Noah Smith is clueless about China (Part 2) - Will China squander its moment in the sun?

Folks, as promised last time, this is Part 2 of my Noah Smith critique. This time I will specifically comment on his latest article about China, titled Will China squander its moment in the sun?

Two important disclaimers before I start.

First, as some of you have mentioned, Noah may not have a strong influence over policy-making circles. So, is my critique a waste of our time? Yet, subscriber 钟建英 made a comment, which I think was spot on:

Noah Smith may not have any actual policy influence but Western commentators who simply make prejudicial comments about China unfortunately help “manufacture consent” for a future conflict with China.

It’s not a wise men’s world anymore. Policies are not created out of a vacuum, or in some smoke-filled rooms. We can’t pretend to live in a world where a few people alone can decide for the course of history. We live in a world of social media. In marketing terms, it’s called VUCA: volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. This is an age when both the richest man and arguably the most powerful man (-to be?) write their own tweets and talk to their audience directly, while their audience holds collective power to change the course of history. So now it’s imperative to pull up our sleeves and get our hands dirty to openly fight for what we believe in, however distasteful doing it might be.

And I think by now you all know what I ultimately believe in: peace between China and US is possible. At the very least, we shouldn’t lose our peace to stupid miscommunication issues, and we have a collective obligation not to sleepwalk into that dark night.

For this, I will fight, the best I can.

Second disclaimer: since the “100-year ban” Noah put on me, I am also on a personal vendetta now. So I can’t say my writing won’t have this emotional dimension to it. If anything, his “mini-censorship” only manages to create more fire in me. Now I have gained more resolve and will continue writing until any of the three things happen: 1) he evolves to someone I can’t critique; 2) he shuts up on China or 3) he can openly confront me. So, listen to me at your own peril, this stuff is a bit personal now.

With that, I will start today’s critique.

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Summary of Noah’s latest piece

Here is the gist ofNoah Smith’s latest China article on Noahpinion:

China is great, but it could be greater. However, China has slowed down considerably. It seems China will not be greater from now and will go downhill. Why? Because of the command and control economy, especially in Xi’s time.

In other words, the Chinese Communist Party, especially under Xi Jinping, has focused China’s economy on creating more of what they want, instead of creating more of what the Chinese people themselves want. This may be one reason that popular confidence in China’s government is beginning to wane.

In the meantime, truly original, “breakthrough” innovations are also lacking in China because China’s system doesn’t reward innovation well, as copying and/or stealing innovations is a norm. Moreover, China’s artistic and cultural prowess also doesn’t match its rising status. They have minimal influence over the world. The reason for that is the Great Firewall:

Chinese people can’t easily consume foreign media, and the Chinese internet is a walled garden that shuts foreigners out. As a result, China’s vast population remains mostly invisible on the global internet, and there’s little opportunity for Chinese culture to win international mindshare through person-to-person contact. Contrast this with India, which is already transforming global online culture.

To summarize, Noah says:

Whether the domain is the economy, technology, or culture, we see the same pattern again and again. China’s government, especially under Xi Jinping, is obsessed with controlling everything the Chinese people do. This limits the greatness of the Chinese nation, because any nation’s greatness is ultimately generated by the independent and spontaneous efforts of its people.

What’s the point of all of this social control? Noah claimed that "Obviously one purpose is preparation for a potential war with the U.S.”, although he also speculated Xi would not want to start WWIII. (Did I say before that Americans like to talk about WWIII a lot, way more than Chinese do?)

Noah then charged that Chinese rulers

appear to believe that Chinese people are of some inferior breed, who aren’t capable of using individual autonomy to better the nation and the world, and who must therefore be treated like robots.

He went on to take pity on China:

A nation of 1.4 billion such people, if allowed to pursue their own dreams and desires, would be absolutely unstoppable. It would be greater than the U.S. — greater than any country in history, not just in a few respects, but across the board. Instead, China’s leaders are choosing a more cramped and limited path.

What I agree with

As I said last time, Noah’s latest piece has a lot of what I agree with. I will start with these, and I will lay out why he is still wrong at the fundamental level.

#1 Command and control system hurts the economy, science, and culture.

This is very true. And this is indeed a central dilemma for China. How do you hold together a vast country with a centralized system, while also allowing for innovation and free expression, which are essential for a country’s long-term vitality?

This is not the question the pre-modern China would care about, because in that world, boxed in by geography, Chinese people could only see as far as China can reach, which is only this particular pocket of the globe. But in an integrated age with global communication and competition, this is a core question. Whether China can cope with this question is fundamental to China’s future success.

I write a lot about specific ways to create a more open system, touching on topics ranging from business confidence, government disclosure to regulatory changes.

#2….

Okay, this is pretty much all I agree with.

What I disagree with

#1 War-mongering

Whenever Noah has something incomprehensible about China, he will always pull out the “war card”. This time, he also attributes this seemingly incomprehensible level of “command and control” to getting prepared for some kind of war.

“War vs. Peace” is the main theme of my first critique of him, so I am done with this topic. Check it out here.

#2 Command and control is a feature, not a bug of China’s system

Noah sounded as if China’s system is something strange as if China supposedly should have an “open society”, that what the Party, and specifically what Xi’s team designs for the country is an aberration from its natural, pre-ordained path.

This is a big misinterpretation.

Brian Shih, a reader of Noah made a far more insightful comment below the article (emphasis my own):

The general analysis (and I'm not sure if I 100% believe it, but think it's worth sharing) I've heard about the CCP's desire for control is not that the Chinese government thinks "Chinese people are of some inferior breed, who aren’t capable of using individual autonomy to better the nation and the world" but that it results from 5000 years of turbulent history. The idea is that Chinese leaders have studied this history (The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is one of the Four Great Novels of Chinese literature), and know what happens without a strong central government (e.g, the warring states period, the three kingdoms period, multiple dynasties, revolutions, civil war, etc) and so they are extremely sensitive to anything that might lead down that road.

Their critiques of the political chaos in the US is not (only) propaganda intended to rile up their populace. It is also a legitimate fear that those conditions ultimately lead down the path to actual empire-ending chaos because Chinese history is littered with examples of this.

I'm no fan of the CCP (my family is from Taiwan), but I'm sympathetic to this at least being plausible. Just think about the US's history and resulting obsession with / celebration of freedom. Then consider that China has a history >10x longer than the US has existed and what different lessons they might have learned from it. It certainly seems plausible that we are approaching the concept of state and governance from completely different worldviews.

It doesn't make it any less sad, but it does mean the "answer" might look very different.

pourteaux commented on the concept called “the median citizen”, which I also agree with very much:

In China and Russia, the authoritarian system is aligned with the worldview of the median citizen… the victims of state indoctrination and a closed system.

In the USA, the democratic system is aligned with the worldview of the median citizen too, but this citizen has the benefit of free press and an open internet.

Those in China with US-style education and a VPN align with a more liberal worldview.

My point is that you can’t have a genuine discussion about China without grounding your discussion into who the “median citizens” actually are, and Western commentators like Noah far underestimated how well the Party represented the general population.

Put in another way, if the majority of Chinese people do not want the kind of “social control” that Noah talked about, then this “social control” will not be enforceable, no matter how powerful the Party is. They are not as powerful as you think, they are not like some alien overlords that can just dictate their will. After all, as Lord Varys said, “Power resides when man believes it resides.” Power needs people to believe in and requires people to willingly become its instruments. Therefore, the only logical reason for this social control to work is that the median citizens, as of now, actually want it, and call for it.

Let that sink in. It’s an uncomfortable thought. But it’s true. I think this is the defining line that separates those who “get it” about China and those who don’t. (I also used to be someone who didn’t “get it” when I was younger. But that story is for another time.)

Think about one example: the ubiquitous CCTV cameras in China. Is it an intrusion of privacy? Absolutely. But it’s those cameras that made it possible to maintain China’s low crime rate. At a Shanghai coffee house, I can safely leave my phone on the table and go to the toilet without any fear of theft. In any 3-th tier city, I can feel safe walking at night. Are there trade-offs for this level of safety? Absolutely. But it will be an extremely hard sell if you want to persuade China’s “median citizens” to give up this level of safety in exchange for better privacy.

If you wish to see a more vibrant and more open China, it’s the people you want to pay attention to. Talk to them, debate with them, learn about them, and engage with them. But if somehow your wish is to destabilize and even remove the Party without changing the mindsets of the people, in the hope that the people will just miraculously cherish their freedom, you risk creating an even bigger problem. (Remember Iraq?)

#3 Confusing cycles with inevitability, and under-estimating this nation’s potential for continued self-improvement

It is true that under Xi’s leadership, China has become more control-oriented than before. But for me, though, this more “control-oriented” outlook is very understandable. It’s a natural reaction to the deep and structural problems that preceded Xi’s time, the kind of problems people often forget to talk about today.

10 years ago, this country’s main problems can be summarized as the following:

• Out-of-control real estate buildup that was originally responsible for the fastest urbanization movement in history, now threatened to make local finances addicted to land sales and to sap the vital energy of a whole generation.

• Over-dependence on low-end, high-pollution, and high energy-consumption industries.

• Getting old before getting rich: a not-so-wealthy population destined for a dramatic population decrease in the coming decade.

• Rampant corruption at the highest level of government that made people deeply cynical of political leadership (Do you still remember Bo Xilai, whose wife killed a Brit, or Ling Jihua, whose son was killed in a Ferrari?)

In short, at the time China had entered a historical period when not all of the major problems could be simply resolved by sheer economic growth or by more liberal policies (as in 90s or early 2000s). Some kind of rebalancing was on the horizon. In some way, we all had this premonition that those violent delights would meet some violent ends.

And it’s not just Xi who saw this. Had the disgraced Bo Xilai come to power (who back in 2012 was seen as another popular choice for the top job), he would only have made this “authoritarian tilt” even further. He could not even wait to openly campaign for his ultra-leftist “Chongqing Model” when he was merely a non-standing Politburo member. His huge popularity among the regular folks only demonstrated that there was (and still is) a big market for what he sold. In that guy, China’s many structural imbalances got personified into a voice, just like Donald Trump is the voice for America’s structural imbalances.

Bo Xilai enjoying his moment in the sun. Bo represented what China could have been, which may be even more extreme than today

To solve these structural imbalances, it is only natural for China to want to move up the global value chain. But to achieve that, some kind of “authoritarian tilt” is inevitable in order to close the ranks as well as to battle the potential backlash from Western powers.

This intention is materially different from Noah’s assertion that Xi “believes that Chinese people are of some inferior breed”, “who must therefore be treated like robots”, or that Xi is preparing “for a potential war with the U.S.” The real intention, like many Chinese leaders who managed to rise through the ranks, is to, in his own way, make this country a better place. Obviously, making Chinese people more stupid is not going to create a better place. Leading China to war is not going to create a better place.

Now, I know there is a huge ongoing controversy and disagreement about how this whole transformation has been managed so far. And I do think many mistakes have been made. Some of the policies and policy implementations are simply self-defeating. You know I have made many complaints.

Call me naive, but I do not yet doubt about the intentions. (Maybe those good intentions will be corrupted one day, but that’s not today.) It’s all part of this deep Confucian code of conduct and belief system for China’s officials, which I think is a major pillar of the China model. (I briefly talk about this code when commemorating the late Premier Li Keqiang. I will expand on this topic in more detail in the future.)

And, if you look back, China is always shifting between “more control” and “less control”. When there is chaos, there is an urge to unify. When the unification leads to rigidity and even sclerosis, reforms are called for to open up. When freedom causes too much internal imbalance, someone will come up and centralize power. When it in turn becomes too tight, a collective effort will be made to free it up again. And on and on and on.

Sitting in the comfortable chairs of an advanced economy, it is easy for people like Noah Smith to have these easy comments and take pity on China. They don’t realize that China is a process in the making, and that this process has always been marked by ups and downs, and pains, and hard work. The China that could have existed in their fantasies, if true, would be a Utopia. But real people on the ground do not dream of Utopia. We improvise on the spot, with good intentions at heart but mental flexibility to change course according to circumstances.

And, guess where we are now in those cycles?

#4 China has no great contemporary cultural output

It’s really a matter of economic development. 40 years ago, most of the Chinese were dirt-poor. Almost every one of my parent’s generation had memories of sustained hunger. My father was a lucky college graduate and he had to borrow food ration stamps from classmates because his ration was too little. I would be surprised if that generation was able to produce a great amount of cultural influence on the world.

But don’t underestimate China’s youth today. We are only just beginning.

It also depends on whether you pay attention to it. Incidentally, Amber of our Baiguan team just launched a personal newsletter Amber Sealed, where she would review arts and creative products mostly in China (but not limited to China). She will write a series of articles on her recent trip to Jingdezhen, China’s “china” capital.

I hope small acts like these may be a starting point for you.