeed, once all people have a certain level of earning power, they are more likely to support the principle of merit and the hierarchy that goes with it, because this is the best reward of their abilities. At the same time, increasing the ability of the population is a sustainable means of raising their income, sweeping away the roots of 均贫富/ “equalization of poor and rich” and thus contributing to the preservation of the existing order. On the ground, we encounter the problem of how to define the equivalence of capabilities. We might recognize two kinds of equivalence. One follows Amartya Sen in allowing everyone to realize their potential; in other words, this means removing all external constraints that hold people back from realizing their potential: the idea here is an equal starting line. However, someone might challenge this kind equality by asking what kind of goal is a reasonable goal? In today’s Chinese society, it is a reasonable goal for a person to want to go to university, but it may not be a reasonable goal for everyone to want to go to Peking University. But why is it not a reasonable goal for everyone to want to go to Peking University? Because some people are smarter than others. But is a person responsible

16 The Analects, D. C. Lao translation, online edition, 15.39.

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for his or her intelligence? Sen’s equivalence thus encounters an insoluble challenge. Another kind of equivalence, which we might call Rawlsian equivalence, wherein each person receives an equal amount of basic goods, regardless of whether they are sufficient for him to achieve a worthy goal. Such equivalence, however, not only fails to accord particular attention to those at the bottom of the social ladder, but also faces the technical challenge of determining the basic goods and their quantity. Based on the above considerations, the best approach in reality is to implement capability-directed equality along the lines suggested by Sen. Even knowing that full equality of capability cannot be achieved, we should aim nonetheless to advance as much as possible in this direction. In particular, this approach requires society and government to pay attention to those with special needs. For example, if the lack of preschool education affects the intellectual development of children in mountainous areas, society and the government should provide them with preschool education; if people with disabilities have mobility issues, society and the government should provide them with what they need to move freely. In contemporary China, there are many such examples. It is worth noting that Confucianism goes further than Marx, Engels, and Sen in emphasizing the importance of individual effort. Marx and Engels gave a static description of people in an ideal society and talked about institutional guarantees, while Sen is concerned only with what society and government should do for the people. However, what the social system and the government can do is solely to provide the institutional and material conditions for the individual to exert his or her motivation, while whether a person can do this or not requires the right incentives. Confucianism emphasizes the individual motivation to become a sage, but in contemporary times, the proper external institutional motivations must be added, such as the survival of the fittest in the marketplace and the principle of meritocracy in the bureaucracy. Such a system motivates people to work hard, and achieves the integration between personal and social values. Approaching things in this manner, we can better understand why Confucianism’s “equalization” is not “equalization of rich and poor” but rather 均无贫/ “where there is even distribution there is no such thing as poverty.” First of all, no matter what kind of equality of capability we choose to aim for, it is impossible to arrive at income equality. If everyone receives only an equal amount of basic goods, then there will

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certainly be some people whose basic capabilities are not nourished and who cannot earn as much as others. For example, in a situation where everyone receives an equal education, people with disabilities will still receive a lower income because they lack the ability to move about freely. Second, even if everyone’s basic capabilities are satisfied, there are differences in intelligence and response to incentives that make it impossible for society to equalize incomes. “Equality” is a philosophical ideal that can be approached forever, without ultimately reaching it. However, if we start from improving the capability of individuals, everyone can earn their own living, and that society can eliminate poverty in a sustainable way, which is the core of the notion of 均无贫/“where there is even distribution there is no such thing as poverty” in Confucian thought. To sum up, Confucius’s statement that one should “worry not about underpopulation but about uneven distribution, worry not about poverty but about instability” reflects his social ideal of 均无贫/“where there is even distribution there is no such thing as poverty,” and the only way to eliminate the tension between this ideal and the Confucian emphasis on hierarchy and social order is to narrow the gap in the people’s earning power. On this basis, we can construct a Confucian theory of common prosperity, which in sum means investing in the people, narrowing the gap in their earning power, and then using the principle of merit as the criterion of distribution to achieve common prosperity. Such a theory of common prosperity would be widely supported by the public because it is in line with the basic philosophical principles of the Chinese people.

Restoring the True Face of Politics in Chinese History: Qian Mu and His Book Successes and Failures of Chinese Politics Throughout the Ages (2020)

Before talking about the book, let me briefly introduce the author. Qian Mu was born in 1895 into the Qian family of Wuxi, Jiangsu, part of the famous Wu-Yue Qian family, whose ancestry can be traced back to Qian Liu (852–932), named prince of Wuyue by the Later Liang emperor during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. After Zhao Kuangyin (927–976) founded the Song dynasty, Qian Liu offered the Wu-Yue Kingdom to him as a way of achieving China’s unification. The Qian family has produced many famous people over the past thousand years, especially the modern Wuxi Qian family, including the historian Qian Mu, the writer and educator Qian Jibo (1887–1957), the famous novelist Qian Zhongshu (Qian Jibo’s son, 1910–1998), the scientist Qian Weichang (Qian Mu’s nephew, 1912–2010), the father of China’s missile program Qian Xuesen (1911–2009), and the nuclear physicist Qian Sanqiang (1913–1992), among others, an extremely impressive lineup. Qian Mu is one of the representative figures of modern and contemporary New Confucianism in China and made great contributions to the

This is the transcript of the first of three lectures given for the CEO Reading Club in June–July 2020.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Y. Yang, China and the West, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1882-9_13

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revival of Confucianism and traditional culture. In 1949 he went to Hong Kong to establish the New Asia College, the predecessor of the present Chinese University of Hong Kong, which still exists today as part of the university. The background to this book, Successes and Failures of Chinese Politics Throughout the Ages, is that in 1952 he was invited by General He Yingqin (1890–1987) to give a special report to what was then known as the Strategic Advisory Committee in Taiwan, and afterward turned it into a book while in Taipei recovering from illness. The book is a relatively short and an easy-to-read work of history. The author took a bird’s eye-view of changes in China’s political system over thousands of years. His views on Chinese politics overturned many preconceived notions about Chinese history since the May Fourth Movement, and corrected many misunderstandings about Chinese history, and can be seen as a masterpiece setting the record straight on China’s history in the post-May Fourth period. Focused on China’s political history, this book seeks to answer four questions: First, is the word “autocracy” an apt summary of more than two thousand years of Chinese history since Qin Shihuang? Qian Mu says no. Second, was the post-Qin era a “feudal society?” Qian Mu points out that China’s feudal era preceded the Qin, and the Qin established the “bureaucratic empire,” even if this is not the term he used. Third, does China’s history simply repeat itself? Hegel once famously marked that there is no history in China because China’s history is merely repetition. From today’s perspective, Hegel is wrong. There were many changes in Chinese history, and Hegel knew little about it when he wrote in the early nineteenth century. Fourth, are Chinese history and politics not interesting enough to write about? Francis Fukuyama’s The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution argues that Chinese history made great contributions to the search for political order and that China created the modern state, a view that we also find expressed in Qian Mu’s book. Below, I will introduce the main contents of Qin Mu’s book. In the process, I will also express my own views.

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A Basic Periodization of China’s Political History My understanding of China’s political history is that it has gone through the following stages. Chinese feudal society existed only during the Zhou dynasty (1046– 256 BCE), including the Western (1046–772 BCE) and Eastern Zhou (772–256 BCE) periods. In the late Eastern Zhou period, the feudal system was actually beginning a slow process of disintegration. Zhou politics was aristocratic, and the monarch was only primus inter pares, and in many principalities the monarch was weaker than the surrounding nobility. This was very much like medieval Europe, or we could say that medieval Europe was very much like the Zhou dynasty, especially the Spring and Autumn Period (770–476 BCE). Thus the real feudal era in China occurred during the Zhou dynasty. The Qin dynasty began the process of “transforming the family into a state 化家为国,” establishing a large unified bureaucratic empire, which is what Fukuyama calls the beginning of the modern state. A modern state took shape in the Han (226 BCE–220 CE) and Tang (618–907) dynasties. Many institutions were created in the Han dynasty, and then later perfected in the Tang. In the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127) we note a strengthening of imperial power, but the scholar-officials grew stronger as well, and really took control of what was called “orthodoxy,” according to which there was a contract between the ruler and his ministers allowing the ministers to remonstrate with the ruler so that the two powers restrained one another. The Northern Song marked the peak of Chinese political civilization. After the Southern Song (1127–1279), China turned inward. This is the opinion of James T. C. Liu (1919–1993), a Chinese-American historian who wrote a book entitled China Turning Inward: Intellectual–Political Changes in the Early Twelfth Century (1988). The reason why the Southern Song turned inward had to do with the invasion of foreign enemies as well as with civilizational cycles. Subsequently, the Ne0-Confucianism associated with Zhu Xi (1130–1200) and the Cheng brothers (Cheng Yi, 1033–1107, and Cheng Hao, 1032–1085) came to dominate, and Confucianism became the principle moral teaching at the personal level. In the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), the founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang (1328–1398) abolished the post of prime minister and

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suppressed the scholar-officials, marking the emergence of autocracy. The Qing dynasty (1644–1911) was a descendant of the Jin dynasty (1115– 1234), which once again “transformed the state into a family,” moving history backward as it developed a comprehensive autocratic system. Many of our views of Chinese history today are influenced by the Ming and Qing dynasties, because they are closer to us in time and many vestiges of their history remain. This has created certain deep-rooted misconceptions, such as the idea that common people had to kneel before the officials and great ministers had to kneel before the emperor. In fact, such practices developed in the Mongol Yuan period (1279–1368), and then flourished under the Ming and Qing, but do not represent China’s historical tradition, because under the Song—and before the Song—there was no such practice of kneeling. Qian Mu’s book corrects many such misconceptions.

The Spring and Autumn Period: The Age of Aristocratic Politics The Spring and Autumn Period was an era of aristocratic politics, and the Zhou dynasty was China’s feudal era, preceded by the Yin (also known as the Shang, approximate dates 1600–1045 BCE). The Yin itself occupied a relatively small area of land and moved frequently. The Yin’s final capital was near today’s Anyang, in Henan Province. The country’s territory was not very large, but it managed to conquer many kingdoms and principalities in the Central Plains region, reaching the Zhou in the West. The Yin did not establish a great unified rule; instead, this process began with the Zhou, which nonetheless ruled through a system of feudal fiefdoms. By “feudal fiefdoms” we mean that the Zhou ruler granted domains to his sons and clan members and even to those of the Yin dynasty. In this system, the brothers, sons, and nephews of the Zhou ruler established their own small states in their respective territories, forming vassal states. The feudal princes did not have to pay taxes to the Zhou ruler, and their only obligation was to fight with him on the occasion of invasion by foreign enemies. Thus what we see in the Zhou dynasty is a true feudal system. The feudal system was also practiced within the vassal states, with the feudal lords bequeathing territories to their sons and brothers. Both Zhou ruler and the feudal vassals depended on the taxes paid by the people in their respective territories for their survival.

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The feudal system functioned well at the outset, but problems grew over time. Strictly speaking, the Zhou dynasty lasted 800 years. After a certain point there was no more land to share, meaning that the Zhou system could not continue. Even when the big feudal states swallowed up smaller ones, there was still not enough land to distribute. In large measure, this was the product of polygamy as practiced in ancient times, which increased the number of sons claiming fiefs, the size of which naturally became smaller and smaller. Therefore, practicing birth control, or in other words having fewer sons, was strangely enough a good thing for the nobility at the time, because the branch that did so not have to divide its property and wound up becoming more powerful. Ultimately, such nobles might accumulate larger holdings than their feudal lords and could even directly influence the politics of their vassal states. For example, in Confucius’s time (551–479 BCE), the state of Lu, where Confucius was from, was in the hands of the descendants of the three brothers of Duke Huan of Lu, and the estates of these three grew over time and eventually usurped the political power of the Lu state. At the same time, during the Spring and Autumn period, another class of aristocrats, the shi, began to emerge. Qian Mu said that after the Han dynasty, Chinese politics was shi politics. The shi were nobles or descendants of nobility who did not have a fief. Confucius was a shi. Confucius’ mother, Yan Zhengzai, was a commoner, and his father was a nobleman who abandoned the state of Song to take refuge in the state of Lu. Song was a vassal state of the Yin dynasty, and the king of Zhou conquered the Yin but did not exterminate the Yin royal family and instead granted them fiefdoms. Therefore, in kinship terms, Confucius was a descendant of the Yin nobility. Confucius lived with his mother until he was fifteen years old, and after her death, he left her coffin on the main road to the east of Qufu. He was finally recognized by the Kong family,1 confirming his noble status. Confucius was a shi, not a scholar-official, and scholar-officials were shi who later took the path of officialdom.

1 Translator’s note: Kong was the Chinese family name of Confucius, which is a Latinized version of Kong-fu-zi 孔夫子.

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The Qin Dynasty: “Turning Family into State,” Unifying China and Building a Bureaucratic Empire Ever since the Qin dynasty, the emperor has been the symbol of the state, and the administration of the state was in the hands of the bureaucracy, all of which constituted a very important invention: the state no longer belonged to one person, but to everyone, and the governance of the state was no longer a matter for the emperor alone, but for the entire bureaucracy. In this sense, China was the first country to establish the prototype of a modern state, which is why Qin Mu referred to this as “turning the family into a state.” The background to this was that Qin Shihuang (259–210 BCE) unified China into a giant state with a very large territory. How did he carry this out? The emperor took his advisor Li Si’s (280–208 BCE) advice and unified the axle length for chariots and unified the written and spoken language, doing away with enough complexity for the country to achieve a certain unity. For example, the Qin dynasty introduced what was known as yayin, the putonghua of the epoch, which remained in use until the Northern Song when it disappeared. When we read ancient poetry today, especially from poems in the Tang and Song, we should read them in yayin pronunciations to be closer to the language of the time, which was much like singing, because yayin had eight tones while modern Chinese has only four. One and half million people in Chaoyang county, Guangdong, speak a Chinese in their daily lives that is closest to the yayin spoken in China from Qin through Song times. On the subject of the Qin dynasty, Qian Mu has another theory, namely his theory of the “early maturation of Chinese civilization.” What he originally meant was that China prematurely established the modern state form at a moment when humanity’s level of knowledge was incomplete, which eventually led China to the dead end of autocracy. At the same time, China’s feudal society predated the West’s by about 1500 years and that of Western Europe by about 1800 years, meaning that Chinese feudalism began early but lasted a relatively short time. When modernization began in the early twentieth century, China did not have a strong force to fight back against the dynastic system. By way of contrast, looking back at the Glorious Revolution in England in the seventeenth century, the forces of religion and the aristocracy were very strong, and became the most dominant forces against the king. The

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same was true of the Meiji Restoration in Japan. The Meiji Restoration was revolutionary in the sense that local vassals revolted. The prominent figures of the Meiji Restoration basically came out of Satsuma and Ch¯ osh¯u han in the southwest, who rose up to challenge the bakufu and finally forced the last shogun to return power to the emperor. Britain and Japan were able to start the modernization process more quickly because they were in the feudal era.

The Han and Tang Eras: Completing the Task of “Turning the Family into the State” and Improving the Bureaucratic Empire The Han and Tang dynasties represent the “melting pot” era of Chinese civilization, and the Tang stands out as a clearer example of integration. Han Wudi (156–87 BCE) was the seventh emperor of the Western Han dynasty, and the emperors who came before him achieved a period of stable government through non-action.2 Han Wudi was unlike his predecessors, and needed a theory that would allow him to develop the state, so he issued an imperial edict seeking such a theory, and finally adopted Dong Zhongshu’s proposal to “abandon the hundred schools and revere only Confucius.”3 In the past, we wrongly believed that prior to Han Wudi, a “hundred schools of thought” had flourished, and that the exclusive respect for Confucianism had brought about a feudal dictatorship in China that lasted 2000 years. The error in this view is that Han Wudi’s adoption of Dong Zhongshu’s counsel merely made Confucianism the political doctrine of the state. The emperor had no intention of doing away with the hundred schools of thought among the people, who remained perfectly free to practice Daoism or other isms.

2 Translator’s note: In Chinese, this period is known as the “reign of the emperors Wen and Jing 文景之治,” which covered the period 180–140 BCE, a period known for the benevolence and thriftiness of the emperors, reduction in tax and other burdens on the people, pacifism, and general stability. “Non-action” is a basic principle of Daoism, a popular mindset at the imperial court during this period. The contrast is between “non-action” and the “activism” of Han Wudi. 3 Translator’s note: In Chinese historiography, this is seen as the critical moment when Confucianism emerged from a conflicting cloud of ideas and isms to become the central ideology of China’s imperial state, although the process was not consolidated for several centuries.

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In simple terms, the object of Dong Zhongshu’s theory was to use the mandate of heaven to provide legitimacy for the emperor’s rule, but this mandate presupposed that the emperor would practice benevolent rule. To quote the sociologist Zhao Dingxin (b. 1953), Confucianism provided the theoretical basis for imperial power, but what Zhao did not say was that Confucianism, in turn, became a doctrine that disciplined the emperor. We often say that Chinese imperial rule should be understood as having a “Confucian exterior and a Legalist interior,” which is true. The Confucian exterior was all about “rectifying names,” to which Confucians pay a great deal of attention, as they see this as legitimizing Confucian rule; the Legalist interior refers to ruling the country through Legalist principles, for which law is required. This is a valuable perspective that applies to most countries. The bureaucratic system in the Western Han dynasty (25–220) was already quite elaborate; the emperor served as the representative of the state, while actual administration was under the “three lords and the nine ministers.” The three lords were the Prime Minister who was in charge of administration, the Grand Commandant who was in charge of the military, and the Imperial Secretary who was responsible for supervising the officials. The nine ministers constituted the other central officials. The division of labor was very clear. Where did the officials come from to staff this bureaucratic system? The Western Han invented the “system of recommendation.” The Imperial College already existed, but now it was used as an institution to train officials. The Imperial College received the sons of both the nobility and of the common people, the difference being that the nobles continued some Spring and Autumn traditions and enjoyed a certain preferential treatment. For example, after graduating from the Imperial College, the son of a member of the aristocracy could immediately serve as a retainer in the imperial court, while the son of a commoner could only do so if he finished first tier in the examinations, while if he finished second tier, he would have to serve as a clerk in his native place. Of course, there were future opportunities for promotion, which meant waiting to be named by local worthies, after which they would be recommended to the emperor by local officials. After passing an examination administered by the emperor, they could finally enter official service. The separation between scholar-officials and petty clerks also began in the Western Han period. What are now seen as political appointments in

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the West already existed in China in the Western Han period. Qian Mu also based his theory of the precocity of Chinese civilization on this. In addition, the Han dynasty also had an “evaluation system,” in which the emperor sent ministers on inspection tours throughout the realm to see whether the local officials were performing well or not. Those who passed were promoted, while those who did not do well were criticized or even demoted. In discussing the Han recommendation system, Qian Mu provided a very graphic summary: “A young man would hasten to the Imperial College to study, and after graduation would be sent back to his native place to serve, awaiting his evaluation by local officials, after which he would be selected by the Governor to return to the capital, and once he passed certain centrally designated exams he would become a proper civil servant.” During the Eastern Han period (206 BCE–9 CE), the system became a plaything for local officials, because it was too easy for them to recommend their own people, and the system slowly evolved toward one that worked to the advantage of the locally rich and powerful. Fukuyama noted in his book The Origins of Political Order that the modern Western state was forged in its struggle with family politics and feudal politics. This was true in China as well; China’s modern state began in the Qin, but it was not until the Northern Song period that family politics or aristocratic politics were truly defeated. Even in the Tang dynasty, governance bore the trace of the aristocracy. During the Tang period, the powers of the prime minister expanded, and the examination system began to formalize. In the Tang period, the powers of the prime minister were divided among three offices: the Central Secretariat, the Chancellery, and the Imperial Secretariat. The Central Secretariat was responsible for preparing imperial edicts for the emperor, which had to be vetted by the Chancellery once they were written, and if the Chancellery did not agree, it could send the document back for revision. The Imperial Secretariat was in charge of the administration of state affairs, and had six ministries under its jurisdiction. Therefore, the Chancellery and the Imperial Secretariat were extremely powerful. Once the Chancellery agreed, the emperor had to sign the imperial edict in vermillion ink, and once the seal of the Central Secretariat was added, the edict was considered to have been promulgated, while without the seal, the edict was not valid. During the reign of Tang Zhongzong (656–710), the emperor signed edicts that had not been approved by the Chancellery in black ink rather

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than red, and such edicts could not be sealed in the regular manner; the seal was applied on a slant, so that these documents were known as “slanted seal ink edicts.” The officials who were appointed by the emperor without going through the vetting process were called “slanted seal officials” and could not hold their heads high in official settings because they had not been appointed through legal procedures. The Tang dynasty also perfected the imperial examination system as means to select officials. Unlike under the Ming dynasty, where only examinations for jinshi (“presented scholar”) were offered, Tang examinations tested candidates in arithmetic, law, military, and many other subjects, in addition to granting the jinshi degree. The Song basically followed the Tang system, although the jinshi degree became the most important. Due to the centuries of turmoil between the fall of the Han and the rise of the Tang, in which nomads from the north captured China’s Central Plains, one might say that the Tang period was really a melting pot era in Chinese history.

The Song Dynasty: The Dawn of Chinese Modernity Qian Mu’s judgment of the Northern Song dynasty follows that of previous historians. On the one hand, he sees the Song as impoverished, weak, and passive, because it was constantly invaded by foreigners, the Liao (907–1125) seizing the area around Beijing before the Jin (1115– 1123) took all of north China and the Song set up their capital in the south, and eventually, the Mongols wiped out the Song completely. At the same time, imperial power was more centralized under the Song than during Han and Tang times, so Qian Mu believes that the decline of Chinese politics began in the Northern Song. I disagree with Qian Mu, and see the Northern Song period as the dawn of modern China, which is a new view shared by many modern historians. The Song marked the peak of China’s agrarian civilization, and there were also signs of a move toward industrial civilization. The historian Chen Yinque (1890–1969) said it well, “The culture of the Chinese people, after thousands of years of evolution, reached its peak during the Song period.” I would also like to add that the Song dynasty was the height of Confucian politics, as reflected in many different aspects.

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First of all, it was an era of true “orthodoxy,” in that the scholarofficials achieved their highest position under the Northern Song. Song scholars believed that “reason is the greatest thing,” and they put such beliefs into practice. The first Prime Minister of Song Taizu (927–976) was Zhao Pu (922–992), and he and the emperor called one another brothers. Once Song Taizu asked Zhao Pu what was the greatest thing in the world. Zhao Pu hesitated at first, but when the emperor asked again, Zhao Pu finally replied “reason.” Had anyone said such a thing to the face of a Ming or Qing emperor, he would have lost his head, but Song Taizu did not react this way, and in fact enjoyed Zhao’s answer. Song dynasty scholar-officials also used “orthodoxy” to discipline the practice of governing. Cheng Yi, one of the great scholars of the Northern Song period, once said: “Whether the world achieves peace or chaos depends on the prime minister, and the ruler’s morality and achievements depend on the lessons learned in the imperial classroom.” What he meant was that the emperor should not bother with the daily affairs of government, because the quality of government was responsibility of the prime minister, and the moral qualities of the ruler were dictated by the Confucian scholars who gave lectures to the emperor. In the Song, the scholars who lectured the emperor on Confucianism were called jingyanguan 经筳 官. When Cheng Yi took this position, he insisted on sitting rather than standing to deliver his lectures, the reason being that “this is not only consistent with righteousness, but also will teach his Majesty to respect the great Confucian principles,” by which he meant that Confucian truth is more important than the emperor. At the same time, the Northern Song period was also the golden age of scholar-officials, who began to develop their own self-confidence, as reflected in Fan Zhongyan’s (989–1052) famous remark: “Be the first to bear the world’s hardship, and the last to enjoy its comfort.” Scholarofficials were widely involved in politics, and the Northern Song was also the dynasty with the highest number of scholars among the ranks of its officials. Of course, this also shows that the Northern Song had a strong economy, which allowed it to support so many officials. The Song dynasty was also an era of rule of law. Many people say that there was no rule of law in traditional China, but I do not think that is

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completely true. Chen Liang (1143–1195), one of the early representatives of the Yongjia school of thought,4 once said: “Men’s hearts dwell most on private affairs, while the law is public. Thus the great, irresistible trend in the world is toward law,” meaning that law must prevail in the world because people are selfish. He also said, “Once law rules the world, the worthy need no longer flaunt their virtues, and the evil will no longer be able to seek their selfish desires,” meaning that while the law restricts the virtuous, its more important duty is to place restrictions on the evil. This notion coincides with the later Western idea of the rule of law. If we did not know who wrote this, we might well think they were the words of a late Qing scholar who had been exposed to Western learning. Song Taizu, the first emperor of the dynasty, ordered that an “oath stele” be set up, on which was recorded that: “the descendants of Chai Rong (921–959) [the last emperor of the dynasty that preceded the Song] shall not be punished, and even if they are guilty of treason, they are to be allowed to kill themselves in prison, and shall not be executed in public, nor will their relatives be accused. Do not kill scholar-officials or those who remonstrate. Those of my descendants who disobey this oath will be punished by Heaven.” According to legend, once Song Taizu erected the stele, when his younger brother and descendants succeeded him to became emperor, they would go with a young, illiterate eunuch to the place where the stele was stored, open the curtains, kneel, and recite the oath until the new emperor could repeat it by heart. The law laid down by the founder of the Northern Song eventually became a contract between the ruler and his officials. It is true that in the history of the Northern Song, it was rare to kill a scholar or a person who wrote a petition to remonstrate. We find a typical story in the historical records: During the reign of emperor Shenzong, China lost a battle in war against the Western Xia (1038–1227). The emperor was so angry that he sought to vent his spleen by killing a minor official. His assistant minister Zhang Dun (1035–1105), who later became prime minister, objected to the emperor’s decision. So the emperor said he would have the minor official branded and sent into exile. Zhang Dun objected yet again, and the

4 Translator’s note: The Yongjia school was an intellectual trend in the Southern Song period that embraced materialism and pragmatism rather than the moral absolutism of some Confucian doctrines at the time.

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emperor asked why. Zhang replied: “You can kill scholars, but not humiliate them!” The emperor let the matter drop, but complained bitterly “I can’t do anything that makes me happy!” Zhang Dun’s retort was even more straightforward: “If this is what makes you happy, then it is better not to do it.” There are many such stories in the history of the Northern Song. Might we see Song Taizu’s family instructions as sharing a basic meaning with Britain’s Magna Carta? The Magna Carta was actually an agreement signed between the nobles and the king in the thirteenth century to restrict the king’s recklessness, especially in terms of arbitrary taxation. However, this agreement was not really enforced for centuries, and it was only after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when the ideas of the Magna Carta were incorporated into the Bill of Rights, that the Magna Carta was taken seriously and is now considered an important document in the move toward constitutionalism in England. Song Taizu’s “oath stele” of course cannot be considered a contract between two parties, but instead a constraint that one party willingly places on himself, but had there been no Mongol invasion, it is hard to say whether this act of self-restraint would have evolved into a constitutional monarchy. The Song dynasty had a real concept of “turning the family into a state.” Song Gaozong was very famous in history as an unenlightened ruler, and was also the first emperor of the Southern Song. General Yue Fei (1103–1142) originally meant to retake the Northern Song capital, but the emperor did not let him fight, and finally had Yue Fei killed. The Imperial Censor Chen Tingshi (n.d.) dared to address even such an emperor as follows: “The world is China’s world, ancestors’ world, and your officials’, the people’s, and the three armies’ world, it is not yours alone.” The joint rule of emperors and ministers was a real thing in the Song period, although later the power of the ruler increased and the power of the ministers was further divided, with two or three people serving as the prime minister, the Privy Council serving as the chief military official, to which were added the Three Bureaus to deal with financial administration and the Court of Judicial Review to exercise legal functions. None of which meant that the emperor could run amok, and imperial edicts were often returned for revision. Because the status of the Imperial Censor increased, there was a great deal of remonstration. For example, when Justice Bao Zhen (999–1062) opposed the personnel appointments of

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Emperor Song Renzong (1010–1063) and spat in his face, the emperor could only listen, and returned to his court before wiping his face. There was a great deal of remonstration during the Song period, but it was nonetheless dangerous. For example, if the Imperial Censor sought to impeach the prime minister, one of the two would lose his post, depending on who won. After the Wang Anshi (1021–1086) reforms, the remonstrations worsened the political ecology of Song rule, leading to excessive factionalism and many unjust cases, such as the “Crow Terrace Poetry Case” in which Su Shi (1037–1101) was impeached (the name of the case stems from the fact that there were many crows on the trees in the courtyard of the Imperial Censor). However, even though factional disputes were fierce, as illustrated by the disagreement between Wang Anshi and Sima Guang (1019–1086), the two remained friends in private. In modern terms, factional conflict may be an inevitable by-product of democracy and an important hallmark of modern democratic politics, as in the United States, where we note conflict between different parties as early as Thomas Jefferson’s presidential race. Herein lies the significance of the political philosophy underlying Song remonstrance practices. The Song period was also the golden age of the imperial examinations system and of scholar-officials. According to my calculation, the annual salary of a prime minister in the Song dynasty was equivalent to about 3 million yuan today [approx. 432,000 USD], the highest in several thousand years. By Song times, the examination system no longer reserved spots for the aristocracy, as was the case under the Tang, and in the Song dynasty the dream of social mobility was realized, in which a commoner could “till the fields in the morning, and be in the emperor’s court by night.” Consequently, children throughout the realm felt light at heart, “pointing to [their] mountains and rivers, setting people afire with [their] words.”5 During his 40-year reign, Emperor Song Renzong was “useless in every other thing except good at being emperor.” He held an examination one year, in which the two Sus—Su Shi and Su Zhe (1039–1112)—as well as two other famous scholars, participated. In fact, the examination was tailor-made for the Sus, the idea being to give them positions in the government. Yet in his answers, Su Zhe engaged in personal attacks on 5 Translator’s note: This is taken from Mao Zedong’s poem Changsha, English translation available here: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/ poems/poems01.htm.

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Song Renzong, criticizing him for indulging in wine and women and not paying attention to governmental affairs. Song Renzhong did not blink an eye, and said that Su Zhe was just being silly, as anyone could see. In addition, he continued, “my stance has always been that I speak directly to the scholars and they speak directly to me. If I were to punish him this time, what would everyone say?” He meant that punishing Su Zhe for this would be a loss of face for the emperor, so he awarded him an official position.

The Ming and Qing Period: From Rigidity to Decline The decline of the Ming and Qing began in the Southern Song. The decline of the Southern Song was the result of the beginnings of political rigidification and also because a kind of ritualism took over from the middle and late Song era. At a time of social unrest and radical change, everyone looked for explanations; in late Song times, the explanation they found was that human nature was bad, so they looked inward for a solution, producing the Neo-Confucianism and ultimately the Confucian school of 心学 “the study of the heart/mind.” There is a saying that “after the battle of Mount Ya [when the Mongols defeated the Song navy], China was no more,” because Chinese civilization peaked during the Song dynasty. People grieved the passing of the Song dynasty, as can be seen from one of Zhang Xiaoxiang’s (1132–1170) poems. The Huai River marked the frontier between Southern Song and the Jin dynasty to the north, and Zhang stood on the south shore of the Huai looking at the Red Cliff on the opposite side, and wrote a poem entitled “Looking at the Border from Afar,” the last lines of which are very illustrative of the mood of the people at the time: “Having travelled to this point, people are full of feelings of loyalty and anger, as hot tears pour down their faces.” Since the founding of China’s first dynasty, the Qin, the trajectory of Chinese history has basically been that it went up for the first thousand years and went down for the second. Climate played a critical role. The scholar Coching Chu (1890–1974) once calculated the climate change over China’s 3000-year history, and later someone drew a climate curve on the basis of his work. According to this curve, China has experienced two major eras of cooling, once during the 400-year interregnum between the Han and Tang dynasties, and the other from the end of

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the Song period through the Ming-Qing period. Both cooling periods mark moments when northern nomads invaded China’s Central Plains and ruined China’s civilization. While the Tang recovered and even benefited from the chaos in the first cooling period—it absorbed the cultures of the invading nomads, the second cooling was devastating to China, which has never recovered ever since. The Yuan dynasty inherited the Song system, but it mistreated the Chinese, the southerners worse than the others. The Yuan was a case of a barbaric civilization replacing an advanced Chinese civilization. Kneeling and being buried with the dead both marked major historical regressions, but under the Ming, both systems became more ensconced, and when the first Ming emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang, died, many of his concubines were buried with him. Zhu Yuanzhang also abolished the post of prime minister, and the status of scholars under the Ming also declined radically: Ming emperors could cane officials in court, and some ten to twenty were killed on a number of occasions. According to records, more than five hundred cases of caning at court occurred in the three centuries of the Ming dynasty. At the same time, the ban on ocean travel went into effect. This ultimately led to the complete closure of Ming society. The Qing dynasty was another era of foreign rule, and while the Manchus were more Sinicized than the Mongols, they remained quite wary of the Han Chinese, and preserved many of their native customs. It was also beginning in the Qing dynasty the “state became a family” once again, leading Chinese history into a darker era. Things improved in the nineteenth century, when Qing politics became a bit more gentle, but there was still no prime minister, and the cabinet was also largely an empty shell. The power of the Grand Council grew greater and greater, and scholar-officials became the emperor’s lackeys, who had to call themselves “slaves” before the emperor, and the Confucian “orthodoxy” carried forward by the scholars for centuries disappeared. The literary inquisition in the Qing period created an atmosphere of political oppression. Of course, there were “literary inquisitions” under the Southern Song as well, but they were not nearly as harsh as those carried out by the Qing. and even in the period of Qianlong emperor, literary inquisitions were quite severe. Qianlong criticized Cheng Yi’s statement that “Whether the world reaches peace or chaos depends on the prime minister, and the ruler’s morality and achievements depend on the lessons learned in the imperial classroom,” arguing that it makes no sense that the “ruler’s morality” has nothing to do with “whether the

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world reaches peace or chaos,” and that if the emperor knew nothing of the world, then where would his achievements come from? Qianlong also once said: “The sovereign’s power is absolute, which is the law of this dynasty. From the time of my grandfather and father, the power to employ people and take advice has never deviated from that principle.” Qing emperors, at least through Qianlong, were incredibly hard working, as hard working as any in Chinese history, but the system of one-man dictatorship brought Chinese politics into the dark ages. This is what I want to share with you on Qin Mu’s book. From this book, we see that traditional Chinese politics was not as bleak as all that. From the Spring and Autumn through the Northern Song, Chinese civilization was on the rise, politically, economically, and culturally, and during this period, the “transformation of the family into a state” created a modern state with at least the rudiments of the rule of law, meaning that there were checks and balances on power. Looking to the future, we should note that even today, our civilization is still that created during the Axial Age. The Axial Age occurred between 600 and 200 BCE, a glittering era when Greece, India, and China all saw the emergence of any number of great thinkers and religious cultures. Liang Shuming once said that the three civilizations born during this era each sought the answer to a different question raised by humanity. Greek civilization sought to answer the question of “how to conquer nature,” thus giving rise to science, because in order to conquer nature, one must first understand it. Indian civilization sought to answer the unanswerable questions of “who am I” and “where did I come from and where am I going,” so India gave birth to Buddhism, the first true religion of mankind. Chinese civilization sought to answer the question of “how to live in the present world,” meaning how can we live peacefully together as a society made up of groups of people, and China was thus the first to produce a civilization of modern governance. “Modern governance” means that the state no longer belongs to the emperor, but to the people of the world who are concerned with how to live together peacefully, and then gives answer to the question how should society best be governed. Dong Zhongshu turned Confucian political philosophy into the theoretical basis of this governance. I believe that in the future, a global civilization will emerge that will incorporate the strengths of all major civilizations and provide answers to the important questions that the three major civilizations have not fully answered so far. Of course, we may have to wait five hundred or even

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a thousand years for this future global civilization to arrive. But in the long river of human history, one thousand years is actually very short; agrarian civilization began ten thousand years ago. China must have a seat at the table when this global civilization is built, which means that we must summarize the five thousand-year history of Chinese civilization and fashion a Chinese narrative to be part of the future global civilization, and we must also learn to convey this narrative in a language that the rest of the world can understand. This is a task that our generation will undertake, together with several generations to come.

Turning Back to China: Understanding the CCP

The End of Ideology? (2002)

We are currently saying goodbye to ideology. We no longer need to take political exams to enter university, college students no longer talk about national affairs, the Internet is full of commercial hype, and what we see on television are handsome men and beautiful women. No matter whether you are a white-collar worker or a blue-collar worker, everyone’s goal is the same: to earn money and enjoy it. All of which is to say that China is moving toward a civil society. For a nation accustomed to imperial power and rigid dogma, this change has not come easily and is therefore all the more precious to us. On the institutional front, a quiet revolution is also taking place in China. The newly adopted “Rural Land Contracting Law” stipulates that, in the absence of special circumstances, a farmer’s land may not be reallocated; at the same time, this land may be inherited and the right to use it may be transferred in perpetuity. In this way, rural land ownership basically has two main characteristics of private property rights, namely

姚洋, “意识形态的终结?” Tianya 天涯, August 2002. Since the essay was written 20 years ago, the reader needs to be aware that many of the situations that it describes have changed, and some of the changes are drastic. But the essay represents an important step in the formation of my thought on China and the key question I posed then is still relevant for today’s China. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Y. Yang, China and the West, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1882-9_14

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excludability and transferability. Consequently, a third land revolution, following land reform and the responsibility system, has quietly taken place in rural China without anyone noticing. In urban areas, massive enterprise restructuring is changing the face of China’s economy. For most state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the essence of restructuring is privatization, and “the state retreats and the people advance” is the slogan for restructuring in many cities. Many SOEs have become private enterprises overnight, and their employees have become employees of private enterprises. When the enterprises were state-owned, the employees filed petitions1 at every turn; when they became employees of private enterprises, they immediately settled down. Ownership has just this kind of magical power: since the enterprise is owned by someone else, as long as I get my money I don’t worry about the rest. Corporate restructuring is one of those things that can only be done, and not just talked about, and although it has been no less dramatic in China than in the former Soviet Union or Eastern European countries, there has been a little international reaction to the dramatic changes in China’s economic system, and even ordinary Chinese would not have noticed much if they had not experienced it firsthand. For whatever reason, in the 1990s, China quietly completed the dramatic if the tragic economic transformation of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The Chinese people have had their fill of ideology. In the era of the planned economy, everyone had to live according to a uniform ideology, and even an old farmer in a remote mountain village had to check in with Chairman Mao in the morning and report to Chairman Mao at night.2 The imposition of this ideology played a certain positive role in the early stages of socialist construction, and the dream of achieving communism overnight inspired everyone to temporarily set aside their considerations of self-interest. However, people’s enthusiasm was dashed during the famine of the early 1960s, and the ensuing Cultural Revolution turned ideology into a 1 Translator’s note: “Filing petitions” was one of the few ways to register a complaint in the era of public ownership. Although the language suggests parallels with “filing a grievance” as do unions and union members, my impression is that the system was much more like leaving a document in the kind of “suggestion box” once seen in some enterprises and government offices in North America (and still available on Amazon). 2 Translator’s note: Literally, “ask instruction” of Chairman Mao in the morning, by facing his poster on the wall of your home and telling the Great Helmsman your revolutionary plans for the day, a common practice during the Cultural Revolution.

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tool for persecuting others. From the point of view of economic efficiency, the planned economy was undoubtedly a failed experiment; but if one looks at the constraints on the lives and freedoms of ordinary people, the rigid yet volatile ideology did more damage than the planned economy itself. The pace of China’s economic growth during the planned economy era was no less than the world average for the same period, and far outpaced other developing countries in education, health, and women’s emancipation; therefore, the three decades of the planned economy were not without bright spots. By contrast, the rigid yet volatile ideology left nothing but painful memories and adverse effects that are still visible today. In this sense, the pragmatic orientation established since the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, held in December of 1978, is significant, and it is this orientation that has led to the civil society we see today. However, although the old ideology has lost its influence, a new ideology adapted to civil society has yet to take root. When ideology fades away, profit becomes king. At the individual level, this may be merely a question of an attitude toward life—you can choose to revel in material pleasures or you can bemoan the fate of humanity—but for a country, this may well be a disaster. The best negative example of this is the former Soviet Union. When Gorbachev launched his Perestroika, a group of oligarchs emerged from the old government agencies and enterprises, and when the country collapsed in 1991, these oligarchs quickly took control of Russian finance. Their power was so great that even the Russian government had to yield to them. Not only that, the democratic politics that developed overnight provided a platform for these financial oligarchs to take control of the country, allowing them to hold the state apparatus hostage. Despite the existence of nominally democratic institutions, the state was effectively in the hands of a handful of oligarchs. If Russian politics can be compared to a slippery slope, Indian politics is slow-motion suicide. Before the arrival of the British, India had never evolved into a fully centralized state. By the time of independence in 1947, democracy appeared to be the only acceptable option for a unified India. However, because of excessive demographic and ethnic polarization, any decision that emerged from such a democratic framework was thoroughly compromised, often resulting in a society unable to make real progress.

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A friend who works at the World Bank told me the following story. India has few state-owned enterprises, but they lose a lot of money. Therefore, when right-wing parties are in power, the government wants to privatize these enterprises. Privatization means layoffs, and workers lose their jobs. When this happens, the leftist parties out of power lead the workers to the streets to prevent privatization from occurring. However, when the leftist parties take power, the government still wants to privatize, because the losses of state-owned enterprises put a huge strain on the government’s finances. The leftist parties completely abandon their ideology and embrace profit. What is more interesting is that the rightwing opposition parties then pretend to oppose privatization and lead the workers to the streets, so that privatization fails again. The rightwing parties also disregard their own ideology because they are bent on opposing the left. Even the most thoroughgoing and liberal democratic society needs to be grounded in a fundamental civic consensus. When the war in Afghanistan was going badly, some newspapers in Britain began to criticize Tony Blair’s policy of following the US, and some even doubted the propriety of Britain’s participation in the war. Blair’s spokesperson had an interesting response; she said, “Britain is a country that knows right from wrong.” While we can accuse the US humanitarian intervention of practicing hegemony under the banner of freedom and democracy, the reason why the intervention is generally accepted by the majority of Americans is that human freedom and social democracy are consensus American values. American society has a clear set of values, which are reflected in both domestic and international policies; even if they are superficial, they serve the purpose of convincing public opinion and gaining the political acceptance of the people. To a large extent, China does better than Russia and India. We have experienced neither the dramatic changes of Russia, nor the fragmented interest groups of India, and the course of the past two decades shows that the Chinese Communist Party, as the broadest representative of public opinion, has led China along a largely correct path. The success of this path, however, stems in part from the space for innovation created by the failure of the planned economy. What must be understood is that this space has become very narrow today, and further change must necessarily move toward a greater redistribution of interests. In an ideological vacuum, interests are more likely to become the dominant force

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driving officials at all levels. The reality is that such tendencies have already emerged. A distinctive feature of China’s government structure is the coexistence of a high degree of fiscal decentralization and a high degree of political centralization. Moderate fiscal decentralization has a positive effect on local motivation, as Mao Zedong pointed out in his “On the Ten Major Relationships,” written in 1957. Excessive fiscal decentralization, however, can have significant negative effects. One of the problems is the inadequate provision of local public goods. The current fiscal decentralization has reached the county level, and each county is responsible for the finances of its own district. This means that pensions and health insurance are carried out at the county level as well, and since insurance functions on the basis of broad coverage, it is not surprising that the current highly fragmented pension and health insurance systems are stretched to the limit. Another notable example is education. Daily expenses for education are fully covered by county governments, which is not a problem for wealthy counties but has become a major problem for poor counties, and some spend 60% of their fiscal resources on education. Education is the foundation of the nation, but unfortunately, our fiscal policy does not reflect this consensus. Another undesirable consequence of excessive fiscal decentralization is the commercialization and opportunistic tendencies of local government administration. Each level of government aims to reduce its own burden and increase its own revenues; a notable consequence of this is the paradoxical devolution of burdens to ever lower levels. Why are governments at the township level overstaffed? Because upper-level governments keep devolving things to the townships. When it’s time to find jobs for university and high school graduates, especially those from agriculture, forestry, and teacher training colleges, no one in the provincial, municipal, or county-level governments wants them, so they wind up in the townships. The same is true for military transfers. This is true in the countryside and in the cities. In recent years, state-owned enterprises have lost money across the board, and have become a burden to local governments, so they are decentralized. Governments at the county level and above grabbed the few enterprises that were still functional or could be sold, while most were devolved to the district and county levels. For the restructured enterprises, almost all cities required the new enterprises to keep all the original

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workers, regardless of the size of the previously bloated labor force. In order to balance the interests of the new managers, cities discounted the assets and sold them to the new managers at extremely cheap prices, while postponing the question of whether the new managers were going to be able to keep their promise not to fire their employees. This approach appears to solve the problem, but in fact, it simply kicks it down to a lower level, where it will re-emerge under certain conditions. For example, the new managers of a state-owned enterprise in a certain city sold the business to another company, and the first thing the latter did after taking over was to lay off employees. The downside of excessive decentralization is related to China’s high degree of administrative centralization. On the one hand, higher levels of government have absolute authority over lower levels of government and can simply direct them to carry out their orders; on the other hand, administration at all levels of government is rarely monitored from below. The juxtaposition of these two facts produces opportunistic tendencies in the operation of all levels of government. In peacetime, a nation’s fiscal structure determines its governmental structure; the economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) went so far as to say that “A nation’s fiscal expenditures are its ideology.” In other words, a state’s ideology is not what the state says it is, but rather where the state spends its money. When we apply this insight to China’s current situation, it is not a pretty picture. Since the introduction of the tax-sharing system3 in 1994, the gap in fiscal spending between provinces has widened rather than narrowed; some backward regions, where the tobacco and alcohol industries are the backbone of the economy, have even become net revenue exporters. To this day, the central government still has not established a complete revenue transfer mechanism, and the central government’s allocations to localities are not issued in the form of transfer payments, but in the form of investment projects. Since investment projects generally require local matching funds, developed regions naturally have an advantage over underdeveloped regions. Such a fiscal spending approach does not narrow, but rather magnifies, regional disparities.

3 Translator’s note: The 1994 tax reform was a major moment in contemporary China’s fiscal history, which basically served the fill the coffers of the central government at the expense of local governments, and set the stage for the central government’s decision to allow local governments to finance themselves via land sales, a precondition to China’s recent real estate boom. See here for more information.

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The market has proven to be the most efficient mechanism for allocating resources, but there are limits to what the market can do. In recent years, classical liberals such as Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) have become increasingly influential in Chinese intellectual circles. Hayek undoubtedly had remarkable insight in criticizing the shortcomings of the planned economy; however, some of his views have been applied inappropriately by Chinese thinkers, one manifestation of which is their excessive confidence in the role of the market. For example, it has been argued that competition among local governments over taxes, and among local officials over promotions, is sufficient to discipline their behavior and make it compatible with social efficiency. However, the competitive principles of the market are the opposite of what we want for governments. Markets require that each participant maximize his own interests, but this is precisely what governments should not do; the commercialization of government behavior and the resulting negative consequences are ample proof of this. The government was created to serve the public interest and it is these interests that it must serve; the commercialization of government behavior runs counter to this. It makes no sense to blame the commercialization of government behavior on the rationality of government officials and to tolerate it for this reason. “Rationality” can be a working hypothesis for a researcher studying government behavior, but at this point, it only yields empirical conclusions about “what reality is like” without addressing the normative question of “what reality should be like.” At the same time, although the commercialization of government behavior is related to institutional design, such as the contradiction between vertical administration and fiscal decentralization, institutions are not the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is that we do not have a complete theory of social justice to answer the following questions: What rights should citizens enjoy? What kind of social distribution is an acceptable distribution? Answering these two questions is a prerequisite for a pluralistic society to maintain its political unity. China, which is moving toward citizenship, is also moving toward pluralism at the same time, a process that has become irreversible. In this context, I am afraid that what we need to address is not the question of representation, but the question of how to provide the public with a vision of justice; a vision of justice that shows the public a picture of an ideal society, a criterion for judging how goods

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and wealth are distributed in society, and a value system adapted to the contemporary world. Utopia is not something that truly exists, but utopian ideals point us toward what to strive for. At a time when the economy is becoming increasingly market-oriented and civil society is taking shape, pragmatism does not mean that we must abandon our ideals. A person without ideals will spend his life in vain, and a country without ideals will be, as Sun Yat-sen famously said, a sheet of loose sand; a person without ideals will definitely focus on the petty profits he can reap today, and a country without ideals will become a tool for a few people to reap personal benefits. Twenty years of reform and opening up have broken the shackles of the old ideology, and the cognitive level of the people has been greatly improved, so now is the time to establish new ideals.

The Dilemma of China’s Democratization (2009)

Most Chinese, including even the country’s top leaders, have a positive view of democracy. However, it seems that China has not made any progress in its democratization process over the past few decades. In fact, in terms of social structure, China has a better foundation for democratization than other developing countries. While social inequality and ethnic polarization are often the biggest obstacles to successful democracies in most developing countries, China is one of the few developing countries to have experienced a modern social revolution. Like European countries that have undergone similar revolutions, China’s social revolution broke down the old elite-dominated social structure, and the resulting egalitarian social structure serves as the cornerstone of an open society. However, an effective democracy, meaning one in which the government is accountable and responsive to the needs of the people under a constitutional framework, in addition to being democratically elected, takes time to build. The People’s Republic of China took a wrong turn in many respects in its first thirty years and has experienced a complex

姚洋, “中国民主化的困境,” Twenty-First Century 二十一世纪, October 2009. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Y. Yang, China and the West, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1882-9_15

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path of development in its second thirty years. Intentionally or unintentionally, the CCP’s policies centering on economic growth—the “growth consensus”—have served to deflect public demand for democratization over the past three decades. By maintaining economic growth and complementing it with an expansion of civil liberties, this policy has basically succeeded, and most Chinese express satisfaction with the Communist Party’s leadership. At the same time, the CCP has gradually perfected reforms of its own institutions, including the institutionalization of the party’s decision-making process, unwritten rules for the transfer of power, the expansion of party membership, and internal party democracy. Most importantly, the CCP has transformed itself from a proletarian party to a party without a clear political ideology. However, these changes do not seem to have translated into more fervent demands for democracy, as political theory predicts; instead, China’s economic success has fostered an optimistic notion that China’s elite institutions can become a new form of governance to rival Westernstyle democracy. This notion is not only accepted by most officials but is also promoted by many intellectuals. This essay first discusses the relationship between the social foundation and successful democratization, and concludes that China has more mature social conditions in this regard than other developing countries; it then examines the formation of the “growth consensus” in China and one of the paradoxical consequences of this policy, namely, that income growth and the expansion of civil liberties have reduced popular demand for democracy. Finally, I discuss the sustainability of such outcomes, arguing that the government’s accountability and responsiveness lack an institutional basis, and that the only way to build such a basis is through democratization.

The Social Foundation of Democracy There are many reasons leading to the failure of democratization, but democratization is most likely to fail in developing countries in times of peace when governments fail to fulfill their promises to their citizens. At an abstract level, democracy has built-in mechanisms to ensure government accountability, i.e., government officials will be removed by the public in elections if they fail to meet the demands of the people. In

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reality, the reason democracy fails to do this is largely due to persistent social inequality and its negative consequences. Most Western democratic countries, such as Britain, France, Spain, and Russia, experienced revolutions before completing their democratic transformation. The revolutions helped these countries begin the transition from traditional to modern societies, a transition that was by far the greatest change in the history of human civilization, freeing humanity from a situation in which tyranny, ignorance, superstition, and suffering were the norm. Such a transformation has only just begun in most developing countries. The impact of these revolutions on the world was profound, and even the most summary explanation is beyond the scope of this paper and the author’s competence. What is relevant to this paper is that these revolutions broke down the old social structures centered on the elite rule. This was true of the French and Russian revolutions; the English revolution seems to have been more moderate, but at its core was still a struggle between Parliament, represented by the emerging merchant class, and the old institutions of king and nobility. Although it took a long time for the old elite to exit the stage of history, the revolutions early on dictated that these changes would eventually occur. Democracies in most developing countries were established when the colonizers left. The colonizers often ruled the colonies through local elites, and when the colonizers departed, the old social structures of these regions remained largely intact. For this reason, the elite rule became a common problem in emerging democracies. While there is a close relationship between social inequality and economic and political inequality, there are important differences among them. Social inequality is static and highly resistant to change. One of the defining characteristics of the old social structure was the lifelong “status identity” that accompanied each individual, and the exclusivity and stability of social elite groups. In comparison with this, economic and political inequality can be ameliorated in the short term through individual struggles and political movements. Empirical research illustrates that there are three basic reasons why democracy fails to ensure government accountability: manipulation by politicians, an uninformed population, and marginalization of specific groups, all of which are associated with social inequality. Politicians in most developing countries come from the elite class that controls the media, the government, and the economy. Even if they do not come

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from this elite class, they are often quick to join forces with elite groups or form new elite groups directly in order to seize or maintain power. In an unequal society, it is much easier to manipulate votes or mislead the population. And the marginalization of particular groups is usually the result of social or ethnic exclusion. Another factor that prevents governments in developing countries from being accountable to their populations is widespread populism. At first glance, this may seem to make no sense, since populism demands precisely that governments respond to the voices of the people. However, a closer look reveals that this is not the case. One frequent outcome of populism is excessive redistribution, to the point that it undermines the government’s ability to carry out effective redistribution in the long run. Under short-term popular pressure, governments can act in ways that are harmful to long-term economic growth, such as nationalization, issuing excessive amounts of money, or even outright confiscation of people’s property. Populism will also give politicians the opportunity to manipulate elections, and they will use the space it gives them to make extravagant promises to the people so they can easily get elected. The best place for populism to grow is precisely in unequal societies. Ordinary people do not expect redistribution because they are poorer than the rich, but because they believe that the rich have not acquired their wealth through their own efforts. In unequal societies, the rich often acquire wealth through favorable social positions, capital holdings (especially land), or even wrongdoing; what is even more upsetting to ordinary people is that most of the returns from public investment also go to the wealthy. Therefore, immediate redistribution is the most desirable option for most people. In short, social inequality is an impediment to democracy because it is a context in which governments either serve social elites, are “hijacked” by populism, or both. In this respect, China has a better foundation than other developing countries. China is the only developing country to have experienced a complete revolution: the 1911 Xinhai Revolution led by Sun Yat-sen overthrew the Manchu dynasty, ending more than 2000 years of authoritarian rule in China; the 1919 May Fourth Movement went on to overturn the moral and cultural foundations of this authoritarian rule; and finally, the 1949 New Democratic Revolution completely broke down China’s old social structure, destroying the economic and political foundations on which it had been built.

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Social equality improved over the course of the first thirty years of the People’s Republic, despite the many mistakes committed by the Communist Party, some of which have not been taken seriously to this day. Land reform, bloody as it was, realized Sun Yat-sen’s dream of “land to the tiller”; the establishment of People’s Communes that followed—despite terrible consequences in other respects—further equalized property relations among the rural population; and the socialist transformation of industry and commerce eliminated the possibility of asset concentration in the cities. The status of women was greatly improved through legislation (mainly the Marriage Law), universal education, and universal employment. The level of education is an important determinant of social status, and its absence was particularly pronounced in the countryside, but the spread of primary education largely erased this gap. In health care, the achievements have been equally remarkable, with the implementation of a near-universal primary health care system in rural areas. Finally, the egalitarianism of the socialist salary system instilled in the Chinese a strong sense of equality, in addition to creating an equal society in terms of income levels. Although it may encourage jealousy and contain other harmful elements, this notion of equality has prevented the emergence of extreme inequality in China. However, if China has a better social foundation for democracy, the question becomes more thorny: why is China not a democratic society today? First, we should note that the Communist Party’s absolutist rule during the first thirty years of the People’s Republic was not an exception; both Britain and France experienced similar periods after their revolutions, because the chaos generated by revolutions generally requires an absolute rule to be dispelled. The next question is why, after thirty years of reform and opening, and after the Communist Party has given up its absolute power, democracy has not yet arrived?

Economic Growth and Popular Demands for Democratization The Democratic Movement of the 1980s When Mao Zedong died in 1976, China was on the verge of economic collapse. The country’s economic growth declined steadily through the early 1970s, eventually becoming negative in 1977. To add to the crisis,

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agricultural output declined during 1976 and 1977, causing severe food shortages. Following the unprecedented famines of 1959–1962, a similar disaster seemed to be looming. The pressures of the crisis undoubtedly played an important role in prompting the rural reforms that eventually brought about the collapse of the commune system in 1984. In addition, the normalization of US–China relations following Nixon’s 1972 visit to China opened a window for the Chinese leadership to observe the achievements of the developed capitalist countries, and reports written by officials who returned from their study tours abroad showed that China had undoubtedly failed in the competition between socialism and capitalism—at least in economic terms. At this point, even radical elements in the Party admitted that the legitimacy of the Communist Party’s rule would be threatened if the people’s living standards were not raised. Therefore, the pursuit of economic growth became the consensus within the Party. As the CCP began to move away from radicalism, a spontaneous democracy movement began to emerge. In fact, the democratic movement of the 1980s can be seen as a continuation of the April Fifth Movement of 1976. On the surface, the April Fifth Movement was a spontaneous movement to mourn the death of Premier Zhou Enlai and oppose the Gang of Four, but in essence, it was a popular demand for rights after an overly long repressive period. The Democracy Wall in Xidan at the end of the 1970s was a big-character poster campaign—a legacy of the Cultural Revolution—that discussed the issue of democracy with considerable fanfare. On university campuses, democratic elections were held to choose student leaders and delegates for district councils. One theory suggests that these campaigns existed for a time because the moderate wing of the party wanted to pressure the radical wing in power at the time to make concessions. Whether or not this is correct, the fact is that after the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, the moderates took control of the Party and the radicals quickly dispersed. Popular demands for democracy continued to escalate in the 1980s. The most significant economic growth in the early 1980s occurred in the countryside, which was the only place where real reforms took place. The income gap between urban and rural areas decreased from a factor of 2.7 in 1978 to a factor of 1.8 in 1985, and urban residents began to grow increasingly dissatisfied with the status quo. Internationally, the Soviet political reforms under Gorbachev encouraged popular demands for more political freedom, while the strategic partnership between the

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United States and China had a significant impact on Chinese society, especially among young students, who increasingly began to identify the American political model as the ideal. Beginning in 1986, university students launched a series of demonstrations that began as demands for more rights on campus and evolved into pleas for democracy. The two general secretaries of the Communist Party during this period, Hu Yaobang (1915–1989)1 and Zhao Ziyang, showed a great deal of sympathy for these democratic movements, but economic development under their stewardship was not promising. In 1988, the rate of inflation reached 18%, a figure that reminded the Chinese of the hyperinflation in the Kuomintang-controlled areas in the late 1940s, when the Communist Party was on the verge of victory. All of these factors eventually combined to trigger the student movement of 1989. At the same time, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were undergoing earthshaking changes, with communist regimes collapsing one after the other and some leaders even being executed. The reaction to this within the CCP was mixed, with some insisting on a return to the old system and others arguing for continued reform. This split led to stagnant economic growth and regression in political reform in the two years following the student movement. It was not until 1992, after Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour, that reform was able to resume. For moderates like Deng Xiaoping, the only way for the Communist Party to maintain power was to achieve economic prosperity, so reform was indispensable. Economic Growth and Low Democratic Demand The most difficult reforms in China took place in the 1990s. Price reforms ended in 1994, when not only were the dual exchange rates unified, but most commodities began to be priced by the market. SOE reforms in the 1980s that did not involve ownership were not successful, and in the 1990s, SOEs finally began to be privatized, a process that has lasted more than a decade and continues today, although the number of remaining SOEs is small.

1 Hu was the CCP’s general party secretary from 1980 to 1987. He was forced to resign from post for his radical ideas of political reform. He was replaced Zhao Ziyang. Hu’s death in April 1989 ignited the June Fourth student movement of 1989. Zhao was forced to resign after the movement was suppressed.

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What was particularly difficult about SOE restructuring is that it involved the employment of hundreds of millions of people, and between 1995 and 2005 nearly 50 million were laid off or lost their jobs. In the late 1990s, the government also underwent a reform that not only reduced its workforce by 15% but also streamlined administrative processes and reduced fees to businesses. At the same time, China accelerated its integration into the international community, culminating in its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. The market-oriented reforms of the 1990s gave the Chinese people the opportunity to show off their skills and get rich, and “jumping into the sea [of commerce 下海]” became a popular expression at the time. Suddenly people realized that, compared to fighting for democracy, making money was a real thing. Since the economy began to grow in 1992, rising living standards have been a constant encouragement: in the early 1980s, China was a poor country with a per capita income of only $200 US; today, more than two decades later, it has surpassed the standard for low- and middleincome countries, with per capita income reaching $3400 US; growth has been even faster in coastal areas, with most coastal cities having per capita incomes of more than $6000 US. This growth is not just on paper; the Chinese have seen a substantial improvement in their standard of living and people are living in bigger houses, buying private cars, wearing fashionable clothes, and even traveling abroad. Although rural incomes have not grown as much as those in cities, rural living standards have improved just as much: almost all villages have electricity, most have built roads connecting to major arteries, most households have televisions, young people have cell phones, and some have purchased motorcycles. Most importantly, nearly 300 million rural people have been lifted out of poverty. Various surveys generally show that rural dwellers’ degree of satisfaction with their lives (more fashionably known as the “happiness index”) is higher than that of urban residents. This is not because their income levels are higher than those of urban dwellers, but because they feel that their standard of living has improved more in comparison to urban dwellers. In 2008, China’s urban incomes exceeded rural incomes by a factor of 3.3, the highest in the world, but when urban and rural areas are viewed separately, income distribution is actually fairly even. The Gini Coefficient for the country as a whole is 0.47, which is comparable to that of the

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United States; when urban and rural areas are separated, the Gini Coefficient is 0.377. Given that the inequality one feels is largely related to one’s surroundings, this level of inequality does not cause the public to turn against the rich or the government. This is not to say that there are not urgent calls for change, but most discontent is with corruption or the illegal profiteering of the rich. As in any developing country, corruption is rampant in China, but the difference between China and other developing countries is that corrupt officials in China are consistently scrutinized and severely punished. While these measures will not eradicate corruption, it will at least instill public confidence in the government. In the wake of economic reform, social security measures suffered for a time, but several programs launched by the Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao government2 are rebuilding the social security system. In the cities, the old-age pension system is being rebuilt and coverage is increasing; the minimum livelihood guarantee system provides a social safety net to more than 20 million low-income residents; and the health insurance system is undergoing a new round of reforms with the goal of moving toward universal health insurance. In rural areas, a new old-age pension system has also been launched. The result of income growth and welfare improvements is an increase in civil liberties. Prior to the reforms, the state controlled the entire life of an individual from cradle to grave through what was known as the “work unit 单位.” We might see reform as a process in which the state withdraws from society. Today, everyone has the opportunity to reach their fullest potential if they work hard; in most cases, people can make decisions for themselves; making money is no longer considered a sin, and the government respects individual property rights. After Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao took office in 2003, the government even made big concessions on the controversial issue of state acquisition of land, and the “Property Law of the People’s Republic of China,” passed in 2007, grants citizens legal protection of their property, including real estate. In addition, the government has introduced laws and regulations that limit its own power. The “Administrative Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China,” passed in 1989, gives ordinary citizens the power to sue the government for improper conduct, while the “Regulations of 2 Hu Jintao (b. 1942) was the CCP’s general party secretary and Wen Jiabao (b. 1942) was the premier in the period 2003–2013.

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the People’s Republic of China on the Disclosure of Government Information,” adopted in 2007, require the government to disclose non-state secret information, including the budget. Although the implementation of these laws is far from perfect, their existence at least demonstrates the government’s willingness to place itself under public scrutiny; it also constitutes a deterrent to government officials, preventing them from excessive abuse of their power. Following the enactment of these laws, ordinary citizens have successfully used them to seek compensation from the government and to obtain information about government finances. In addition, the government has become increasingly tough in investigating and dealing with incompetent government officials, as evidenced by the sacking of Shijiazhuang’s Party secretary, the mayor, and several senior officials after the tainted milk scandal in 2008. The same thing happened twice to Meng Xuenong (b. 1949), and quite dramatically: the first time was when he had just become mayor of Beijing, when he lost his position due to his failure to deal with SARS in a timely manner; and the second was when he had just taken up the position of governor of Shanxi Province when he again lost his position due to the slave labor scandal in illegal brickyards and to mining accidents. Although there is no formal rule, when the government fails to deal with mass incidents or major emergencies properly, the general expectation of the public is that the officials concerned will resign or be removed from their posts. This is not to say that the Chinese people already enjoy as many civil liberties as in developed democracies. There are two main reasons leading the Chinese people to be satisfied with their government: first, people may have many complaints about the status quo, but comparing life today with life thirty years ago, few would deny that standards of living have vastly improved; and second, the government does not directly interfere in most people’s lives, or to put it another way, people can avoid this interference. The state may expropriate residents’ land without just compensation, but most people do not own land; the state monitors speech and the Internet, but people can communicate in private gatherings or evade Internet controls through technology or wordplay; the state may wantonly charge businesses unreasonable fees, but most people do not own their own businesses; the state strictly controls political gatherings, but people still have considerable space in private gatherings and can go sing in a choir in a public park or participate in family religious activities;

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even in family planning, for many families, having only one child is no longer a result of government coercion, but has become a social custom. In countries with developed democratic systems, civil liberties provide citizens with the sense that they possess rights they can invoke to protect themselves when they feel their rights have been violated. These rights are important for long-term stability and the creation of a fair and orderly society. In China, most people are still too busy enjoying the benefits of economic growth and the freedoms that come with it and ignore these rights, which will be all the more important in the long run.

Accountability, Responsiveness, and Their Relationship to Democracy Generally speaking, “accountability” is a term that can only be found in democracies. However, China’s authoritarian regime also provides some opportunities for public accountability, especially in the non-political sphere, and the government is increasingly responsive to public demands. Accountability and responsiveness are necessary for a well-ordered democracy, but there is a significant difference between the two. Accountability means that the government acts in accordance with certain norms and that promises can be verified by the public after the fact; responsiveness means that the government is responsive to the demands of the public. A government with an accountability mechanism may be a passive government that promises as few things as possible, so a government with an accountability mechanism is not necessarily a government that does things on behalf of the people; by contrast, a government that responds to the people’s demands is more likely to act in the people’s interests and to promote economic growth. While some developing countries’ governments may have accountability mechanisms but remain unresponsive to popular demands, the Chinese government has done a better job on the responsiveness front. The Chinese government has been quite successful in raising national incomes, providing social security, and ensuring the basic livelihood of the poor, as well as in allowing civil liberties in certain areas. In addition to appealing to the People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, people can make their voices heard by calling the mayor, submitting petitions, publishing articles in the media and on the Internet, and demonstrating. While government repression is still common, we can see that the government is responding to the

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public’s demands. This raises the question: What is the CCP’s motivation for doing this? The simple answer is that the CCP’s motivation is to gain the legitimacy to govern the people. In democracies, a government’s legitimacy comes through a system of elections and government subsidies agreed to by the people. Governments in non-democracies are not elected by the people and are not the products of fixed processes, so they need to find other ways to gain governing legitimacy. Historically, rulers have often relied on military force or superstition to gain legitimacy, and some contemporary dictators have tried to emulate these traditional means, but have failed miserably. More common in today’s authoritarian regimes is for the rulers to curry favor with a small group of potential opponents and buy their support. These regimes may also develop their economies, but they allow the small groups aligned with them to monopolize the benefits of economic development, as was the case in Latin American countries under military governments, and the current government of Zimbabwe. China is different in that the CCP is willing to allow all segments of society to benefit from economic growth and to allow civil liberties to exist. To a large extent, this has to do with China’s social structure and the CCP’s own political base. As I emphasized above, Chinese society became a relatively egalitarian society after a series of revolutions in the first half of the twentieth century. An egalitarian society has no prominent elite groups; interest groups thus lose their basis for organizing themselves, and rulers do not face challenges from particular groups and do not need to buy their support. Instead, in order to gain legitimacy, the rulers try to curry favor with the entire population rather than a particular group; in other words, the government adopts a neutral attitude toward society so it could act as if it were disinterested in society. The Chinese government is such a disinterested government. This is not to say that the Chinese government is altruistic, but rather that it does not purposely look out for the interests of particular groups. We all know that the Chinese government’s policies are selective, and the urban–rural income gap is one of the results of these policies. However, selective policies do not represent selective intentions; in China’s case, the intention behind government policies is unified, and the goal is overall economic growth. For example, a government policy bias toward cities

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does not mean that the government prefers urban residents, but rather reflects the fact that productivity is higher in urban areas. One test of whether a policy is motivated by government preferences for particular groups or instead reflects a uniform preference is to see whether the government’s preference for a particular group is enduring. The Chinese government has passed this test over the past three decades in that it has not explicitly favored any particular group. Reform is a process of transferring power from the state to the general population, and the CCP has not backed away from this process because of opposition from its own internal elites; it has also redistributed group interests, and in some cases, such as in the process of restructuring SOEs, where many people’s interests have been harmed, the government has stood firm against populist demands; to compensate for the relative decline in rural living standards, the government has launched the policy of “building a new countryside,” etc. Generally speaking, the CCP has remained disinterested over the past three decades. The CCP’s ability to remain disinterested is also related to the party’s own political base. After several rounds of ideological changes during the reform period, the Party began to include members from all walks of life, while most Party members had been drawn from the working class in the Maoist era. One important change was to allow capitalists to join the party, and in addition, many Western-educated intellectuals began to hold senior leadership positions in the Party and the government. Ultimately, the CCP became as diverse as Chinese society, which to an important degree helped the party retain its neutrality vis-à-vis society. But can accountability and responsiveness be sustained without Western-style democracy? Some commentators tend to give a positive response, and “consultative democracy” is one possibility. However, my personal opinion is that, while China’s democracy may be different from the West’s, the basic framework of democracy will inevitably become necessary, including regular competitive elections, checks and balances on power, and diverse forms of self-expression. Without this basic framework, there is no guarantee of government accountability, especially when events demand that the government act according to fixed regulations. And because accountability is not guaranteed, the government’s response to popular demands may be incomplete or selective. For example, in a study I carried out with an Indian scholar comparing Beijing and Rui’an, Zhejiang, we found that the two cities differed greatly

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in their attitudes toward the education of immigrants children.3 Rui’an’s economy is based on manufacturing, so the local demand for qualified workers is high, and as a result, local schools are not only open to the children of immigrants but also give subsidies to students in need. In contrast, Beijing wants to develop a knowledge-based economy, so it does not welcome immigrants with low levels of education, and one of the measures taken is to set tuition fees very high for immigrant children. Even in Rui’an, the government’s response is not institutionalized, but rather motivated by the local government’s concern for the local economy. Ultimately, the current government’s accountability and responsiveness grow out of the CCP’s quest for legitimacy and not mechanisms built into the implementation of the social contract. However, whether or not it is consistent with its original intent, the CCP’s quest for legitimacy will inevitably lead China down the road to democratization.

3 Translator’s note: Yao uses the term 移民, which usually refers to immigrants from other countries, and not 民工, the term that Chinese media uses for migrant labor. Yao uses 移民 because 民工, literally meaning peasant workers, has a connotation of prejudice against those workers.

Understanding the Chinese Communist Party System (2018)

An understanding of contemporary China must begin with an understanding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The evolution and function of contemporary China’s political system are a product of the CCP and its larger ramifications. In this sense, the political system of contemporary China can be called the “CCP system.” Official Party documents already contain a systematic exposition of these institutions. The next step we need to take is to understand it from the perspective of contemporary political science and political philosophy and to explain it clearly in a language that can be understood elsewhere in the world. Clearly, the CCP system is a different kind of system from that of Western democracies, but it is not an ordinary authoritarian system either. At the design level, it is a mixed system, the main feature of which is a clear separation between the selection of officials and the expression of popular opinion; the selection of officials is carried out by a centralized selection mechanism, the CCP, while the expression of popular opinion occurs through formal or informal mechanisms like the People’s Congresses. In addition, the Party also shoulders the responsibility of summing up the interests of society as a whole. The expression of

姚洋, “理解中国共产党体制,” Chapter 1 in Yao, Yang and Xi, Tianyang, eds. 中 国新叙事 (China: A New Narrative). Shanghai: Gezhi Press, October 2018. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Y. Yang, China and the West, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1882-9_16

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these interests is transformed into discussions within the Party via Party members and Party committees at all levels, finally becoming the country’s major policies and laws. The CCP is not only an organization but also an important part of China’s constitutional framework. The charter of the Party, together with China’s written constitution, should be seen as the de facto organized part of China’s constitution.1 As part of China’s constitutional framework, the CCP is not a political party in the Western sense, and one of its major characteristics is its ideological depoliticization. At the theoretical level, the “Three Represents” have transformed the CCP from a party of the proletariat to a party of the people as a whole; at the organizational level, the Party opens its doors to people from all walks of life, especially intellectuals and entrepreneurs; at the socioeconomic level, the Party maintains a neutral attitude when conflicts of interest arise between different groups. This last characteristic is reflected in the fact that the government led by the Party does not favor any one class or group in the allocation of resources; therefore, this government can be characterized as “disinterested.” Opposed to this is a biased government whose goal is to garner political support through its actions. Compared to such biased governments, disinterested governments prefer to spend their energy on improving the efficiency and welfare of society as a whole. From the perspective of governance, a core component of the CCP system is what I call the selectocracy, i.e., a centralized system of political selection as opposed to the one-person-one-vote electoral system, the core of which is a centralized but inclusive “selectorate,”2 for which the CCP assumes responsibility. The depoliticization of ideology has allowed the CCP to become an inclusive selectorate. Before 1978, the Party defined its political base narrowly. As society became more economically stratified

1 See Jiang Shigong, “Written and Unwritten Constitutions: A New Approach to the Study of Constitutional Government in China,” Modern China 36, no. 1 (2010): 12–46; Larry Catá Backer, “Jiang Shigong on ‘Written and Unwritten Constitutions’ and Their Relevance to Chinese Constitutionalism,” Modern China 40, no. 2 (2014): 119–132. 2 Translator’s note: Yao is drawing on “selectorate theory” as developed by the political scientist Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, among others, as a means of describing how political leaders attempt to stay in power. The basic idea is that the successful leader stays in power by pleasing “those who matter,” i.e., the “selectorate,” a group that is defined differently in different settings. See Edward Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival. The MIT Press, 2003; and Edward Bueno de Mesquita and Alistair Smith, The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics. Public Affairs, 2011.

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and ideologically diverse, the Party had to change this narrow definition in order to remain representative. As an inclusive selectorate, the Party takes in any individual who supports the Party’s leadership and wants to work for the country, without much regard to their personal preferences or social origins. More importantly, in order to maintain the credibility of the system, the Party must be able to select officials on the basis of merit. Empirical studies have shown that at county and municipal levels, the ability to promote economic growth is an important factor in the promotion of government officials.3 The doors of government are open to any individual who is willing to seek promotion through the Party’s selection mechanism. Officials must compete on the basis of their ability to seek promotion. China’s selection system is characterized by its openness, competitiveness, and meritocracy, and for this reason, the CCP system satisfies one of the major criteria that a legitimate regime should have. In practice, China’s mixed system, with the selectocracy at its core, is far from perfect. The system of People’s Congresses needs to be further improved to become a truly institutionalized venue for the expression of public opinion; the function of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) needs to be further refined to restore the status it held in the early years of the state, so as to become a constitutional institution where democratic parties and social luminaries can monitor the work of the Party. The discussion in this essay sketches a “new narrative” of the CCP system. First, political selection is accomplished through a central body, the CCP; second, the People’s Congress oversees the decisions of government officials; and third, the CPPCC oversees the Party’s political selection and other leadership functions. The Party’s legitimacy derives from its constitutional role as the mechanism for the selection of officials and as a decision-making body, and its leadership is embodied in its selection and management of officials and its control of state decision-making. The selection system follows the tradition of China’s meritocratic system; in practice, it draws on the Party’s organizational resources. In terms of

3 Yang Yao, and Muyang Zhang. “Subnational Leaders and Economic Growth: Evidence from Chinese Cities,” Journal of Economic Growth 20 (2015): 405–436; Landry Pierre, Xiaobo Lü, Haiyan Duan. “Does Performance Matter? Evaluating Political Selection Along the Chinese Administrative Ladder,” Comparative Political Studies 51, no. 8 (2018): 1074–1105.

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process, Chinese political selection is characterized by openness, competitiveness, and meritocracy; in terms of results, the CCP system is capable of achieving good governance. Complemented by the People’s Congress and the CPPCC, the CCP system is adequate to guarantee individual freedom and social diversity, and to place checks and balances on power.

Neutralization of the Party Depoliticization Depoliticization is one of the key features of the CCP since reform and opening. In an influential article, the New Left scholar Wang Hui (b. 1959) pointed out that the twenty-first century has seen a worldwide “depoliticization of politics” in which party lines have tended to disappear. He argues that this trend hinders the formation of public space and is detrimental to the open expression of different interests, which in turn facilitates the centralization of state power.4 In China, however, depoliticization has been a necessary and urgent measure for the Party to maintain its legitimacy. In the late 1970s, top Party leaders realized that China had fallen behind capitalist countries economically; the pragmatists, led by Deng Xiaoping, believed that only by breaking through the obstacles of the radical ideology of the Cultural Revolution would China be able to modernize its state and society in a more pragmatic way. The Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, held in December 1978, marked the Party’s departure from the radical ideology of the Cultural Revolution era, and the Party embarked on a more pragmatic path, both in terms of theory-building and the economy. Since then, the Party’s ideology has evolved in step with economic reform and social change. Rural reform was a bottom-up reform initiated by peasants and grassroots cadres. During the 1979–1984 period, local policy experiments and central ideological adjustments complemented one another. Inspired by the success of the rural reforms, the Party announced the beginning of urban reforms in 1984, but official ideology did not begin to loosen up until the 13th National Congress in October 1987. This conference introduced the theory of the “primary stage of socialism.” To a great degree, 4 Hui Wang. “Depoliticized Politics, Multiple Components of Hegemony, and the Eclipse of the Sixties,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 7, no. 4 (2006): 683–700.

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this theory was an acknowledgment of the reforms that had already taken place. A major shift in the Party’s ideology occurred at the Third Plenary Session of the Fourteenth Central Committee in October 1993, when it stated clearly that the goal of China’s economic reform was to establish a socialist market economy. In contrast to the theory of the “primary stage of socialism,” the “socialist market economy” theory was not only an acknowledgment of the existing reforms, but also a guide for the subsequent reforms in the 1990s. There is no doubt that the most difficult reforms were carried out in the 1990s, including the abandonment of fixed prices, the transformation of industries, the restructuring of stateowned enterprises, joining the World Trade Organization, and the reform of the social security system, among others. The reforms of the nineties accelerated China’s move toward a mixed ownership economy. The results of the reforms were reflected in amendments to the constitution in 1999, in which the individual economy and the private economy were affirmed as important parts of the socialist market economy. The 16th National Congress, held in 2002, amended the Party Charter, after which the CCP was no longer solely the vanguard of the proletariat, but represented “the developmental needs of China’s advanced productive forces, the direction of China’s advanced culture, and the fundamental interests of the Chinese people as a whole.” This new formulation, known as the “Three Represents,” completed the transformation of the CCP from a revolutionary party to a party of the people as a whole. The reforms of the 1990s exposed China’s society and economy to dramatic changes, and “Three Represents” responded to these. Under the banner of the “Three Represents,” the Party opened its doors to people from all walks of life. The result of this depoliticization is that the Party provides a venue for the expression of various interests, and through a process of democratic centralization within the Party, the Party itself becomes a mechanism to sum up various interests throughout society. Just like in a congress or parliament in a democracy, the Party must function as part of a constitutional order; the difference is that there is no centralized mechanism in a congress or a parliament, whereas the Party can use democratic centralism to weigh and sum up various interests throughout society.

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The Disinterested Government The CCP has achieved ideological depoliticization, and at the same time, the Chinese government has transformed into a disinterested government. What we call a disinterested government is one that can choose to be neutral when there is a conflict of interest between different social classes or political groups. In other words, a disinterested government will not consistently represent any particular social class or political group, let alone be captured by any political force. However, this does not mean that disinterested governments do not have their own interests, only that these interests are not dictated by the interests of fragmented social groups. Thus, in comparison with a biased government that consistently represents a particular social class or political group, a disinterested government is more likely to adopt policies that serve the long-term interests of society as a whole. A brief review of China’s major reforms and policy changes since 1978 will suffice to show that the Party and the government it leads have chosen policies that are favorable to long-term economic development. Even when these policies favored certain groups, it is because such a choice was good for the overall economy. But there is no way that policies will always favor the same groups; when circumstances change, the Party adopts policies that favor other groups. For example, the four special economic zones (SEZs) were established early on to experiment with the market economy system and to serve as a window onto China’s reform and opening. The SEZs enjoyed huge policy preferences, including the sale and purchase of land use rights, tax breaks, and more flexible labor regulations. These policies are obviously preferential, but they were crucial to China’s reform and opening. Another example is that rural reforms were clearly biased in favor of peasants. Not only did the reforms restore family production and return some land rights to the peasants, they also greatly increased the government purchase price of grain. While urban dwellers also received a greater supply of food, peasants undoubtedly benefited more from rural reforms. One obvious piece of evidence is that while urban dwellers earned 2.7 times the income of rural dwellers in 1978, the gap fell to 1.8 by 1984. By the 1990s, the Party’s focus shifted to building a market economy, and the restructuring of state-owned enterprises became an important step toward this goal. This time, SOE managers were given preferential treatment, and the workers’ interests were temporarily put on the

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back burner. In the decade between 1995 and 2005, 50 million SOE employees were laid off.5 Later, when China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), the government gave preference to the export industry, and farmers’ interests were again forced to adjust. Farmers producing soybeans and cotton had to face the challenge of cheap imported agricultural products and experience through a painful transition. During the Hu Jintao-Wen Jiabao administration, government policy shifted to compensate groups that suffered during the 1990s. Agricultural taxes were completely abolished; a new rural cooperative medical system was established; and new labor laws provided more protection for workers’ rights. The current anti-corruption efforts under General Secretary Xi Jinping can also be interpreted as an effort to maintain Party neutrality. An important goal of the anti-corruption effort is to eliminate the collusion between government and business that has put the Party at risk of being controlled by interest groups. In sum, since 1978, through ideological depoliticization and the expansion of its political base, the CCP has completed the process of “neutralization” and the Party-led state has become a polity that remains neutral in the face of social conflict. Depoliticization laid the groundwork for the Party to become China’s selectorate, and neutrality allowed for consistent selection of government officials on the basis of merit.

The Constitutional Status of the Party In a democracy, the state and political parties are separate. Political parties compete for government positions through elections, and once in power, they are subject to constitutional constraints. The popular “democratic narrative” in the West extends these criteria to the evaluation of other polities, arguing that the ruler can only be legitimate if he or she has been elected by the people. From the perspective of this narrative, the Chinese system of government lacks legitimacy. However, this narrative is constructed on the basis of democracy and denies the possibility that other legitimate polities exist. The goal of political governance is good governance and the guarantee of civil liberties, and democracy is not necessarily the only viable system of government that can achieve this goal. If the preconditions of the “democratic narrative” are relaxed, such 5 Russ Garnaut, Ligang Song, Stoyan Tenev, and Yang Yao. Ownership Transformation in China. The World Bank, 2005.

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that the requirement that officials be elected is loosened or eliminated, then the range of legitimate polities may be expanded. A polity can also be seen as legitimate if it practices a model of governance that is acceptable to its citizens. For example, a constitutional monarchy can be legitimate if citizens approve of it via free expression of their opinions or via historical precedent. One of the purposes of this essay is to argue that the CCP system has many of the characteristics that a legitimate polity should possess. The discussion in this section will center on China’s constitutional structure, focusing on explaining the relationship between the Party and the state; the next section will examine the selection of officials and their criteria. Unlike in democratic systems, the CCP is not a political organization separate from the state, but part of a mixed system within the Chinese system of government. Western scholars refer to the Chinese system as the “Party-State system,” but this is not China’s first Party-State, but dates back to when Sun Yat-sen reorganized the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) according to Lenin’s Bolshevik Party in the early 1920s. After the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty in 1911, the Republic of China copied the legal framework of Western democracy. However, warlordism soon emerged in China, which greatly weakened party politics. Realizing the weakness of politics as usual, Sun Yat-sen resolved to rebuild the Kuomintang, drawing on the Bolshevik model. An important step for him was to form a Kuomintang army. After 1927, Chiang Kai-shek established a Party-State system dominated by the Kuomintang, and after the founding of New China in 1949, the Communist Party revised the Party-State system and replaced it with a mixed system with the CCP at its core. With its extensive organizational network, the Party was able to penetrate every corner of Chinese society, replacing the traditional social organization based on ties of kinship and location. At the level of central authority, the PRC’s first constitution, promulgated in 1954, established the leadership of the CCP in China and gave the Party the power to nominate key leaders of the State Council to the National People’s Congress. However, the Party’s power was also subject to oversight and checks and balances. Through the CPPCC, the democratic parties exercised the power to monitor the CCP and participate in major national decisions, and some key positions in the government were held by people outside the Party. After the “anti-rightist” movement in 1957, however, the constitutional status of the CPPCC declined significantly. Relations between the

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Party and the government soon grew tense, for which Mao Zedong’s own aversion to rigid bureaucracy bore considerable responsibility. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Mao mobilized the masses to attack the bureaucracy, bringing the country to the brink of collapse. After the Lin Biao (1907–1971) incident in 1971, Mao began to rectify the social and political order. Although the 1975 Constitution reflected the radical ideas of the Cultural Revolution, the Party’s right to nominate leaders of the State Council, established in the 1954 Constitution, was retained. After the end of the Cultural Revolution, the Constitution was revised in 1978, and the Party’s right to nominate members to the State Council was again retained. In 1982, the Constitution has revised again. The goal of this revision was to produce a constitution that would be long-lasting and stable, avoiding major changes in the future and treating minor changes through amendments. Under the leadership of the key leaders of the NPC at the time, the Party’s right to nominate the leaders of the State Council was removed, and the Party’s role was outlined only in the preamble to the Constitution. However, this change did not reflect the role the Party plays in reality; the powers granted to the Party by the 1954 Constitution remained in effect. The Party’s first role is to make decisions on major national policies, and the 1982 Constitution gives the Party the power to lead China. “Leadership” is a broad concept that establishes both the Party’s central position in the constitutional structure and its control over major national decisions. The second function of the Party is to provide guidance to the National People’s Congress on matters of legislation. The resolution of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee, held in October 2014, fully illustrates this point: “Whenever legislation involves major institutional and major policy adjustments, it must be reported to the Party Central Committee for discussion and decision. The Party Central Committee proposes constitutional amendments to the NPC and carries out constitutional amendments in accordance with the procedures stipulated in the Constitution.” The third function of the Party is to select government officials. Although the 1982 Constitution deleted the Party’s right to nominate key leaders to the State Council, Party control of cadres remains an important Party responsibility and one that has become increasingly obvious and crucial over time. It is a core element of China’s selection system, and the Party has thus taken on several important functions of democratic systems. This will be discussed in detail in the next section of this essay.

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None of the above three functions is under the control of the law. However, as we can see from the account in the previous section, the Party’s decision-making since 1978 has been largely rational. One reason for this is that the Party is constrained by the Party’s internal decisionmaking policies and selection procedures as set out in the CCP Charter. Several scholars have pointed out that the CCP Charter should be thought of as part of the constitutional structure, serving to compensate for the shortcomings of the Constitution. The Party is not only a political organization that has been placed in a position of leadership but is also an institution. The Party is an important part of the Constitution and has constitutional responsibilities. The Party Charter and other important Party documents make appropriate provisions for Party decision-making and official selection that are not defined in the Constitution but relate to key components of China’s system of government. Given the Party’s key role in the constitutional structure, it is appropriate to refer to China’s system as the “Chinese Communist Party system.” The Party’s neutrality over the past thirty years has laid the foundation for this, making the system compatible with an increasingly pluralistic Chinese society. The Chinese Communist Party as a “Selectorate” The selectorate theory was developed by the political scientist Bruce Bueno de Mesquita (b. 1946). The selectorate is the group that decides who governs a country. The value of the theory is that it provides a unifying concept for scholars who study different regimes. Every system of government faces the problem of how to select government leaders; the size of the selectorate determines a great deal about its form. In democratic systems, the selectorate includes all citizens; in a dictatorship, the selectorate consists of a small number of people or a few families who can threaten the dictator’s rule. The nature of the selectorate determines the incentives for the rulers, who must cater to the interests of the selectorate. In a democracy, the ruler is willing to provide public goods that benefit the majority of the population; in a dictatorship, the ruler needs to bribe only a few decisive individuals or families who make up the very small selectorate.

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The explanatory power of selectorate theory in the Chinese case has been challenged by scholars,6 most importantly because the theory ignores the institutional nature of the Chinese regime. However, the concept can indeed help us understand the Chinese official selection system. Unlike in a democracy, Chinese government officials are not elected by the people; they are appointed by the Party. As such, they are accountable to the Party. In this sense, the Party is China’s selectorate. There is, however, an important difference between the Party and the selectorate as defined by Bueno de Mesquita: it is not comprised of a group of people, but rather of the Party’s selection system. This system was created in the 1980s and has been refined over the past thirty years. This difference is very important in that it dictates that Chinese officials do not have to cater to any group, but only have faith in the system and be loyal to the Party. Again, this shows that the Party is not only an organization, but also an institution. The selectorate is not a group of people who can potentially decide the fate of those in power, but a system that regulates the selection process. One corollary of the selectorate theory is that in non-democratic systems, the ruler needs to bribe a powerful faction of the selectorate in order to stay in power. In this kind of regime, “you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours” is king, and the ability to govern is meaningless. This may be true for most non-democratic systems, but it does not apply to China, where the selectorate is not made up of individuals, but rather a system that regulates the selection process. Political Selection in China As noted above, the Party began to establish a system for selecting Party and government leaders in the 1980s, and in 2002 these systems were summarized in the “Regulations on the Appointment of Cadres,” which were revised in January 2014 and renamed the “Regulations on the Selection and Appointment of Party and Government Leaders” (hereafter referred to as the “Regulations”). These regulations describe in detail the procedures for the assessment and selection of leading Party and government cadres at all levels. 6 Mary Gallagher, and Jonathan Hanson. “Authoritarian Survival, Resilience, and the Selectorate Theory,” In Martin K. Dimitrov, ed. Why Communism did not Collapse: Understanding Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Asia and Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2013.

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The Regulations stipulate that the selection and appointment of leading Party and government cadres must adhere to the “principle of Party control over cadres.” Other principles include: all are welcome, as long as they have merit; all should have talent and virtue, but virtue comes first; focus should be on performance that the masses can recognize; they must practice democracy, openness, competition, and make choices according to merit; they must respect democratic centralism; and they must work in accordance with the law. Party committees at all levels are responsible for actual selection procedures. Generally speaking, the organization department of the Party committee and the secretary of the Party committee are the main decision-makers in the selection process. The organization department first drafts a small list of candidates and then talks to them as well as their colleagues and subordinates. For key positions, such as Party secretaries and major heads of government, the organization department also invites veteran cadres who have just stepped down from their positions to be part of the interview team. After the interview is completed, the organization department recommends a short list of candidates to the Party Committee, which collectively decides on the final candidate. For the selection of government officials, after the list of candidates is put together, it must be confirmed by a vote by the local People’s Congress. The Regulations provide detailed guidance on the selection process. The Regulations also provide that young officials can be the object of examinations and become reserve cadres,7 and also provide detailed instructions on the examination process. Officials who become subjects for examination usually rotate through different positions at the same administrative level. The Regulations also make provisions for the rotation of leading cadres. In addition to regular selection, open selection is also a way to select and appoint leading cadres. This provides a fast track into government for those working in non-governmental sectors, and an opportunity for officials within the government to try out new positions as well as move up the ladder quickly. The Regulations also provide regulations for open selection. This shows that the CCP’s selection and appointment system is procedural and institutionalized. This system marks a difference between China’s system of government and that of other non-democratic systems. 7 Reserve cadres usually enter a program maintained by the organization department that manages their training and rotation. They are prioritized when promotion opportunities come.

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Research has shown that the degree of institutionalization is an important determinant of economic performance in non-democratic regimes.8 China’s economic success after reform and opening may owe much to the institutionalization of the Chinese Communist Party. During the Cultural Revolution, the state apparatus was severely damaged and the selection and appointment of Party and government leaders were extremely irregular, which contributed to the turbulence of the state and Chinese society. After reform and opening, nation-building was put back on track and the selection and appointment procedures of Party and government cadres were gradually institutionalized. In democratic systems, officials are elected by the people; in China, the Party selects officials through a set of established procedures, so the term “selectorate” is the most appropriate term for China’s official selection mechanism. However, institutionalization does not guarantee the legitimacy of a system of government, and political selection in a legitimate system of government must above all be open and competitive. China’s regime is often perceived to be closed and non-competitive, perhaps the result of two misconceptions. First, the Chinese regime is controlled by the CCP to the exclusion of other political parties; second, that membership in the Party requires members to believe in the Party’s orthodox ideology, thus excluding those who believe in other ideologies. I demonstrated in the first part of this essay that this view is wrong. The CCP does not cling to a single ideology, and the Party is open to people from all walks of life. It allows people from different groups to join the Party, providing a platform for interest groups to compete and compromise. The Party is by now integrated into the state apparatus, and whether the Party has a monopoly on power is a false question. However, the openness of China’s selection system does have significant difference from the openness of a democracy. In a democracy, citizens can theoretically go into politics at any time and any place; therefore, it is not surprising that some politicians are able to stand out at a relatively young age. In China, a person who wants to enter politics must enter the system at a young age and spend his or her life working his or her way up through the system. The Party also places great importance on attracting young people to join the Party. Since reform and opening, 8 Scott Gehlbach and Phillip Keefer. “Investment without Democracy: Ruling-Party Institutionalization and Credible Commitment in Autocracies,” Journal of Comparative Economics 39 (2001): 123–139.

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students from elite universities have been more coveted. Some students enter the government through civil service examinations and begin the long race for promotion with their peers in the same system. A few of them eventually rise to higher positions, while most retire in ordinary positions. Almost all central leaders have had experience in local politics, and almost all Politburo members have been provincial party secretaries. Competence and Political Selection From the perspective of political selection, it is best to think of the CCP as a system that replaces the electoral mechanism in a democracy. In a democracy, politicians compete with each other for the votes of the electorate; in China, officials join a long-term promotion tournament. The difference between democracy and China’s selection system is that officials need to cater to a different selectorate: in democracy, officials need to cater to the voters; in China, officials need to cater to the Party’s selection criteria. Loyalty to the Party is one of the key criteria for selection. However, since the Party is no longer a political party in the traditional sense, loyalty here is not to a political ideology, but to the Party-centered constitutional framework and to the CCP system. From this perspective, the existing official narrative does not put the Party in its proper place and discuss it as it should; the Party is still treated as a conventional political party, not as part of the constitutional framework. If the Chinese selection system is agreed upon by the entire Chinese people, and thus constitutionally agreed upon, then loyalty to the Party is loyalty to the regime. In the existing literature, several studies suggest that political connections play a significant role in the promotion of Chinese officials. For example, Shih, Adolph, and Liu argue that factional affiliation is an important factor in determining whether one can become a Central Committee member.9 Without discussing some of the technical issues involved in this research, it is important to note that political connections are not new even in well-functioning democracies; for example, when a new US president takes office, he fills more than 2000 government positions, and the new hires are those connected to him. More important than political 9 Victor Shih, Christopher Adolph, and Mingxing Liu. “Getting Ahead in the Communist Party: Explaining the Advancement of Central Committee Members in China,” American Political Science Review 106, no. 1 (2012): 166–187.

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connections is the question of whether competence is a key criterion in determining the selection of officials. If the answer is negative, then the regime is made up merely of cronies and will have a hard time achieving legitimacy. In this regard, many studies have shown that competence is indeed an important criterion in the Chinese selection system. The earliest study is an article published by Li Hongbin and Zhou Li-An in 2005.10 They examined how relative economic growth rates affected the probability that a provincial leader would reach the central government. They found that if the economic growth rate of an official’s province was one standard deviation above the average during his tenure, the official’s probability of promotion would increase by 15% over the average probability. Later studies illustrated that economic performance lost its predictive power after controlling for the official’s connections with the central government.11 However, in most studies, political connections as defined as having worked together, gone to school together, or both. There are two possible problems with this definition. One is that most top leaders come from a handful of top universities, and the other is that most central officials have experience working in the coastal provinces. In light of this, political connections may be only an ex post facto description of the outcome of promotion rather than a factor that influences promotion. Aware of the various problems in these studies of provincial officials, my Ph.D. student Muyang Zhang and I (Yao and Zhang, 2015) shifted focus to municipal officials. Using a more refined econometric approach, we measured the ability of officials to develop the local economy and found that officials over the age of 49, the more capable officials are more likely to be promoted. Landry et al. (2015) went a step further and examined how economic performance affected the promotion of government officials at the county, city, and provincial levels. They found that GDP and tax revenue growth significantly increased the probability of promotion for county-level and municipal officials, but it was not so clear for provincial officials. This order of significance reflects, to some 10 Hongbin Li, and Li-an Zhou. “Political Turnover and Economic Performance: The Incentive Role of Personnel Control in China,” Journal of Public Economics 89, no. 9–10 (2005): 1743–1762. 11 Ruixue Jia, Masayuki Kudamatsu, and David Seim. “Political Selection in China: The Complementary Roles of Connections and Performance,” Journal of European Economic Association 13, no. 4 (2015): 631–668.

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extent, the role of competence and loyalty in the selection process. In a large enterprise, the personnel department takes very seriously the ability of young people who have just joined the company and always makes repeated investigations before finally deciding which people to hire. When considering middle-level cadres, job performance is also a very important indicator. At the top of the company, by contrast, the ability of all executives is similar, so the ability in a particular area may not be the most important indicator of who can eventually serve as general manager. The Chinese selection system is similar to the personnel system of a large enterprise, where the ability of lower-level officials is important, but after a few rounds of selection, the ability of higher-level officials is more or less the same, and the importance of loyalty comes to the fore. Considering that economic growth has been the Party’s focus for a considerable period of time, it is not surprising that the selection of officials takes the ability to develop the economy as a key criterion. In order to adapt to changing economic and social conditions and respond to popular demands, the Party is also trying to establish a more comprehensive cadre inspection system that adds other indicators to the assessment system. However, there is a multi-task principal–agent problem12 between the Party’s organizational department and officials, and according to the multi-task theorem in economics,13 since economic growth is the easiest metric to measure, it is inevitable that officials compete mainly on this issue. This is the reason why higher authorities have little choice but to use the “veto” system for important policy goals such as family planning and environmental protection.14 This meritocratic selection system distinguishes China’s selection system from other non-democratic systems. It attracts ambitious young

12 Translator’s note: In economics, the multi-task principal–agent problem addresses cases where the principal has several tasks for an agent, but can only measure the outcome of some of the tasks. See here for more information. 13 Bengt Holmstrom and Paul Milgrom. “Multitask Principal-Agent Analyses: Incentive Contracts, Asset Ownership, and Job Design,” Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization 7, Special Issue (1991): 24–52. 14 Translator’s note: There is a widely accepted methodology in China for calculating economic growth rates, while similar measures presumably do not exist for the one-child policy or environmental issues. If officials used partial measures to try to evaluate cadres on such performance issues, they would alter their behavior to try to meet these particular metrics instead of the policy goals as such.

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people into the system and increases public confidence in existing institutions. Sociological research shows that most Chinese believe in the concept of “deserve.”15 Projected onto the political sphere, this means that people naturally expect highly capable officials to stand out in the system. The selection system fulfills this expectation and thus enhances its own legitimacy.

The Question of Justness At this point, we need to address the most critical question coming out of this essay: where does the justness of the CCP system come from? This has already been covered to some extent in previous sections, and I will provide a more complete answer here. But before doing that, it is necessary to briefly discuss the question of what constitutes a just system of government. A just system of government must satisfy three principles. The first principle is to ensure that political office is open to all. This is precisely the first principle Rawls sets for a free society, and which distinguishes modern society from traditional society. In traditional societies, hereditary monarchs were the most dominant feature of the political system. In modern societies, where equality is the dominant political ideology, government positions must be open to all, and an individual’s ability and virtue must be a prerequisite for obtaining those positions. The second principle is to guarantee the individual’s freedom of expression, movement, association, and property ownership. In other words, a legitimate regime must guarantee a free society. A just system requires the consent of the people16 ; it is inconceivable to obtain the consent of the people if the system does not protect individual freedom. And without popular consent, a polity has to face the possibility of a popular challenge at all times, even if it is producing good results for the people. For example, a well-meaning dictator may treat his people well, but this 15 Jing Zhang. China in Transition: A Research on the Views of Social Justice 转型中 国: 社会公正观研究. Beijing: Renmin University Press, 2013. 16 Political legitimacy is different from political justness. A legitimate government is a

government built on a set of constitutional rules that are proved by the people, mostly through their representatives. A just government has to meet certain criteria derived from a theory of justice that reflects a society’s moral convictions and good politics. A just government therefore has to be a legitimate government whereas a legitimate government is not necessarily a just government.

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does not guarantee that his successors will do the same thing, in which case the population is unlikely to accept the legitimacy of the dictatorship. However, guaranteeing political competition and personal freedom does not always guarantee the justness of a system. If a system is unable to maintain a certain political order and improve the welfare of the population, it is unlikely to be considered just, and it is also unlikely to survive in a competitive world. Therefore, a just polity also needs to satisfy a third principle, which is the ability to guarantee good governance, including political order, rational decision-making, and improvements in social welfare. Democracy does very well with the first two principles. If everyone’s opinion should carry the same weight in political selection, then democracy is still the only regime that decentralized individuals would choose; in other words, democracy is self-enforcing. In addition, elected officials are required to make policies based on the will of the voters. For this reason, the power of political selection and oversight is concentrated in the hands of the electorate (carried out, of course, through certain institutional arrangements). This is the most attractive aspect of a democratic system. However, a self-enforcing regime can also be unjust if it does not deliver good governance. One example is the Nazi regime. The Nazis gained leadership in Germany through the democratic process and were supported by the majority of the German population in their rise to power; however, the crimes it committed made it irrefutably unjust. At the same time, the Nazi example also suggests that it is not a self-evident proposition that everyone’s opinion should be given equal status in terms of political selection. The people may know little or nothing about the candidates; the people may be confused by the false promises or the incitements of the candidates; the people may not understand what the elements of a good society are, etc. In such cases, democracy is not an appropriate form of government. Finally, democracy may find itself unable to produce good governance. At a theoretical level, the well-known Arrow’s impossibility theorem17 illustrates that one of the reasons that

17 Translator’s note: Arrow’s impossibility theorem states that under the conditions of unrestricted domain of preferences, pair-wise independence, Pareto principle, and nondictatorial rule, collective decisions cannot meet individual rationality. See here for more information.

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any non-authoritarian system of ranking social choices produces contradictory results is precisely one of the tenets of democracy—that the system should treat all preferences equally, no matter how absurd they may be. In reality, elected officials often have to accommodate the short-term demands of their constituents, ignoring the long-term goals of society and ultimately harming the long-term interests of the people. What we must realize, however, is that these are not problems with democracy per se, but rather the result of a conflict between the three principles required by a just system of government. In the course of their long evolution, human beings have had to confront many different circumstances, and in turn, have constructed value norms to match those circumstances. The applicability of these value norms depends on the contexts in which they are used, which may result in conflicts. Correspondingly, a system has multiple functions, and the principles that humans impose on each function may derive from different processes of moral reasoning and thus may be in conflict with one another. Democracy—in its pure form—chooses to focus on the first and second principles of a legitimate regime, and less on the third. In reality, this deficiency is largely compensated for by the range of non-democratic institutional arrangements found in democracies. However, the role of these institutional arrangements is suppressed when “popular sovereignty” becomes the overriding claim and populism prevails. This is exactly what has happened in some Western democracies. In the context of the above discussion, we now turn to the question of the justness of the contemporary Chinese system. From the perspective of modern politics, the justness of the CCP derives primarily from its role as a selectorate in China’s constitutional set-up. Unlike democratic societies, China’s selection system makes an institutional distinction between the selection of officials, which is done by the Party, and the supervision of officials, which is carried out by a composite system. This distinction gives China’s selection system some significant advantages over democracy, as described in the previous section. In theoretical terms, the selection of officials by one-person-one-vote is not a necessary condition for ensuring the three principles of just government. Indeed, the Founding Fathers of the United States were acutely aware of this problem when they created the United States of America. By conscious design, the United States was not a democracy, but a republic. This is fully reflected in the election of the president. According to the original design, the people did not elect the president directly but chose “electors” to the Electoral College, who

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were meant to be public-spirited local elites who would vote for presidential candidates based on their own judgment. Today, however, the system exists in name only. Candidates in both parties designate their “electors” in each state in advance, ensuring that if the candidates win in that state, all the “electors” will vote for them. The Chinese selection system and the American “electoral college” system have basically two things in common. First, they both recognize that not everyone’s opinion is equally important in the selection of officials; second, they both separate the selection of officials from the supervision of these officials. The difference is that the Electoral College gives power to the local elite, while China’s selection system gives power to a central body; in terms of separating the selection of officials from their supervision, the Chinese system has done a more thorough job. This essay’s synthesis of empirical studies illustrates that Chinese political selection is characterized by openness, competition, and meritocracy, and thus satisfies the first principles of a proper system of government. The Chinese selectocracy places particular emphasis on the selection of officials with both virtue and talent, and these criteria derive from both the Confucian tradition and the needs of contemporary society.18 The difference between the Chinese selectocracy and democracy begins with the difference in the political philosophies on which they are based. The political philosophy of democracy is based on the idea that everyone’s opinion is equally important; the political philosophy of the Chinese selectocracy is based on the idea that a political process must aim to produce officials of both virtue and talent. However, “everyone’s opinion is equally important” is not a self-evident principle. Within the framework of liberalism, it guarantees individual self-determination and political equality, but it can also undermine individual liberty, because as I argued above, while democracy can guarantee the first and second principles of a legitimate regime, it can also yield undesirable results. In this sense, democracy is process-driven. By contrast, Chinese selection is outcome-driven, and thus it can be carried out by a central body. In contemporary China, 18 Of course, in real life, not all public officials in service are virtuous, and the anticorruption campaign has uncovered any number of “big tigers” [i.e., high-level corrupt officials], which proves that the moral quality of public servants does not always conform to social interests or Confucian teachings. However, this is not a problem with the system, but a problem with how the system functions and with the officials themselves. This anti-corruption campaign proves that China’s current system has a great capacity for self-renewal.

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the CCP is this central body, replacing the “one-person-one-vote” voting mechanism of a democracy. This is why, from the perspective of modern politics, the CCP derives its justness from its constitutional role as a selectorate. But do the people agree that a central body, rather than their own votes, should decide on the appointment of officials? This question is meaningful because “one person, one vote” seems to be the natural choice of a self-enforcing system. While an answer to this question in terms of political philosophy is possible, in China the question is more likely to be related to the popular acceptance of the Confucian tradition. The Confucian tradition is the philosophical foundation for the Chinese selectocracy, and acknowledging the Confucian political idea of meritocracy means endorsing the institutional arrangement of the selectocracy. In that case, do most Chinese people agree with Confucianism? Answering this question requires careful empirical political and sociological research, which is clearly beyond the scope of this essay. The point of raising this question here is to show that it is possible to construct institutional arrangements for good governance based on non-individualistic philosophies. The empirical findings cited in this text show that China’s selectocracy is open and competitive, but also capable of selecting the best and the brightest, thus satisfying the first principle of a legitimate system of government. In addition, it also ensures the enhancement of individual and social welfare and thus partially satisfies the third principle. The remaining question is whether it satisfies the second principle and whether it can guarantee overall good governance, especially the checks and balances on power. It is important to emphasize that even if the answer to this question is not entirely positive, there is no reason to abandon the discussion of the justness of China’s systems altogether. As the previous discussion has shown, the three principles required for a just system of government may be in conflict with each other, and democracy is capable of upholding only two of them. Compared with democracies, the Chinese system views these principles with a more critical eye, but the gap between it and democracy is not sufficient to constitute a qualitative difference between the two polities. Considering improvements well within the realm of possibility, the CCP system can greatly increase the number of principles it adheres to.

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Improvements and the “New Narrative” Accommodating Diversity In essence, the second principle of a legitimate system of government requires respect for the will of the people. As argued above, the Chinese selectocracy has found a solution to political selection, but it needs to do a better job of respecting the will of the people. In a pluralistic society, the question of what finally constitutes social welfare must be answered by public discussion. Democracy has done a good job of this. However, there is also a danger that democracy will fail to reach consensus. Selectocracy offers an opportunity to find a balance by separating the selection of officials from their supervision, the first being carried out by a centralized mechanism, and the second by an elected mechanism. The People’s Congress is just such a supervisory body. As long as the deputies are elected by the people through an open and fair process, then according to the Constitution, the People’s Congress can effectively supervise the decisions of officials. In other words, as long as the Party effectively implements the Constitution, selectocracy can embrace diversity and work in parallel with a pluralistic society. Compared to democracy, selectocracy is also better able to achieve a balance between virtuous political leaders and popular demands. To achieve this balance, the Constitution needs to be amended to provide a two-way guarantee of power for the Party and for the National People’s Congress. On the one hand, the Constitution needs to restore the 1954 Constitution’s provision guaranteeing the Party’s right to nominate key leading members of the State Council. Moreover, the Party should also have a certain degree of veto power in these matters. For example, if a Party nominee is not approved by the People’s Congress, the Party should have the right to nominate the same candidate again, and the People’s Congress should need an absolute two-thirds majority to veto the nomination a second time. The Constitution should also give the Party the power to nominate a certain percentage of People’s Congress deputies. At the same time, the Party should not usurp the role of the selectorate and should allow the People’s Congress to become a platform for the expression and exchange of popular will. This requirement does not go beyond the existing framework of the Constitution. The Constitution reflects the will of the Party itself; compliance with it is good for the Party’s prestige.

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Monitoring the Selectors Chinese selectocracy must also confront the question of who will supervise the selectors. This question is not raised to challenge the legitimacy of the CCP. As this essay has repeatedly emphasized, the Party is part of China’s constitutional structure, and thus its legitimacy depends on the justness of China’s system of government, which I have taken pains to demonstrate in the arguments I have developed. The question is: when selectors elect incompetent officials, can the selectors be held accountable? In this regard, the CPPCC should play a greater role. The Constitution stipulates that the CPPCC is a united front organization and that the Party realizes multi-party cooperation with democratic parties through the CPPCC. The first session of the CPPCC was held in September 1949 “to act in the place of the National People’s Congress, to represent the will of the people of the country, and to proclaim the establishment of the People’s Republic of China” (taken from the “Constitution of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference—General Outline”). All eight democratic parties participated in the CPPCC. The CPPCC constitution stipulates that the CPPCC has the power of political consultation and supervision over the general policies of the state, so naturally, the CPPCC has the right to supervise the selection process of Party officials. However, the current size of the CPPCC is overly large, and the quality of its members varies. To give full play to its supervisory role, it is necessary to address these shortcomings. Readers may naturally assume that the introduction of diversity and oversight will inevitably lead to a separation of powers within the CCP system. Can the CCP system be compatible with decentralization? The answer is yes, because decentralization is essential to the proper functioning of the system. China is not an ironclad centralized system, but rather a constitutional structure including multiple levels of government and various branches of government, with national decision-making carried out by specialized Party departments. At the same time, as in a democracy, each decision involves multiple stakeholders whose interests are not necessarily aligned, and the decision-making and executive branches may become representatives of certain interests. For this reason, we cannot guarantee that every decision reflects the will of the Party. In such a context, checks and balances can be effective in preventing the abuse of power by decision-makers. This would enhance, rather than weaken, the Party’s power as part of China’s constitutional structure.

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In terms of implementation, the separation of powers and the resulting checks and balances can help the Party and the state strike a balance between different decision-makers and implementers of policy in order to induce them to implement Party policies. The essence of what we call “constitutional rule” is that checks and balances between powers at the operational level are not the preserve of democracy; they are a necessary institutional arrangement whenever a regime needs to make decisions by proxy. At the same time, putting the Party’s operations under the supervision of the CPPCC is not a manifestation of the Party’s weakened dominant position, nor is it a negation of the Party’s leadership. The Party’s status is determined by the Constitution, and its legitimacy is determined by the justness of China’s selectocracy. Because of the limitations imposed by organizational regulations, the Party may not be able to promptly identify and correct mistakes made by individuals or institutions within the Party (including those made by the Party’s leadership). The CPPCC, as an external body, can complement the Party’s internal supervision. A New Narrative The greatest contradiction in contemporary China is the disconnect between the orthodox narrative and reality. For a fairly long period after its establishment, the CCP was a revolutionary party that followed Marxist–Leninist guidance; Marxism was the theoretical source of the Party’s orthodox narrative. However, since the Party’s focus shifted to economic construction in the late 1970s, the Party entered a new period. The Party’s task is no longer to destroy the old system but to build a new one with the goal of creating a better life for the Chinese people and achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Marxism is undoubtedly a great theory, and its critique of capitalism is still enlightening today, but Marxism can hardly guide the Party’s work at this stage, nor can it encompass everything the Party is doing on the ground. The result is that a great discrepancy has arisen between the Party’s theory and its practice. The “Three Represents” was a very important attempt to bridge these differences, but it is insufficient to provide a new theoretical basis for the Party. Moreover, the CCP system has to face the external challenges of democratization. The “democratic narrative” has become so popular that even prominent Party theorists have acknowledged that “democracy is

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a good thing.” However, it is important to realize that democracy is a product of the struggle between the common people, represented by the working class, and the elite, represented by the bourgeoisie, in nineteenth-century Western Europe, and is a form of governance rooted in recent European history. But it is by no means the only legitimate form of governance. China did not go through the same historical process as Europe and thus did not produce a Western democracy. History led China to choose the CCP system, and the Party not only established this system of government, but also worked to improve the lives of the people, and the goals of the Party and the people have been consistent throughout. With this unique history as a starting point, China is trying to find its own path to a liberal system of government. Imposing a “democratic narrative” on a country may not yield the ideal results; the chaos in the Middle East after the Arab Spring, and especially the serious refugee problem resulting from this, is a wake-up call reminding us of the dangers of “blind democratization.” China needs a “new narrative” to bridge the huge gap between current orthodoxy and reality, and to provide a solid narrative of justness for the CCP system. This work is beyond the scope of this text, but the analysis in this essay provides a solid foundation for future inquiry and charts the broad contours of a “new narrative” around the Chinese selectocracy. First, in terms of its origins, the selectocracy has its roots in China’s long-standing Confucian-based system of meritocracy.19 Debates on the topic continue, but traditional China was surely one of the most upwardly mobile of traditional societies. More importantly, China was the only traditional society to practice meritocracy; all other major traditional societies worked according to heredity. At the very beginning of its civilizational development, China solved an important problem facing human society: how to select capable officials. The CCP should not be ashamed to admit that it inherited the Chinese meritocratic tradition; what the “new narrative” needs to do is to find a solid contemporary philosophical and political foundation for this tradition. Second, the CCP system is a mixed system of government that is distinct from democracy. Unlike democracy, it distinguishes between the selection of officials and their supervision. In terms of political 19 A good reference to China’s political meritocracy written by a Western scholar is Daniel Bell. The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy. Princeton University Press, 2015.

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selection, the system practices openness, competition, and meritocracy, thus satisfying the first principle of a proper system of government and partially fulfilling the third principle. In terms of supervision, the Constitution guarantees that the people express their will and exercise their supervisory power through the People’s Congress, and that they also supervise the CCP as a “selecting body” through the CPPCC. Hence, the Chinese selectocracy is able to accommodate diversity, guarantee individual freedom, and create checks and balances between powers, thus realizing the second and all third principles of a legitimate system of government. Third, the CCP is not a political party in the Western sense. It is not just an organization, and more importantly is an indispensable institutional building block in China’s constitutional structure. The Party’s constitutional status is both the result of historical choice and a requirement of a mixed system of government appropriate to the Chinese context. In terms of realizing the diversity of human values, a mixed system of government is the best choice for human society. The CCP system is one option for a mixed system of government, and with the necessary improvements, it can become a fully just system.

The Sinification of Marxism: The CCP’s Most Urgent Ideological Challenge (2021)

On its 100 anniversary, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) faces a serious ideological challenge. One hundred years ago, it was established by a group of intellectuals searching for a viable way to pursue a modernized China, and Marxism was more a tool it adopted to mobilize China’s revolutionary forces than a vision of its ideal society. The social movements carried out in the first thirty years of CCP rule were instrumental for China’s modernization process, notwithstanding their Marxist perspective. Since 1978, the CCP has returned to China’s traditional values, particularly pragmatism, and meritocracy, to guide its reform process and ultimately, state governance. It is no exaggeration to say that China’s economic success has been a result of the CCP’s Sinification. Yet the CCP’s political legitimacy still rests on its theoretical allegiance to Marxism, creating a great tension between what it practices and what it preaches. Realizing this tension, the CCP has put the Sinification of Marxism at the top of its list of priorities for theoretical innovation. Thus

An essay submitted to the international conference “CPC Futures” organized by the East Asia Institute, National University of Singapore on November 19–21, 2021. The main body of the essay appears in Frank Pieke and Bert Hofman, eds. CPC Futures: The New Era of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. NUS Press, 2022. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Y. Yang, China and the West, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1882-9_17

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far, however, only limited success has been achieved, the primary reason for which is that China’s Marxist theorists have not taken traditional Chinese thought, particularly Confucianism, seriously in their quest. For these theorists, Marxism is the container, and Chinese thought is one thing that should be in that container. The right approach is just the opposite: Chinese thought should be the container, in which various elements of Marxism accompany other things. This essay first reviews the CCP’s role in China’s modernization process, and then discusses the CCP’s return to Chinese traditional values in the reform era. Then it turns to the contradictions between the CCP what has done right in the reform era and Marxist doctrine. Finally, the article suggests several areas in which Marxism can be made congruent with Confucianism.

Modernization: The CCP’s First Hundred years The CCP was founded as a Marxist-Leninist party in 1921. China at the time was experiencing a degree of change not seen in two thousand years. The dynastic system first erected by Qin Shihuang in 221 BCE had collapsed, after which China entered a period of militarism. It was widely believed that China needed reunification to solve her problems, a belief reinforced by leading intellectuals like Liang Qichao and Yan Fu. As is true everywhere in the world when drastic changes are underway, radical ideas were more likely to prevail because they promised quick and thoroughgoing regime change. The success of the Bolshevik victory in Russia inspired a group of Chinese intellectuals to establish the CCP, which means that from the outset, the CCP was a product of China’s learning from the West. In this sense, CCP was also a product of China’s modernization process because China’s modernization was forced on China by the West. In its first 30 years of its rule, the CCP followed the Soviet model to build a socialist China. The Soviet version of Marxism was the CCP’s main ideology. After the initial land reform that gave land to tillers, the CCP quickly moved to collectivization of agricultural production. One of the strong reasons for this move was to facilitate rapid industrialization. With the commune system, the state could control food production and procurement to accelerate capital accumulation. Although visible successes were limited at the time, industrialization laid a foundation for

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China’s economic takeoff in the reform era by accumulating a considerable amount of physical and human capital. In addition, the CCP also raised the country’s educational level, built a public health system, and lifted women’s status relative to men. So by 1978, China was socially ready for a rapid economic takeoff. Notwithstanding its big mistakes (the Great Leap Forward and subsequent Great Famine, the Cultural Revolution), the CCP consciously paved the way for China’s modernization. The process was painful, but later generations benefited. By 1978 when the country began to open up, China was more ready than other large developing countries (such as India) for the next step. The CCP in its first 30 years of power, therefore, proved to be instrumental in China’s quest for modernization, which meant that Marxism then was instrumental as well. Under the pragmatic leadership of Deng Xiaoping, the CCP changed its course in the reform era. Although Marxism was still included in its charter as the guiding ideology, in practice the CCP has irrevocably returned to Chinese traditional thought. At the philosophical level, pragmatism guided the Party on the ground. The absolute truth pursued by Marxism gave way to the idea that truth should be tested by practice. Deng’s theory that “it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice”—i.e., the idea that goals are more important than means— prevailed. As a result, China’s reform has taken a gradual approach. At the organizational level, the CCP embraced China’s traditional political meritocracy. Officials were selected more based on their merits than their allegiance to Marxist orthodoxy. The Party set up various programs to identify and train talented young people; the Party School system provides systematic training for officials at all levels. The promise of promotion gave officials high incentives to grow the economy even when corruption was a serious problem. As the Party turned toward the past, the CCP has also brought tradition back to the Chinese society. The market economy is often believed to be a feature of capitalist society, but China had markets long before 1949—at least since Northern Song dynasty. The meritocratic belief that hard work and talent should be rewarded runs deep in the Chinese blood. The CCP’s reestablishment of the market released the inner energy of ordinary Chinese people. With this energy came an embrace of traditional culture. Traditional festivals were restored; traditional ethical values were promoted; Chinese art and poetry became popular again; and the government spent large amounts of money to support the study of Confucian classics and the restoration of Confucian archives.

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Legacy and Reality This meant that the CCP had Sinicized itself. Its goal is not so much to build a communist China, but to build a fully modernized China. Modernization has replaced Marxism as its de facto ideology. However, this has created a great tension between the CCP’s theory and its practice. Its theory is still Marxism, but its practice is guided by Chinese values. This tension in turn created deep anxiety in the Party about its political legitimacy. Economic success since 1978 has allows the CCP to win great support from Chinese people. However, economic success is not enough to prove that a political system is a just polity. To do that, it is imperative to anchor this system in a theory of political philosophy that embraces values which are widely held by citizens. Marxism in its current form does not fulfill that goal. Understanding this conundrum, the CCP has to find an alternative theory. However, it is not ready to completely give up Marxism because the action will run the risk of negating the Party’s past. Sinification of Marxism thus has become the Party’s major theoretical pursuit. However, current efforts to Sinicize Marxism have not produced meaningful results. The most popular approach, often adopted by orthodox Marxist scholars, is to apply Marxism to explain what the CCP has done in the reform era. Because of the reasons laid out in Section “Modernization: The CCP’s First Hundred Years”, it is very hard for orthodox Marxist scholars to explain the CCP’s success. Instead, their views are often critical. This is not surprising, because Marxism was a critical theory in the first place. The spread of orthodox Marxism actually plays a destabilizing role for the CCP. Another approach, taken by Marxist scholars who are more sympathetic toward Chinese tradition, is to compare what Marx wrote and what Confucians wrote and try to find overlapping points. This approach ignores the systematic differences between Marxism and Confucianism, and the comparisons it yields are mechanical at best. In addition, the entire process is necessarily selective because there are so many conflicts between Marxism and Confucianism. Marxism was created by Karl Marx as a theory to guide the revolution of the proletariat. The Marxist theory of political economy thus placed exploitation front and center. The theoretical basis of exploitation is the labor theory of value. The starting point of that theory, as many of Marx’s philosophical predecessors had already proclaimed, is that all value is created through labor. The capitalist, however, by controlling capital,

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can squeeze workers’ salaries and extract surplus value out of their labor. The capitalist reinvests the surplus value to accumulate more capital. This process will decrease the exploitation rate by eliminating labor, very much like what is predicted by the rule of diminishing marginal returns. In the end, the exploitation rate approaches zero and no capitalist wants to reinvest anymore because there is no labor to be exploited. Capitalism thus digs its own grave. The proletarian revolution is consistent with this historical imperative. It crushes the capitalist class, eliminates the ownership of capital, and creates a society without exploitation. The labor theory of value is flawed. If all value is created by labor, then one has to admit that capital was also created by labor at a certain point. If current labor insists on its value, why not labor accumulated in the past? There is no concrete argument against it. Therefore, factor payments are actually labor payments even by the logic of the labor theory of value. Marx’s theory of exploitation ultimately falls apart. In the CCP’s official discourse, exploitation has seldom appeared since 1978. Embracing the market means that factor payments have to be the principle of distribution. To be consistent with its practice on the ground, the CCP must give up Marx’s theory of political economy. Indeed, the Party must abandon Marx’s entire theory of revolution and its consequent endorsement of a proletarian dictatorship (or “people’s democratic dictatorship”, to use the CCP’s post-1978 jargon). Communism is a utopia by definition because it is based on the premise that all of people’s needs have been met—a kind of “end of history” in which man’s desires are saturated. The role of communism is at best to inspire a society to increase the supply of goods and services so that it moves asymptotically toward that goal. Understood in this manner, the proletarian dictatorship becomes unnecessary because its role merely marks a transition between capitalist society and communist society. In reality, the “people’s democratic dictatorship” often becomes a sword of Damocles for private business owners in times when the mood shifts leftward in China. Fearing that their wealth will be taken by the state, they often try to move their money out of China. To the extent that the private economy is one of the pillars of China’s sustainable growth, the “people’s democratic dictatorship” is detrimental to the rejuvenation of China. The CCP has to find a new political philosophy that is accepted by ordinary Chinese.

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Marxism Meets Confucianism This new political philosophy should borrow from Confucianism because Confucianism is firmly grounded in Chinese values and has been the model of state governance for most of the past two millennia. Both Marxism and Confucianism should be sources for the new political philosophy the CCP needs to build. To achieve this, the CCP needs to find commonalties and complementarities between the two strands of thought. The Marxist theory of political economy has to go; Marxist philosophy is more likely to offer opportunities, such as the following. First, Marx and Engels put individual achievements before collective achievements. If they lived in today’s world, both thinkers would be liberals, at least progressive liberals. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, classical Confucianism does not reject liberal ideas. Both Confucius and Mencius put personal efforts at the center of their theories of personal perfection. Scholar-officials are self-regulating agents, not subjects who merely follow the emperor’s orders. Second, historical materialism offers a viable method for us to understand human beings and human history. Man is not just defined by self-interest—as proposed by Hobbs and Locke—but by a variety of material-based characteristics. The starting point for the construction of human society is not some normative claim (something that “ought to be”), but an empirical observation of what human beings really are (something that “is”). Confucius held this view. For him, human nature had many forms; it was fluid and could be molded by personal efforts. Third, dialectics has been long been part of Daoist wisdom. Confucianism is not as dialectical as Daoism in theoretical terms, but quite agrees with dialectics when it comes to practice. One of the central ideas held by Confucianism is keeping to the “mean”/zhongyong , the Middle Way. Engels expressed similar ideas when he discussed dialectics: “Differences are harmonized in the middle stage; all the contradictions are transformed by each other through intermediating steps … Dialectic reasoning does not recognize rigid and fixed boundaries. Nor does it recognize universal ‘not this, but that’ … Dialectics recognizes ‘this and that’ when it appears appropriate.”1 The notion of the zhongyong has guided China’s reform process since 1978. The CCP adopted a gradual approach to reform, creating many transitory institutions that were not 1 Translated from Collections of Marx and Engels, Vol. 9, p. 471. People’s Press, 2009.

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perfect but solved the most urgent problems at the time. The zhongyong is also reflected in the CCP’s governance model. For outsiders, many of China’s laws only reflect the Party’s arbitrary wills. But in reality, most of China’s laws are debated and even contested many before finally being voted on. In the end, laws are the results of compromise among many interests at stake. Fourth, Marx’s ideas about democracy can be combined with the Confucian theory of human nature to create a new form of state governance. For Marx, the democracy created by Locke was a false form of democracy because it ignored the existence of classes in society. Real democracy could only be established when people became self-regulating agents. However, agency is more an ideal than a reality. In the real world, we have to accept Confucius’ view that man is constantly in the process of perfection. As imperfect agents, not all people are qualified for all political decisions. This is the argument for political meritocracy—society is ruled by a political hierarchy whose officials are required to demonstrate possession of the necessary qualities for the ranks they hold. However, officials’ decisions are subject to checks and balances. The final say belongs to the people, who through their representatives, approve or disapprove the decisions of officials. Unlike in the current form of democracy where people’s sovereignty is positively defined, people’s sovereignty is passive in the Confucian state.

Concluding Remarks The Sinification of Marxism is itself an example of zhongyong —not a continuation of orthodox Marxist teachings, not a wholesale acceptation of China’s traditional values, but something in between. Confucianism experienced a similar transformation in historical times. The introduction of Buddhism was the first cultural shock China experienced in recorded history. Buddhism challenged the Confucian order and the Confucian belief that virtues were given by the heaven. By way of response, Neo-Confucian scholars in Song dynasty absorbed Buddhist ideas and introduced self-reflection into Confucianism. The introduction of Western ideas was the second cultural shock in China’s history, a shock that China continues to process. On the material front, China has done a fairly good job in absorbing the knowledge created by the West. On the spiritual front, China has not yet decided how to absorb Western values

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and ideas. Marxism is by far the most consequential Western idea implemented by the CCP in China, but other Western ideas, such as liberalism, have also impacted Chinese society. The period of introducing Western values and ideas probably is approaching an end; China is now at a point to return to its own traditional values. The task of CCP is to lead the process to create a new Chinese culture. In this culture, Chinese values should be the vehicle that carries universal values and Western ideas that are congruent with Chinese values.

Name Index

A Acemoglu, Daron, 111 Ai, Weiwei, 16 B Bai, Tongdong, 42 Bell, Daniel, 143, 257 Braun, Otto, 109 Bromley, Dan, 4 C Carter, Michael, 4, 19 Chen, Duxiu, 116 Chen, Yinque, 200 Chu, Coching, 205 Commons, John R., 4 Confucius, 8, 37, 38, 40, 41, 130, 142, 157, 158, 160, 161, 167, 168, 172, 178–184, 186, 187, 190, 195, 264, 265 D de Waal, Frans, 142

Dong, Zhongshu, 130, 178, 197, 198, 207 Dworkin, Ronald, 37, 171–173, 187

F Fairbank, John King, 105 Fei, Xiaotong, 89, 121 Feng, Youlan, 13 Friedman, Edward, 67 Fukuyama, Francis, 134, 151, 192, 193, 199 Fu, Sinian, 90

H Han Wudi, 129, 144, 197 Hu An’gang, 18, 21 Huang, Ping, 3 Huang, Ray, 122 Hui, Wang, 3, 30, 236 Hu, Shih, 90 Hu, Yaobang, 225

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Y. Yang, China and the West, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1882-9

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J Jiabao, Wen, 227 Jiang, Zemin, 44 Jintao, Hu, 227

K Kai-shek, Chiang, 33, 62, 108–110, 117, 118, 240 Kang, Youwei, 13, 106, 116

L Liang, Shuming, 90, 99, 207 Li, Dazhao, 116 Li, Hongzhang, 115 Liu, Bocheng, 33 Liu, Zhidan, 109 Li, Zehou, 118 Lu, Xun, 88, 90

M Mao, Zedong, 13, 43, 96, 100, 101, 105, 108–110, 124, 204, 212, 215, 223, 241 Marx, Karl, 4, 37, 43, 107, 131, 146, 187, 189, 262–265 May, Kenneth, 153 Mencius, 37, 40, 41, 86, 152, 158, 160, 168, 169, 172, 174, 183–185, 188, 264 Mou Zongsan, 13

Q Qian, Mu, 191, 192, 194–196, 199, 200 Qin, Hui, 16–18 Qin, Shihuang, 107, 145, 192, 196, 260 Qin Zizhong, 7, 36

R Rawls, John, 37, 38, 171, 249

S Schumpeter, Joseph, 216 Sen, Amartya, 3, 4, 7, 20, 99, 137, 154, 156, 168, 173, 187–189 Shi, Su, 204 Sima, Guang, 204 Song Renzong, 204, 205 Song Taizu, 201–203 Sun, Yat-sen, 13, 93, 96, 104, 105, 108, 110, 116, 117, 218, 222, 223, 240 Su, Zhe, 204, 205

T Tan, Sitong, 106, 108 Trump, Donald, 35, 39, 53–55, 152, 157

V von Hayek, Friedrich, 153, 154, 217 N North, Douglass, 67

P Prebisch, Raúl, 124, 125

W Wang, Anshi, 204 Wang, Jingwei, 108 Wang, Shaoguang, 18, 21

NAME INDEX

X Xiaoping, Deng, 7, 33, 42–44, 70, 72, 73, 128, 129, 131, 132, 146, 225, 236, 261 Xi Jinping, 14, 15, 39, 42, 48, 239 Xu Fuguan, 167 Xunzi, 37, 158, 168, 172, 174, 184, 185 Y Yan, Fu, 116, 260 Yao Youguang, 26, 93, 94

Yew, Lee Kuan, 136 Yuan, Shikai, 116

Z Zhao, Dingxin, 198 Zhao, Ziyang, 147, 225 Zhisui, Li, 105 Zhou, Enlai, 105, 224 Zhu, De, 109 Zhu, Xi, 107, 179, 193 Zhu, Yuanzhang, 193, 206

269

Subject Index

A Accountability, 54, 143–145, 149, 220, 221, 229, 231, 232 A just system of government, 249, 251, 253 Aristocratic politics, 194, 199 A self-enforcing regime, 250 Atomic equality, 169

B “Big-picture” writings, 3 Bottom-up reform, 236 Bureaucratic empire, 130, 192, 193, 196, 197

C Catching up, 73, 113, 115, 125, 134 Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 5, 9, 12–14, 26, 27, 31, 34, 42, 43, 49, 55, 94, 110, 113, 114, 117, 130, 131, 145, 146, 186, 214, 225, 227, 230, 233, 235, 237,

239, 241–243, 245, 247, 249, 251, 253, 257, 259–263, 265 Commercialization of government behavior, 217 Common prosperity, 15, 39, 41, 177, 186, 190 Confucianism, 5–9, 12–14, 18, 21, 22, 29, 33–42, 44, 45, 47, 48, 56, 107, 129, 130, 143, 144, 150, 151, 170, 174, 177, 179, 181, 183–185, 188–189, 191, 193, 197, 198, 201, 253, 260, 262, 264, 265 Confucian liberalism, 39, 41, 45, 47, 175, 183 Confucian pragmatism, 44 Confucian pragmatist, 11 Confucian thought, 9, 12, 38, 56, 169, 177, 183, 187, 190 Constitutional rule, 149, 249, 256 COVID-19, 10 Cronyism, 6, 151, 163 Culture, 8, 9, 47, 53, 66, 67, 107, 116–118, 122, 128, 132, 135,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Y. Yang, China and the West, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1882-9

271

272

SUBJECT INDEX

149, 156, 167, 169, 170, 175, 184, 186, 192, 200, 237, 261, 266 D Democratic decay, 157 Democratic narrative, 165, 239, 256, 257 Democratization, 9, 45, 46, 49, 152, 156, 219, 220, 232, 256, 257 Depoliticization, 234, 236–239 E Egalitarianism, 40, 41, 98, 99, 152–157, 161, 167, 177, 223 Enlightenment, 8, 111, 118, 154, 169, 179, 184 Equality, 4, 37–40, 45–47, 98, 99, 127, 137, 143, 150, 151, 161, 168–173, 175, 178, 180–183, 187–189, 223, 249, 252 F Factor-based distribution, 131, 132 Fiscal decentralization, 215, 217 G Grassroots society, 7, 67, 90, 91 Growth consensus, 220 Gua/寡, 178–180 H Hierarchies bad, 143 good, 143 Human development, 6, 99, 114, 126, 137 Human nature, 33, 45, 46, 77, 129, 142, 143, 152, 153, 156, 157,

159, 161, 168, 169, 205, 264, 265

I Ideology, 9, 44, 46, 47, 56, 130, 132, 144, 147, 197, 211–214, 216, 218, 220, 234, 236, 237, 245, 246, 249, 260–262 Individual determination, 152, 153, 156, 157, 161, 174, 175, 252 Individual value, 157, 174 Industrialization, 6, 96, 100, 124, 125, 260 Informal institutions, 67 Informal structures, 91 Institutionalization, 220, 245

J Jun/均, 178–180

K Kinship, 25, 89, 91, 121, 195, 240 Kuomintang, 6, 26, 61, 71, 93, 94, 108, 109, 117, 118, 122, 225, 240

L Land reform, 24, 26, 61, 96, 98, 118, 120, 134, 212, 260 Liberal democracy, 8, 9, 13, 45, 142, 143, 145, 149, 151, 157, 159, 165 Liberalism, 6, 8, 12, 14, 22, 34, 36–38, 47, 48, 56, 89, 151–157, 159, 165, 170, 175, 176, 252, 266 Literary inquisitions, 206

SUBJECT INDEX

M Marxism, 4, 6, 7, 9, 43, 47, 116, 117, 146, 147, 150, 164, 256, 259–262, 264 Meritocracy, 7, 34, 41, 45, 46, 49, 128–130, 147, 162, 186, 188, 189, 235, 236, 252, 253, 257–259, 261, 265 Middle way/Zhongyong , 7, 264, 265 Mixed system, 155, 233, 235, 240, 257, 258 Modernization, 5, 6, 8, 22, 26, 28, 29, 35, 43, 46, 47, 49, 100, 103, 105, 106, 108, 110, 111, 113–120, 122, 126, 127, 132, 133, 136, 138, 153, 196, 197, 259–261 N Nanchang Uprising, 26, 62, 71, 94 National political identity, 122, 124, 127 Nation-building, 5, 43, 100, 245 Nation-states, 98, 99 Neo-Confucianism, 107, 205 New Confucianism, 13, 48, 191 P Paretian Liberal, 154 People’s Commune, 24, 96, 118, 123, 223 Personalism, 183 Political centralization, 215 Political legitimacy, 249, 259, 262 Political order, 39, 192, 241, 250 Political selection, 162, 234–236, 245, 246, 250, 252, 254, 258 Competence and, 246 Populism, 37, 45, 47, 130, 138, 150, 222, 251 Pragmatic Confucian, 8, 9

273

Pragmatism, 8, 33, 44, 47, 128, 129, 137, 146, 202, 218, 259, 261 Privatization, 25, 212, 214 Proletarian dictatorship, 263 Promotion tournament, 162, 246 Public intellectuals, 5, 13–18, 23, 30, 34, 48, 90, 118

R Rawlsian equivalence, 189 “Reading the China Dream”, 5, 48 Reform and opening, 5, 13, 15, 22, 24, 26–29, 32, 33, 35, 39, 40, 43–47, 49, 98, 99, 114, 121, 127, 128, 130–133, 177, 186, 218, 223, 236, 238, 245 Relational equality, 169, 170, 172, 173, 175 The Confucian theory of, 170 Ren/good, 8 Responsiveness , 220, 229, 231, 232 Revolution, 6, 7, 22, 25–29, 31, 43, 61, 71, 92–97, 100–111, 114–118, 121–124, 127, 128, 132–134, 136, 137, 211, 212, 219, 221–223, 230, 262, 263

S Selectocracy, 234, 235, 252–258 Selectorate, 9, 234, 235, 239, 242, 243, 245, 251, 253, 254 Selectorate theory, 234 Sen’s equivalence, 189 Sinification, 146, 150, 259, 262 Sinification of Marxism, 9, 43, 117, 132, 259, 261, 263, 265 Sino-US competition, 56 Social inequality, 219, 221, 222 Spontaneous order, 153, 154 State capitalism, 148

274

SUBJECT INDEX

T The CCP system, 7, 9, 152, 162–165, 233–236, 240, 246, 249, 253, 255, 257, 258 The Confucian State, 8, 9, 141–143, 145, 146, 148–150, 265 The constitutional status of the Party, 239 The Cultural Revolution, 25, 26, 43, 62, 64–67, 76, 92, 96, 103, 104, 117, 130, 212, 224, 236, 241, 245, 261 The Democracy Wall, 224 The disinterested government, 7, 238 The English revolution, 106, 110, 221 The feudal system, 193–195 The Foreign Affairs Movement, 116, 124, 133 The French Revolution, 27, 110, 111, 136 The Gang of Four, 224 The Great Famine, 261 The Great Leap Forward, 24, 25, 43, 96, 118, 126, 261 The Hundred Days’ Reform, 106, 116 The labor theory of value, 262, 263 The Long March, 109 The Magna Carta, 203 The May Fourth Movement, 90, 98, 116, 192

The The The The

multi-task theorem, 248 new Cold War, 56 New Culture Movement, 32, 116 New Left, 13, 18, 21, 22, 30, 31, 236 The “New Narrative”, 254 Theory of basic capabilities, 187 The Pareto principle, 154 The party-State, 47 The “people’s democratic dictatorship”, 263 The primary stage of socialism, 236, 237 The socialist market economy, 237 The Socialist Revolution, 118, 122, 127, 136 The Xi’an Incident, 110 The Yongjia school, 202 The Zunyi Conference, 109 Three Represents, 44, 234, 237, 256 Tianxia, 98, 99 Trade war, 56 Traditional values, 7, 91, 259, 260, 265, 266

W Western-style democracy, 220 Wisconsin Idea, 4 Wisconsin School, 4 Women’s liberation, 120