“In this sense, asking someone in China to reject the one-party rule is equivalent to asking someone in the US to support the cancellation of separation of powers, or asking someone in Germany to deliver a Nazi salutation - all of these scenarios are just not very constitutional in their respective countries.”
Important to note that in the U.S., vocally supporting a cancellation of the separation of powers is still constitutionally protected speech. You could tweet that view, write a book in favor of it, shout it from a street corner, etc. and nothing bad would happen to you other than being ridiculed. Very different in China I presume. And Germany for that matter.
I have great admiration for China, so do not take this as an assertion of American chauvinism. But the comparison here is factually incorrect and misleading.
I had the same question in my mind when writing this analogy, but still decided to put it out in the end, because a) both are examples of unconstitutionality. For example, maybe you can tweet about it, and you have First Amendment protecting you, but your tweeting it is not the point here and is not what your constitution really trying to protect against. The real question is, can a President shut down Congress, Can your Supreme Court orders White House to be shut down? and b) near-total freedom of speech is enshrined in your constitution, but not in China's. This argument only proves my point. When you talk about what you fundamentally can or can't do, you can only compare things within their context, not taking out an element out of context and compare the two.
Now, which "constitution" is better? that's a discussion for another day. There are wide debates about it even in the relatively more limited freedom of speech in China.
I think you're confusing or conflating things here and it muddies the waters. The bottom left box in your matrix is doable in America and Europe. An individual can criticise the system publicly and a political party could theoretically run on a promise to amend the constitution via its own change mechanisms. No one would go to jail in either case. There is even a small movement to abolish the UK monarchy for example.
Robert recognized the issue you raise. He says that in the United States we have a right to say anything, but hardly any individual person ever gets listened to. What Robert does not take into account is the right of free association in the United States in which powerless individuals can come together to advocate for their positions. Groups of individual Americans can bring about political change through such organizations as Teachers Unions, the NAACP, and the National Rifle Association.
In the U.S., journalists and whistleblowers have been prosecuted for bringing to light information of public interest. Just two examples, Julian Assange and Daniel Hale.
I really like your comments on fully appreciating (and cherishing) what freedoms are available rather than attempting to drink from a firehouse of anarchistic “right of free speech”. Denying official election results and encouraging insurrection would have severe consequences in most parts of the world but in the U.S. one can simply up the ante to full-scale fascism and be a leading Presidential candidate. A ‘right’ not cherished can easily be abused.
The United States needs to realize the validity of the Chinese perspective on different political/values-based questions. That being said, how can you praise Mao Zedong? His policies killed 50+ million of his own citizens and those left alive were brutalized by the Red Guard.
It's a complicated matter that requires an essay of its own. But the short conclusion is: Mao was wrongly grouped together with the likes of Hitler, in western discourses.
The policy blunders of both Mao AND the government he led did cause deaths of tens of millions during the famine, but it was still a very different thing from intentionally killing people with war and holocaust.
Also, had it not been for Mao and his party, China would either end up in non-stop warlordism, or foreign invasion (this time most likely to be ever-land-hungry Soviet Union), which would also claim lives of millions with no end in sight. That he was able to instill a true modern sense of nationhood into China, and a high level of spiritual emancipation of Chinese people, can't be denied.
Btw, you know what's the favorite book for China's capitalist entrepreneurs and CEOs these days? Mao's Selected Writings. Why? Not for the ideology of course, but for the sharp mind and the great writing that's super relevant for building any organization and for achieving anything, despite the toughest situation (think of the Long March)
Now, it is obvious from my writings that there were plenty of what Mao did and who he was that I don't agree with. I hate the Cultural Revolution mistakes. In the list of people that I admired, Peng Dehuai was fiercely against Mao during those "mistake years", while Deng Xiaoping was an anti-Mao without saying it directly. But still, that doesn't mean his towering achievement can't be recognized.
I have heard this argument before, but I have always wondered: Why do you discard the possibility that if the Guomindang had won control of all of the china, then the mainland might have followed the direction of Taiwan? Perhaps 30 or 40 years of autocratic dictatorship, giving gradually way to a sort of paternalistic democracy with protection of civil liberties. Same history as South Korea
If china has followed this direction, it just seems you might have a much higher living standard by now. But is there something special about the demographics or geography of mainland China that makes this version of history unrealistic?
Thanks for this! I understand that Mao was instrumental in allowing the small people in villages to have, for the first time ever, a voice in their localities, and instilled in them a sense that they could do so instead of deferring to internal village power elites. I always find it odd how the West cannot see that what happened in China was no different from the chaos and horrors of the French Revolution. In popular Western thinking, the former revolution is bad while the latter is always held up as a exemplar of freedom and equality. Yet, the victims of the French guillotine were not just French nobles but many small, ordinary people as well who were unwilling to give up their religion and denounce their village priests. Not something that is bruited about in the received ideas of the West.
Yes, Mao did more than anyone else in freeing Chinese people's minds (his own cult of personality is the imperfection of course, he can't free people from millennia of history within one lifetime)
I don't think the french revolution is often seen as an exemple of freedom and equality. Some people see it as a necessary reaction to a cirrupt regime, some people admire it for the bravery of the revolutionaries but almost all historians agree that it was actually s bloody mess. And that Robespierre was a dictator who brought suffering and death to his own people. But perhaps have selection bias in the history books I read.
No, I agree that historians would see it as a "bloody mess". But that's exactly why I confined my comment to "popular Western thinking" and "received ideas" -- as in how the masses conceive of the French Revolution. I too may well suffer from selection bias but certainly growing up, the "popular" ideas I received about French Revolution played up its fight for freedom, equality and brotherhood rather than its bloodiness. Yes, the guillotine was mentioned but only in terms of nobles being killed. It was only much later as an adult reading history books that I learnt about the horrors, and how many common people got caught up in the dragnet. Certainly even people who do know their history have attitudes towards the French Revolution that mix both admiration and outrage, whereas as far as I am aware, there is only one one-dimensional view of the Chinese revolution and Mao in the West that can be found, especially on MSM.
It's interesting to me, though, that people (especially Westerners) outside China are more likely to see Mao as the embodiment of evil dictatorship, whereas the people in China have a more mixed view of him. Perhaps rather than discount it as brain-washed masses who don't know anything, it might be more respectful to listen to their views and accept their accounts and the lived experiences of their grandparents and to modify the one dimensional frameworks that we have. Or if that is too much to ask, to at least to acknowledge that as outsiders all we have are very partial (meaning both "not impartial" and "not complete") views of the matter, that we cannot know how -- because we have no innate sense of it -- how big the challenge changing 2,000 years of culture was, and that this history is in any event is not our history and it is for them to come to terms with it and that therefore their take on it matters more than ours.
And as for how successful the Kuomintang would have been at peaceful leadership, no one can say. We do not have crystal balls to see alternative histories. But we do know that Chiang went on to become a military dictatorship in the province of Taiwan. We do know that he brutally tortured and killed people suspected of communist leanings with the help of America, and we do know that he massacred one entire village that rebelled against him. If he had had to fight against communist sympathisers as well as revanchists seeking to remake the Confucian past, given what we know about what he did actually do, can we be so certain that the proper alternative history is one where he would have been an enlightened peacenik tolerating dissent and welcoming opposition parties?
And whether change of the scale required could in fact have happened peacefully, my own experience suggests that it is unlikely. I have been learning a South Indian language for about a decade now, and talking to my tutor from India, it is very apparent that despite being "liberated" by the British and by independence in 1947, much of India, especially rural India, still very much accepts traditional values, including the caste system and the lower position of women. My tutor tells me of how in the 2000s (not the 1960s or 70s, mind you), her uncle had to fight for her to get a university education. And she didn't come from a rural village, she came from the midsize town. This is after decades of women's liberation in India (dating to before Independence), and transitioning to a modern economy. Old ideas and cultures in ancient civilizations die hard. Unless of course, the children are forcibly taken into religious boarding schools and deracinated from their cultures, sort of like a mini Cultural Revolution.
I always enjoy reading your articles, for something that mostly reflects my experience of living and working in China. My sense is that the 1984-ness of China ebbs and flows; there was a time in the late 2010s where a couple of friends in law and finance had small scale run ins with law enforcement based on pretty innocuous weixin/ weibo posts, and these shook them quite badly.
Thanks for sharing! I think I know what you mean. That's why I say for the people who "have sway", they have to be careful. But I also see people who really want to express ideas they think it through and stand by it (not in an offhandish way), dare to express them both privately and publicly, and sometimes artfully too.
This may not be related to your friends' experience: another often overlooked but very relevant aspect is that, often it's not the law enforcement that initiates this kind of "run ins", but the people who genuinely don't agree with someone's views reporting it to law enforcement, who in turn will have to act.
A similar situation is dealing with disputes with neighbors. You know, Chinese policemen not just do policing work, but a whole lot of social work. Because it's so easy for someone to deal with petty daily disputes by reporting to the police. And imagine such bizarre kind of "dispute resolution" writ large in the space of ideas.
BTW, your framework on private/public criticism of policy/constitution is interesting. However, I would distinguish between “reasoned criticism” and “malicious criticism”. I would argue that criticism (even if public, even if it relates to the constitution) can be made if it is “reasoned” vs “malicious”. The latter is a form of unreason, and contributes nothing to improving the world.
Western ideas of “free speech” fails to make this distinction, and this failure is why Western societies are in so much difficulty over how it handles debate about the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the genocide going on in genocide.
China has every right to discourage malicious criticism, and welcome reasoned criticism.
You definitely are right. Problem is the distinction between “reasoned” and “malicious” is often not clear, and thus become unenforceable if that’s the line we draw. Also, a society should allow some outburst of emotions, even if unreasonable, imo
It’s not so difficult to distinguish reasoned vs malicious criticism. Just ask for a reason! And keep asking … For example, ask NS why he thinks you are a China shill. I suspect he ultimately cannot give a reasoned answer.
So much comments I come across in social media can be easily shown to be prejudicial, even abusive. Just ask for a reason, and the answer will just be more prejudice and abuse.
The problem with “free speech” in the West is that they assume from the start that we cannot differentiate “reasoned arguments” from “unreason” and so few people have learned to give reasoned claims. This unfounded scepticism about reason is so profound that it has made Western politics a mud pit of cynicism.
This pessimism about reasoning is due to “logical positivism”, a now discredited philosophy that used to be respectable in the early 20th century. Logical positivism draw a sharp distinction between “facts” vs “values”, and claim that we can only reason about facts, not values. Although it is discredited among philosophers, logical positivism is still very influential in politics and economics.
Do look up logical positivism and the American pragmatic philosopher, Hilary Putnam who critiques logical positivism in his essay on The Collapse of the Fact-Value dichotomy.
I would like to share a note about that graphic (private/public - fundamental/specific).
As some comments pointed, there is not a law that banned some expressions in the West (I generalize). However, I think that your graphic could be useful if we apply it to western countries. We can see that in public you can not say some things, you can not criticize the fundamental, unless you don't care about your "social death", that is: the cancellation and disappearing of places where your voice could be heard (mass media, television...). That's why there is so concern about the internet places, and why they would like to censor a few, because it is a public space where people that criticize fundamental could arrive to any house. That's a different with China, I suppose.
Also in the private, be careful if you criticize some dogmas, because maybe your environment will attacked you. That affect, for what I can see, to people that used to move in groups (universities, companys, stereotype groups with ideological packages...), but also to the normal guy that see the news on TV or the journals. Some things, some dogmas, could not be even mentioned, without a bad look, a deviation of the issue or a conversation that should deal, more often, of misunderstood (ad hominem, propaganda, straw man fallacy...) than a real talk for understanding and debate.
The law and the prohibitions are the difference, but, in the deep, in real life, the thing is a lot more close than most westerns would like to imagina (criticizes this is difficult in public sphere, and even in the private)
If both of us can see this, apart that a possible sharing of some kinds of ideas about the world that make us converge, that means that the world itself behaves and has some properties that you and I have observed. I am from Spain, and I see that in here; and for your name, I assume that your from some "anglo country". I see this "indirect coercion" increasing since the last years.
We already know a lot about the "soft power", marketing or propaganda, and the thousands of social mechanisms that coerce people in different degrees of intensity. That apply to every corner of the societies; that's why a politician can not say what he think (assuming that he want to) if he wants to arrive to power, but also is the reason that helps my partner to convince me of going to launch outside when I am lazy (I am a hove-loving).
For me it is important to distinct the customs from the law, because the degree of coercion of both it is different. In law we have the State with his monopoly of violence that coerce us and the others for good and bad reasons. In customs we don't have that, but will be really naif if we think that the coerce do not work, or that its power is insignificant. Sometimes, a law can be changed easily than customs, and those are more rooted than the laws (the tribalism, we can say). In conclusion: yes, "de iure" we can find strong difference, but "de facto" the similarities are even stronger.
"The older I grow, the more I find that in fact we are all of us, myself very much included, deeply prone to not enough willingness to question our own beliefs, especially the most closely held ones."
Well, that is the most difficult task of any epistemicall activity, and requieres a really love for the truth (yes, I am talking like a romanticist platonic guy, but we can "translate" this to real proceses that succeed in things in the real world). I have observed that it is easy to do if you don't are engaged on the public sphere or participate in groups; also, if you think and reflect for yourself and not for expose your ideas to others. Internet allows these kind of "free-thinking, because you can receive huge amounts of information and talk with the pressure of social approval; it is the most close to a sky where the ideas float and fight each other without the importance of our egos (it is metaphoric).
But in my case, the best antidote to those strong and visceral beliefs is to be a dilettante: knowing for the pleasure that this activity (read, think, write) gives us. But if people don't like hedonism, I can share also the good words of a book wrote by man: "the straw always will be in your neighbor's eye, my friend..."
However, I want to take issue with this one statement of yours: "nobody really cares about the voice of small folks anywhere in the world."
Undoutably that is usually true. However, there is an imporant exception being played out right now.
US elites, from Generals to former Chief of Staffs to Donald Trump during his first Presidency, may prefer Kamala Harris by a huge margin. I think maybe 90% of the high ups that Trump hired for the White House in his first Presidency have endorsed Kamala Harris.
But that is almost irrelevant. The important question is what the small folks in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina think and want. Their views (and votes) matter more than all the Generals in Virginia.
As to the charge that Robert may well find himself self-indoctrinating to become a Chinese shill, I have never never never yet met in real life (as opposed to virtual life) any Westerner, and especially any American, who has been willing to even countenance the idea that other systems other than the American one have any virtue in them. The criticism of the American ideas of democracy and constitution (especially if coupled with even the mildest of suggestions that political systems like China's may have some positive points to them) are met with the kind of knee-jerk rejection that I have only ever otherwise seen when fundamentalist Christians have their beliefs challenged. With that in mind, it might be useful for Westerners to ask themselves about the extent to which they have self-indoctrinated themselves to become "Western shills" and that what are "truths held to be self-evident" are not in fact truths at all but simply faith-based beliefs that brook no argument. The older I grow, the more I find that in fact we are all of us, myself very much included, deeply prone to not enough willingness to question our own beliefs, especially the most closely held ones.
All systems must find a balance amongst many competing goals, and every solution has a price, both in terms of real and opportunity cost. The American solutions of free speech and the right to bear arms have had a price measured in children having to learn shooter drills in school. I may find that an intolerable price but I won't deny that Americans are perfectly entitled to make this choice for themselves. In the same way, the Chinese system has its own benefits and prices for those benefits that the Chinese people have been willing to pay that an American might well find intolerable. But that does not give Americans the authority to denigrate the very real agency and choice that Chinese people have actually exercised. And I find that it is far too simplistic to tar and feather 1.4 billion people as having no free will, rather than accepting the hard truth that indeed the Chinese people (who include people like Robert) do exercise their free will by the simple choice of choosing to not migrate or even migrating and then choosing of their own free will to return.
I appreciate you taking the time to write this. We’ve discussed issues of bias in the past, and personally I feel it is your point around Noah Smith which feels most key in this area. For what it’s worth, whilst I think you are probably careful about what you say, I think your opinions here are largely genuine, and I completely agree that the Noah Smiths of this world have basically no idea what they are talking about. However, I still think you are at risk of bias precisely because you seem to spend a lot of time (justifiably) defending Chinese policy from the likes of the Noah Smiths of the world.
Although I don’t believe you are a China shill, I suspect it’s still fair to say you have a certain soft spot for China as a country, and so when you get a bunch of unfair and badly researched criticisms of China, you are justifiably quick to jump to its defence. However, when you start to get into the habit of doing this a lot, you run the risk of embracing that side of things into your overall mentality. Rather than it being ‘this criticism of China is unjustified and here’s why’, it becomes ‘you are on the Western team and so you are wrong because of x’, and can lead to a position where any criticism you accept of China feels like you are losing, even if on an individual level you’d actually agree.
Again, I don’t believe you are doing this deliberately or that you are a ‘China shill’ or anything like that. However, I think you run the risk that if you spend your life trying to refute the Noah Smiths of the world, you can end up treating everyone like a Noah Smith, and so both run the risk of ignoring genuine criticisms you might otherwise agree with, and acting like exactly the ‘China shill’ you are trying to avoid.
Thought-provoking post! It's pretty clear that ideas of government and the role of free speech are quite different between China and the West. I have heard it explained to me before by people from China that it is because the conditions of China (huge, impoverished, diverse, etc) make it so that an "authoritarian" or "centralized" government is the only type of government that would allow a prosperous and unified country (e.g., other systems will result in chaos)
Do you believe this to be true? What are the underlying conditions you think make the current system of governance in China the way it is, and as a corollary, what might change in the future conditions that might cause the current Chinese governance system to evolve or even radically change?
The free speech topic is difficult because it unavoidably frames the problem from a Western perspective. This is due to the primacy and axiomatic nature of freedom of speech in the West frame relative to Asian culture.
One potential argument is that Chinese people appreciate and prioritise Confucian ideas and hence freedom of speech is naturally lower in order of importance.
Is this intrinsically bad - if you just landed on this planet and were told these are two different societies who prefer different things? There is no undebatable proof that limits to freedom of speech is inherently bad.
The way it is discussed in Western media is typically full of half truths and attacks that do not pin it down to first principles. ie is the lack of a constitutional freedom of speech somehow creating a dishonest society unable to communicate key ideas?
Let me also point out the trend in the West recently on reversing the freedom of speech - from wokeism (and the reverse such as in Texas) to Australia's movement towards banning objectionable material.
This is a great example of changing prioritisation within a society - at the cost of free speech. If the West accepts these trends, then it must necessarily accept that there are limits that make sense to society depending on priority.
Thank you for pointing out important distinctions within the Chinese narrative that are oblivious to those in the West possessing near-xenophobic ideals of their intellectual supremacy.
The US constitution has capitalism as a defining feature of thr country. Most mainstream news (and people) would demonize one for even quoting Marx or using terminology from his writings, even though many university professors teach it. (I am saying this in that there is self censorship on the US too.)
Please tell me where the word capitalism is found in the Constitution. The Constitution reflects a society where capitalism exists, but it does not mandate it. When the Constitution was written there were small communist societies in the United States including the Shakers and the Ephrata Cloister, The US Constitution accepts any economic system that that citizens choose to embrace.
There is the interstate commerce clause, but commerce has existed in China throughout the existence of the PRC.
I agree that there are *social pressures* that encourage self-censorship in the United States. But you don't have the courage to speak your convictions, maybe you aren't entitled to them.
Years ago I urged my daughter to apply for the Li Po Chun United World College, even though we both recognized she had almost no chance of getting into the school because of their preferred background. The point being the interviews would lead her into re-thinking/introspection of her goals and how she was structuring her education and life path. While not at the same intensity, this is really good, I'm giving a copy to my daughter (who still lives in Hong Kong). The quality of the questions and the thought behind the answers are useful starting points to anyone living anywhere, and I mean living, not simply going through the motions.
Hi Robert, it is wonderful for you to share these pertinent answers with us. It is an excellent post and I hope more people will read what you write, an important bridge to understanding China by the West.
P.S. Glad to know you are a PR in HK too, and I look forward to your voice to help HK government to navigate its complex environments!!
“In this sense, asking someone in China to reject the one-party rule is equivalent to asking someone in the US to support the cancellation of separation of powers, or asking someone in Germany to deliver a Nazi salutation - all of these scenarios are just not very constitutional in their respective countries.”
Important to note that in the U.S., vocally supporting a cancellation of the separation of powers is still constitutionally protected speech. You could tweet that view, write a book in favor of it, shout it from a street corner, etc. and nothing bad would happen to you other than being ridiculed. Very different in China I presume. And Germany for that matter.
I have great admiration for China, so do not take this as an assertion of American chauvinism. But the comparison here is factually incorrect and misleading.
I had the same question in my mind when writing this analogy, but still decided to put it out in the end, because a) both are examples of unconstitutionality. For example, maybe you can tweet about it, and you have First Amendment protecting you, but your tweeting it is not the point here and is not what your constitution really trying to protect against. The real question is, can a President shut down Congress, Can your Supreme Court orders White House to be shut down? and b) near-total freedom of speech is enshrined in your constitution, but not in China's. This argument only proves my point. When you talk about what you fundamentally can or can't do, you can only compare things within their context, not taking out an element out of context and compare the two.
Now, which "constitution" is better? that's a discussion for another day. There are wide debates about it even in the relatively more limited freedom of speech in China.
I think you're confusing or conflating things here and it muddies the waters. The bottom left box in your matrix is doable in America and Europe. An individual can criticise the system publicly and a political party could theoretically run on a promise to amend the constitution via its own change mechanisms. No one would go to jail in either case. There is even a small movement to abolish the UK monarchy for example.
Huh….i didn’t claim it’s not doable in the West. That’s not my point.
Robert recognized the issue you raise. He says that in the United States we have a right to say anything, but hardly any individual person ever gets listened to. What Robert does not take into account is the right of free association in the United States in which powerless individuals can come together to advocate for their positions. Groups of individual Americans can bring about political change through such organizations as Teachers Unions, the NAACP, and the National Rifle Association.
In the U.S., journalists and whistleblowers have been prosecuted for bringing to light information of public interest. Just two examples, Julian Assange and Daniel Hale.
Excellent discussion. Thank you. It is rare to have anyone honestly provide subtly thought out answers to provocative questions.
I really like your comments on fully appreciating (and cherishing) what freedoms are available rather than attempting to drink from a firehouse of anarchistic “right of free speech”. Denying official election results and encouraging insurrection would have severe consequences in most parts of the world but in the U.S. one can simply up the ante to full-scale fascism and be a leading Presidential candidate. A ‘right’ not cherished can easily be abused.
The United States needs to realize the validity of the Chinese perspective on different political/values-based questions. That being said, how can you praise Mao Zedong? His policies killed 50+ million of his own citizens and those left alive were brutalized by the Red Guard.
It's a complicated matter that requires an essay of its own. But the short conclusion is: Mao was wrongly grouped together with the likes of Hitler, in western discourses.
The policy blunders of both Mao AND the government he led did cause deaths of tens of millions during the famine, but it was still a very different thing from intentionally killing people with war and holocaust.
Also, had it not been for Mao and his party, China would either end up in non-stop warlordism, or foreign invasion (this time most likely to be ever-land-hungry Soviet Union), which would also claim lives of millions with no end in sight. That he was able to instill a true modern sense of nationhood into China, and a high level of spiritual emancipation of Chinese people, can't be denied.
Btw, you know what's the favorite book for China's capitalist entrepreneurs and CEOs these days? Mao's Selected Writings. Why? Not for the ideology of course, but for the sharp mind and the great writing that's super relevant for building any organization and for achieving anything, despite the toughest situation (think of the Long March)
Now, it is obvious from my writings that there were plenty of what Mao did and who he was that I don't agree with. I hate the Cultural Revolution mistakes. In the list of people that I admired, Peng Dehuai was fiercely against Mao during those "mistake years", while Deng Xiaoping was an anti-Mao without saying it directly. But still, that doesn't mean his towering achievement can't be recognized.
I have heard this argument before, but I have always wondered: Why do you discard the possibility that if the Guomindang had won control of all of the china, then the mainland might have followed the direction of Taiwan? Perhaps 30 or 40 years of autocratic dictatorship, giving gradually way to a sort of paternalistic democracy with protection of civil liberties. Same history as South Korea
If china has followed this direction, it just seems you might have a much higher living standard by now. But is there something special about the demographics or geography of mainland China that makes this version of history unrealistic?
Lew Kuan Yew to Deng: There was nothing that SIngapore had done that China could not do, and do better.
Deng: If I had only Shanghai, I too might be able to change Shanghai as quickly. But I have the whole of China.
Thanks for this! I understand that Mao was instrumental in allowing the small people in villages to have, for the first time ever, a voice in their localities, and instilled in them a sense that they could do so instead of deferring to internal village power elites. I always find it odd how the West cannot see that what happened in China was no different from the chaos and horrors of the French Revolution. In popular Western thinking, the former revolution is bad while the latter is always held up as a exemplar of freedom and equality. Yet, the victims of the French guillotine were not just French nobles but many small, ordinary people as well who were unwilling to give up their religion and denounce their village priests. Not something that is bruited about in the received ideas of the West.
Yes, Mao did more than anyone else in freeing Chinese people's minds (his own cult of personality is the imperfection of course, he can't free people from millennia of history within one lifetime)
I don't think the french revolution is often seen as an exemple of freedom and equality. Some people see it as a necessary reaction to a cirrupt regime, some people admire it for the bravery of the revolutionaries but almost all historians agree that it was actually s bloody mess. And that Robespierre was a dictator who brought suffering and death to his own people. But perhaps have selection bias in the history books I read.
No, I agree that historians would see it as a "bloody mess". But that's exactly why I confined my comment to "popular Western thinking" and "received ideas" -- as in how the masses conceive of the French Revolution. I too may well suffer from selection bias but certainly growing up, the "popular" ideas I received about French Revolution played up its fight for freedom, equality and brotherhood rather than its bloodiness. Yes, the guillotine was mentioned but only in terms of nobles being killed. It was only much later as an adult reading history books that I learnt about the horrors, and how many common people got caught up in the dragnet. Certainly even people who do know their history have attitudes towards the French Revolution that mix both admiration and outrage, whereas as far as I am aware, there is only one one-dimensional view of the Chinese revolution and Mao in the West that can be found, especially on MSM.
It's interesting to me, though, that people (especially Westerners) outside China are more likely to see Mao as the embodiment of evil dictatorship, whereas the people in China have a more mixed view of him. Perhaps rather than discount it as brain-washed masses who don't know anything, it might be more respectful to listen to their views and accept their accounts and the lived experiences of their grandparents and to modify the one dimensional frameworks that we have. Or if that is too much to ask, to at least to acknowledge that as outsiders all we have are very partial (meaning both "not impartial" and "not complete") views of the matter, that we cannot know how -- because we have no innate sense of it -- how big the challenge changing 2,000 years of culture was, and that this history is in any event is not our history and it is for them to come to terms with it and that therefore their take on it matters more than ours.
And as for how successful the Kuomintang would have been at peaceful leadership, no one can say. We do not have crystal balls to see alternative histories. But we do know that Chiang went on to become a military dictatorship in the province of Taiwan. We do know that he brutally tortured and killed people suspected of communist leanings with the help of America, and we do know that he massacred one entire village that rebelled against him. If he had had to fight against communist sympathisers as well as revanchists seeking to remake the Confucian past, given what we know about what he did actually do, can we be so certain that the proper alternative history is one where he would have been an enlightened peacenik tolerating dissent and welcoming opposition parties?
And whether change of the scale required could in fact have happened peacefully, my own experience suggests that it is unlikely. I have been learning a South Indian language for about a decade now, and talking to my tutor from India, it is very apparent that despite being "liberated" by the British and by independence in 1947, much of India, especially rural India, still very much accepts traditional values, including the caste system and the lower position of women. My tutor tells me of how in the 2000s (not the 1960s or 70s, mind you), her uncle had to fight for her to get a university education. And she didn't come from a rural village, she came from the midsize town. This is after decades of women's liberation in India (dating to before Independence), and transitioning to a modern economy. Old ideas and cultures in ancient civilizations die hard. Unless of course, the children are forcibly taken into religious boarding schools and deracinated from their cultures, sort of like a mini Cultural Revolution.
I always enjoy reading your articles, for something that mostly reflects my experience of living and working in China. My sense is that the 1984-ness of China ebbs and flows; there was a time in the late 2010s where a couple of friends in law and finance had small scale run ins with law enforcement based on pretty innocuous weixin/ weibo posts, and these shook them quite badly.
Thanks for sharing! I think I know what you mean. That's why I say for the people who "have sway", they have to be careful. But I also see people who really want to express ideas they think it through and stand by it (not in an offhandish way), dare to express them both privately and publicly, and sometimes artfully too.
This may not be related to your friends' experience: another often overlooked but very relevant aspect is that, often it's not the law enforcement that initiates this kind of "run ins", but the people who genuinely don't agree with someone's views reporting it to law enforcement, who in turn will have to act.
A similar situation is dealing with disputes with neighbors. You know, Chinese policemen not just do policing work, but a whole lot of social work. Because it's so easy for someone to deal with petty daily disputes by reporting to the police. And imagine such bizarre kind of "dispute resolution" writ large in the space of ideas.
BTW, your framework on private/public criticism of policy/constitution is interesting. However, I would distinguish between “reasoned criticism” and “malicious criticism”. I would argue that criticism (even if public, even if it relates to the constitution) can be made if it is “reasoned” vs “malicious”. The latter is a form of unreason, and contributes nothing to improving the world.
Western ideas of “free speech” fails to make this distinction, and this failure is why Western societies are in so much difficulty over how it handles debate about the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the genocide going on in genocide.
China has every right to discourage malicious criticism, and welcome reasoned criticism.
You definitely are right. Problem is the distinction between “reasoned” and “malicious” is often not clear, and thus become unenforceable if that’s the line we draw. Also, a society should allow some outburst of emotions, even if unreasonable, imo
It’s not so difficult to distinguish reasoned vs malicious criticism. Just ask for a reason! And keep asking … For example, ask NS why he thinks you are a China shill. I suspect he ultimately cannot give a reasoned answer.
So much comments I come across in social media can be easily shown to be prejudicial, even abusive. Just ask for a reason, and the answer will just be more prejudice and abuse.
The problem with “free speech” in the West is that they assume from the start that we cannot differentiate “reasoned arguments” from “unreason” and so few people have learned to give reasoned claims. This unfounded scepticism about reason is so profound that it has made Western politics a mud pit of cynicism.
This pessimism about reasoning is due to “logical positivism”, a now discredited philosophy that used to be respectable in the early 20th century. Logical positivism draw a sharp distinction between “facts” vs “values”, and claim that we can only reason about facts, not values. Although it is discredited among philosophers, logical positivism is still very influential in politics and economics.
Do look up logical positivism and the American pragmatic philosopher, Hilary Putnam who critiques logical positivism in his essay on The Collapse of the Fact-Value dichotomy.
I would like to share a note about that graphic (private/public - fundamental/specific).
As some comments pointed, there is not a law that banned some expressions in the West (I generalize). However, I think that your graphic could be useful if we apply it to western countries. We can see that in public you can not say some things, you can not criticize the fundamental, unless you don't care about your "social death", that is: the cancellation and disappearing of places where your voice could be heard (mass media, television...). That's why there is so concern about the internet places, and why they would like to censor a few, because it is a public space where people that criticize fundamental could arrive to any house. That's a different with China, I suppose.
Also in the private, be careful if you criticize some dogmas, because maybe your environment will attacked you. That affect, for what I can see, to people that used to move in groups (universities, companys, stereotype groups with ideological packages...), but also to the normal guy that see the news on TV or the journals. Some things, some dogmas, could not be even mentioned, without a bad look, a deviation of the issue or a conversation that should deal, more often, of misunderstood (ad hominem, propaganda, straw man fallacy...) than a real talk for understanding and debate.
The law and the prohibitions are the difference, but, in the deep, in real life, the thing is a lot more close than most westerns would like to imagina (criticizes this is difficult in public sphere, and even in the private)
Totally agree. We posted at about the same time, and you've said it much better than I did.
If both of us can see this, apart that a possible sharing of some kinds of ideas about the world that make us converge, that means that the world itself behaves and has some properties that you and I have observed. I am from Spain, and I see that in here; and for your name, I assume that your from some "anglo country". I see this "indirect coercion" increasing since the last years.
We already know a lot about the "soft power", marketing or propaganda, and the thousands of social mechanisms that coerce people in different degrees of intensity. That apply to every corner of the societies; that's why a politician can not say what he think (assuming that he want to) if he wants to arrive to power, but also is the reason that helps my partner to convince me of going to launch outside when I am lazy (I am a hove-loving).
For me it is important to distinct the customs from the law, because the degree of coercion of both it is different. In law we have the State with his monopoly of violence that coerce us and the others for good and bad reasons. In customs we don't have that, but will be really naif if we think that the coerce do not work, or that its power is insignificant. Sometimes, a law can be changed easily than customs, and those are more rooted than the laws (the tribalism, we can say). In conclusion: yes, "de iure" we can find strong difference, but "de facto" the similarities are even stronger.
"The older I grow, the more I find that in fact we are all of us, myself very much included, deeply prone to not enough willingness to question our own beliefs, especially the most closely held ones."
Well, that is the most difficult task of any epistemicall activity, and requieres a really love for the truth (yes, I am talking like a romanticist platonic guy, but we can "translate" this to real proceses that succeed in things in the real world). I have observed that it is easy to do if you don't are engaged on the public sphere or participate in groups; also, if you think and reflect for yourself and not for expose your ideas to others. Internet allows these kind of "free-thinking, because you can receive huge amounts of information and talk with the pressure of social approval; it is the most close to a sky where the ideas float and fight each other without the importance of our egos (it is metaphoric).
But in my case, the best antidote to those strong and visceral beliefs is to be a dilettante: knowing for the pleasure that this activity (read, think, write) gives us. But if people don't like hedonism, I can share also the good words of a book wrote by man: "the straw always will be in your neighbor's eye, my friend..."
Another excellent and interesting post.
However, I want to take issue with this one statement of yours: "nobody really cares about the voice of small folks anywhere in the world."
Undoutably that is usually true. However, there is an imporant exception being played out right now.
US elites, from Generals to former Chief of Staffs to Donald Trump during his first Presidency, may prefer Kamala Harris by a huge margin. I think maybe 90% of the high ups that Trump hired for the White House in his first Presidency have endorsed Kamala Harris.
But that is almost irrelevant. The important question is what the small folks in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina think and want. Their views (and votes) matter more than all the Generals in Virginia.
An interesting time we are living in!
Yes. Isn't that an old curse??
As to the charge that Robert may well find himself self-indoctrinating to become a Chinese shill, I have never never never yet met in real life (as opposed to virtual life) any Westerner, and especially any American, who has been willing to even countenance the idea that other systems other than the American one have any virtue in them. The criticism of the American ideas of democracy and constitution (especially if coupled with even the mildest of suggestions that political systems like China's may have some positive points to them) are met with the kind of knee-jerk rejection that I have only ever otherwise seen when fundamentalist Christians have their beliefs challenged. With that in mind, it might be useful for Westerners to ask themselves about the extent to which they have self-indoctrinated themselves to become "Western shills" and that what are "truths held to be self-evident" are not in fact truths at all but simply faith-based beliefs that brook no argument. The older I grow, the more I find that in fact we are all of us, myself very much included, deeply prone to not enough willingness to question our own beliefs, especially the most closely held ones.
All systems must find a balance amongst many competing goals, and every solution has a price, both in terms of real and opportunity cost. The American solutions of free speech and the right to bear arms have had a price measured in children having to learn shooter drills in school. I may find that an intolerable price but I won't deny that Americans are perfectly entitled to make this choice for themselves. In the same way, the Chinese system has its own benefits and prices for those benefits that the Chinese people have been willing to pay that an American might well find intolerable. But that does not give Americans the authority to denigrate the very real agency and choice that Chinese people have actually exercised. And I find that it is far too simplistic to tar and feather 1.4 billion people as having no free will, rather than accepting the hard truth that indeed the Chinese people (who include people like Robert) do exercise their free will by the simple choice of choosing to not migrate or even migrating and then choosing of their own free will to return.
I appreciate you taking the time to write this. We’ve discussed issues of bias in the past, and personally I feel it is your point around Noah Smith which feels most key in this area. For what it’s worth, whilst I think you are probably careful about what you say, I think your opinions here are largely genuine, and I completely agree that the Noah Smiths of this world have basically no idea what they are talking about. However, I still think you are at risk of bias precisely because you seem to spend a lot of time (justifiably) defending Chinese policy from the likes of the Noah Smiths of the world.
Although I don’t believe you are a China shill, I suspect it’s still fair to say you have a certain soft spot for China as a country, and so when you get a bunch of unfair and badly researched criticisms of China, you are justifiably quick to jump to its defence. However, when you start to get into the habit of doing this a lot, you run the risk of embracing that side of things into your overall mentality. Rather than it being ‘this criticism of China is unjustified and here’s why’, it becomes ‘you are on the Western team and so you are wrong because of x’, and can lead to a position where any criticism you accept of China feels like you are losing, even if on an individual level you’d actually agree.
Again, I don’t believe you are doing this deliberately or that you are a ‘China shill’ or anything like that. However, I think you run the risk that if you spend your life trying to refute the Noah Smiths of the world, you can end up treating everyone like a Noah Smith, and so both run the risk of ignoring genuine criticisms you might otherwise agree with, and acting like exactly the ‘China shill’ you are trying to avoid.
Thanks for the reminder. I don't think I am this kind of person yet, and I hope I won't become one.
Thought-provoking post! It's pretty clear that ideas of government and the role of free speech are quite different between China and the West. I have heard it explained to me before by people from China that it is because the conditions of China (huge, impoverished, diverse, etc) make it so that an "authoritarian" or "centralized" government is the only type of government that would allow a prosperous and unified country (e.g., other systems will result in chaos)
Do you believe this to be true? What are the underlying conditions you think make the current system of governance in China the way it is, and as a corollary, what might change in the future conditions that might cause the current Chinese governance system to evolve or even radically change?
"China and Democracy" is part of my master plan, I will finish writing this one day! typing, typing, typing, typing...
The free speech topic is difficult because it unavoidably frames the problem from a Western perspective. This is due to the primacy and axiomatic nature of freedom of speech in the West frame relative to Asian culture.
One potential argument is that Chinese people appreciate and prioritise Confucian ideas and hence freedom of speech is naturally lower in order of importance.
Is this intrinsically bad - if you just landed on this planet and were told these are two different societies who prefer different things? There is no undebatable proof that limits to freedom of speech is inherently bad.
The way it is discussed in Western media is typically full of half truths and attacks that do not pin it down to first principles. ie is the lack of a constitutional freedom of speech somehow creating a dishonest society unable to communicate key ideas?
Let me also point out the trend in the West recently on reversing the freedom of speech - from wokeism (and the reverse such as in Texas) to Australia's movement towards banning objectionable material.
This is a great example of changing prioritisation within a society - at the cost of free speech. If the West accepts these trends, then it must necessarily accept that there are limits that make sense to society depending on priority.
Thank you for pointing out important distinctions within the Chinese narrative that are oblivious to those in the West possessing near-xenophobic ideals of their intellectual supremacy.
The US constitution has capitalism as a defining feature of thr country. Most mainstream news (and people) would demonize one for even quoting Marx or using terminology from his writings, even though many university professors teach it. (I am saying this in that there is self censorship on the US too.)
Please tell me where the word capitalism is found in the Constitution. The Constitution reflects a society where capitalism exists, but it does not mandate it. When the Constitution was written there were small communist societies in the United States including the Shakers and the Ephrata Cloister, The US Constitution accepts any economic system that that citizens choose to embrace.
There is the interstate commerce clause, but commerce has existed in China throughout the existence of the PRC.
I agree that there are *social pressures* that encourage self-censorship in the United States. But you don't have the courage to speak your convictions, maybe you aren't entitled to them.
I spoke too quickly here, but in my defense, it is question 11 of the nationalization test.
Years ago I urged my daughter to apply for the Li Po Chun United World College, even though we both recognized she had almost no chance of getting into the school because of their preferred background. The point being the interviews would lead her into re-thinking/introspection of her goals and how she was structuring her education and life path. While not at the same intensity, this is really good, I'm giving a copy to my daughter (who still lives in Hong Kong). The quality of the questions and the thought behind the answers are useful starting points to anyone living anywhere, and I mean living, not simply going through the motions.
I took my SAT exam at Li Po Chun! Fond memories.
Like I said, two cats is a ingenious move.
Hi Robert, it is wonderful for you to share these pertinent answers with us. It is an excellent post and I hope more people will read what you write, an important bridge to understanding China by the West.
P.S. Glad to know you are a PR in HK too, and I look forward to your voice to help HK government to navigate its complex environments!!
I hope so, one day.