Kudos for you very smart and thought-provoking essay! I have a quibble though: In my view, freedom of thought and speech is of a different quality than all other values. Without freedom of thought, progress becomes impossible, and eternal stagnation is the consequence.
Imagine two countries, one a well and rationally organized place without free speech, and the other racked by inequality and bigotry, but enjoying free speech. Which one will be better after a hundred years? Or in other words, why did the industrial revolution happen first in England and Holland, but not in France?
I believe, the obsession with "unification of thought" played a part in the decline of old China, and is having a pernicious effect on today's China.
Of course that means that people like you are destined to play an ever more important role: Chinese people loving and understanding their country, but having the freedom to develop new ideas and hopefully (eventually) helping their country to escape from the "stability" aka stagnation imposed by Mr. Xi and his friends. A bit like the Chinese revolutionaries in Japan during the late Qing... Good luck and regards!
France was hardly free of inequality and bigotry in early modern centuries, though. I'm inclined still to think that freedom of speech is one of the more potentially destabilizing rights, and one that a society needs longest to acclimate to and remain relatively stable. It certainly is among the most important, but my whole point is that it's been absent in Chinese states arguably at least since mid-Tang, and to introduce it now, suddenly, given the fact that all Chinese now have a device capable of incredibly powerful amplification of speech, and the fact that there are so many Chinese, the Party probably sees the potential for catastrophic destabilization and wants to be gradual about what it lets go of. I wouldn't hesitate to say that it hasn't been loosening its grip nearly fast enough in the last decade: in fact, it's very much tighter than it was. But I wouldn't argue for a total, sudden release.
Thanks Kaiser for your reply! I understand your point and, indeed, nobody wants a return to the anarchy of the early 20th century. But my concern is that without free speech all progress is blocked, as even the mere proposing of reforms is prohibited. Free speech may carry some risks; but the absence of free speech brings not just the risk but absolute certainty of stagnation. It's quite possible to imagine a prosperous country without democratic elections or freedom of association; but a country without free speech remains second-rate forever. Foreigners shouldn't take that as a pretext to sit in (hypocritical) moral judgment; but Chinese people do deserve better. Anyway I hope you will be able to continue publishing your essays freely! With best regards
To add to Kaiser's reply, freedom of speech, specifically the freedom to express one's idea socially without state persecution, have many different manifestations and legal interpretations. One such interpretation is that it allows for political actors to speak in bad faith, and manipulate popular perception for one's own political gain, provided that this is done in the name of idea competition. This form of pluralism is "destabilizing," because it has a tendency to weaken some democratic institutions on which a modern democratic state relies on to be effective. For example, in the US, our trust in elected officials is a narrative rooted, in part, on the security of the elective process and the population's universal commitment to fair elections; if we assail this narrative, we weaken the system's legitimacy and decrease our affinity for the rule of law, alla Fukuyama. I tend to agree that these destabilizing forces pose a serious threat to governments, even those that exercise great beneficence.
There are other facets of the freedom of speech and thought centering around civil protests and non-interference of state apparatus on civil and scholastic discourses. These tend to be stabilizing forces: as they strengthen the population's willingness to use voice (over exit, to borrow Hirschman's terminology), promotes trust, and encourages the expression of ideas for incremental improvements over social disruption. However, even in this scenario, there are winners and losers, and the losers can sometimes be political elites, whose legitimacy can be severely challenged if the narratives turn from specific grievance to governmental misconduct. In this way, the Chinese ruling party mistrusts its own population and perpetuates the idea that greater speech freedom -- in all forms -- equals greater political instability. I do not share this view.
The other point of yours that I want to push back on is the notion that "unification of thought" leads to "pernicious effect on today's China" and that it tends to lead to stagnation and lack of progress.
First, "unification of thought" is too simplistic of a characterization of Chinese political milieu. I find Jin Keyu's descriptions in "A New China Playbook" to be much more accurate, albeit gives the society and government a tinge more credit than I would. (I would be more critical about, for example, the treatment of journalists in China and politicization of HKU.) However, even critical, there is a dedication from many people throughout society -- sometimes within party cadres -- to pluralism and honesty, in part because there are a billion people who have internalized stories about ministers and intelligentsia throughout Chinese history who have given their lives, speaking truth to power, and one doesn't simply overcome these calls of morality through the corruptive forces of power or fear. Examples include provincial and university staff who suffered various degrees of political persecution for pushing against politicization of certain Chinese curriculum. These are not singular examples, and exist at a massive scale throughout Chinese society.
The "pernicious effects on China" -- no doubt there's plenty of that happening. You can look at the internment camps in Xinjiang to know how domestic security viewed through the lens of thought engineering can play out viciously, cruelly and relentlessly. However, there is tremendous progress, in part because the Chinese is not dedicated to uniformity of thought; neither the government nor its people seek out uniformity as an end in of itself.
Kaiser's essay pitches two snapshots of Chinese societies: one in 1970s and one in 2024. Even factoring in the regression during the Xi tenure, you see legal and political reforms in both commercial and societal spaces that can positively be thought of as heretic in the 1970s. For example, private enterprises now employ as many people as they deem necessary versus no legitimate wholly private enterprises in the 1970s; Weibo is a messy metropolis of censored Chinese brain-dump -- lie flat, white paper holders of the world unite! -- versus the red guards of the 1970s who patrolled newspaper articles at every level for any "rightist tendencies" and punished those -- including my grandfather -- for any counterrevolutionist thinking. One cannot say this is not progress. I think it is worth asking how and why did this change happen and how to encourage more of it; it is also worth noting that caricatures of the authoritarian regimes -- in this case, the Chinese one -- have made it harder for people in the US to perceive the sliding scale of democratization and adoption of human rights.
The last thing to note is your two countries comment: "one a well and rationally organized place without free speech, and the other racked by inequality and bigotry." You use this example to illustrate the importance of Freedom of Speech for an individual but also its role in fostering innovation and technological advancement: "why did the industrial revolution happen first in England and Holland, but not in France?"
I respond with the following parody of your question -- pardon my glibness. Which firm would you rather work in: a well-run, meritocratic organization that puts emphasis on work ethics and consistency in its focus on the firm's strategic values, or one that is disorganized, highly political, and each stakeholder -- from management to individual contributor -- is free to reinterpret the firm's organizing agenda? In other words, why did AWS succeed in capturing the market with its cloud offering, but the Google Cloud is so much of a dud?
I hope my parody highlights the false dichotomy without the charge of politics. China isn't just a "rationally organized place without free speech" and the US isn't just an unequal place with it. Even if they seem to be on the surface, there is still the penchant from its citizens to exercise their agency to address issues such as inequality, racism, the lack of a sense of social and economic safety, and, yes, freedom of thought and expression. It is just as much about the mechanisms -- at the local and national level -- as it is about the social and political realities here and now. It is about the perception of responsiveness of the government to the "right" priorities. It is about the clarity and obstacles in one's own economic mobility. It is about the perception that the bad people are punished and the deserving ones are rewarded. Kaiser alluded to this, and I will go further to say to recall my first two paragraphs that these good environments are often fostered by freedom of thought and speech; they can also be hampered, just the same.
Just like the narratives regarding company culture shouldn't only be about their corporate structures and whether they focus on freedom of interpretation of firm's organizing principles in deciding whether or not you want to work there. It is also about an employee's sense of agency and how they are rewarded (or punished) for exercising that agency. In the corporate world, it is also about the viability of the firm's strategy; it is also about luck.
In this way, the average Chinese on the ground in Beijing may feel a greater sense of "freedom" than their American counterpart in New York or San Francisco, a fact that is often lost to folks looking at China from the outside.
Wow and Double Wow. This essay clearly reflects the fact that you have thought very deeply about Daly’s initial question. I like your reference to the U.S. Constitution and cultural diversity and religious diversity. During our recent lunch, I mentioned the American penchant to simplify good vs evil. This is best embodied in the cowboy movies we watched as kids: bad guys wore black hats and the good guys wore white hats. No gray hats! Many of our political leaders have used this simplistic model in their characterization of post-1949 China as the black hats — manifested in the many many evil deeds practiced by the CCP leadership. Bottom line is that after reading your essay, I am more convinced than ever that we need a much more nuanced approach towards China. The “us versus them” framework is inadequate to capture the numerous complexities that distinguish our two countries from one another. Our behavior has exacerbated levels of xenophobia in China that we have rarely seen in the post-Mao era. I commend you for taking the time to reveal how unfortunate it is that few of our current and even past leaders have taken the time to reflect more deeply on why the bilateral relationship has soured. The desire for easy answers has not proven very helpful if avoidance of conflict is truly our ultimate goal. Keep on thinking more and writing more about these important issues. Your effort is not wasted…. the broad array of U.S. Sinologists need to read your essay as do our policymakers dealing with Chinese affairs. My hope is not to get everyone to agree with you, but rather to get more people to move away from the simplistic notion that the PRC leadership can do nothing good.
Great essay, Kaiser. I particularly enjoyed your citing of a variety of thinkers on the subject, some of whom I was not very familiar with. You did your homework.
But here’s what I’m often left with when you discuss America, China and the contrast in political cultures/values/progress - it’s the people of Taiwan (not to mention the people of South Korea who also share your pull of “gravity” from the past) plaintively asking you (and Mr. Fu, too):
You're right, I didn't mention Taiwan (or South Korea, or Japan, or other polities in the region that might have had similar gravitational pull or been subject to the same inertia). This would have required a very long digression and opened a whole can of worms about the operation of historical gravity and why some polities seem able to break free of it with relative ease. I've actually put quite a bit of thought into that and might address it in another essay (actually I have, in Taiwan's case, in a bit of an aside in one of my very early essays this year, about Taiwan's election: https://www.sinicapodcast.com/p/taiwans-democratic-election-and-chinas).
I use gravity as a metaphor in part because the total gravitational force is proportional to mass, which is analogous here to population. That's certainly part of it: It's easier by far for 23 million people than for 1.4 billion. Add to that the long, welcome gravitational influence of Taiwan's benefactor, the U.S. Recall that in my essay I talked about how engagement changes a place, allowing as it does another powerful polity to exert its own gravitational pull? Well clearly the U.S. influence has been far greater in Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan since the end of the War in those polities than in the Chinese mainland. Let's add in the infrastructure that was put in place during Japan's 50-year occupation of Taiwan, the relatively high median education level of the 49ers and the wealth they brought with them (including the entire hard currency reserve of the whole of China) and surely you agree that there were very different circumstances.
I certainly agree that the circumstances in Taiwan, SK and Japan have been different. Hugely different. But they’re quite relevant as well. Because they show us that the weight of 2,000 years of history is by no means determinative of how a nation (or part of a nation) can choose to organize themselves politically *today*.
In 1978 and 1979, while I was studying in Taipei, i got to know some dangwai activists, whom I greatly admired for their bravery, and I remember that one of their explicit demands was for something called duoyuanhua - pluralism. At the time, I don’t even think I had any more than a fuzzy idea of what that meant. But I thought of that while I was reading your essay.
Yes, Kaiser, I agree that some kind of pluralism is called for in our international order. But the point those brave activists were making 45 years ago - and really, was it that much different from Sun Yat-Sen’s demands made another 50 years before that? - was that China itself could and should become a pluralistic society. A China that allows for a diversity of thought on how to move the country forward. A China that no longer operated in the top-down, “my way or the highway” manner of the imperial past.
Indeed, a truly pluralistic China is possible, and I believe, necessary for the Chinese people - or any people - to reach their full potential, just as a pluralistic international order is probably the best possible way for the world to develop as a whole - certainly better than a hegemon ruling a uni-polar world, even if it happens to be the US in that role, haha.
Ironically, it seems the rulers of China have never stopped making a big deal about “hegemony” and how awful it is. Yet what is the CCP if not the hegemon of the Chinese political world?
Is China more pluralistic in important ways than it was under Mao? Absolutely. But is it more pluralistic than it was when Xi Jinping took power? I don’t think so. In that respect, it’s going in the wrong direction, politically and culturally, and that should worry all of us who care about China and its people.
But maybe there’s a new generation of “dangwai” activists demanding duoyuanhua on the mainland. I bet there are. And maybe we should support them.
In Taiwan, against all odds, the old generation of dangwai activists who demanded pluralism eventually achieved their goals. Who’s to say it can’t happen in China?
And that’s why I think Taiwan should cross your mind - a bit more often!
Part of the reason that China isn't as pluralistic under Xi is that the leadership feels, with good reason, like it's been in the crosshairs. Read that excellent piece by Mike Lampton and Tom Fingar in the Washington Quarterly from last year, about the two modes that China swings between. Less repressive domestic politics always pairs with less assertive foreign policy, while repression always pairs with a national security focus and more belligerent foreign policy. As they correctly note, one big driver that moves China in the bad direction is U.S. policy, or perception thereof. The perception of external threat — the sense that the U.S. and its allies regard the PRC's government as illegitimate, that they're pushing for regime change, that (especially in recent years) there's an intent to contain China and starve it of key tech inputs — is a big driver of that closing-down of pluralism. The more that "all of us who care about China and its people" engage in high-handed moralizing, lavish affection on Taiwan and encourage, overtly or tacitly, de jure independence, the worse things get. Less is more, when it comes to China. Much of the reason we enjoyed that period from late 2001 to about 2008 of untroubled US-China relations and relatively liberal domestic policy was that the U.S. was distracted and couldn't be bothered with China. Really — less is more. We should try that.
I’m very much in favor of improving relations with China, and the Xi-Biden Summit has certainly helped in that regard. Just the simple optics of the meeting and the subsequent panda diplomacy helped. All good.
What I’m not in favor of is blaming perceived US threats to China’s security for what happens domestically in China. I haven’t read Lampton and Fingar’s article, but I really doubt they would argue that US foreign policy had much, if anything, to do with, for example, Xi doing away with presidential term limits in 2018, or deciding to put people in camps in Xinjiang.
Regarding the two term limit - would it be rude to suggest that the awful megalomania that China endured during the Mao years, and which led directly to Deng’s call for term limits, has come back now in the Xi years, and has led to those very same term limits being thrown out? A single man’s quest for absolute authority - a story old as time - seems to me to be the “big factor” in why Xi took this radical step - backwards.
And I sincerely doubt “high-handed moralizing” and lavish praise for Taiwan from people like me had anything to do with it. Actually, I’m sure it didn’t. No way am I going to be ludicrously “guilt-tripped” for somehow contributing to Xi’s repression by simply speaking the truth as I see it. When it comes to the truth, less is not more.
I have a more simplistic way of looking at this. Since my limited knowledge of the PRC is third hand at best, I'll stick to US politics. I seek cognitive empathy especially for those Americans who hold the most loathsome political views, but my sympathies are reserved for those with the least power and security in our society. Naturally, I dislike most those with wealth and power who prey on those with the least. Likewise, my deepest antipathy to the US political system is the favoring of those with the most over those with the least.
That’s the way everywhere, though. People get power and then use that power to get more. That power comes from taking power from others.
People often criticize foreign political systems to promote their own. That’s the purpose of statecraft. It’s certainly annoying as an American to see my government claim superiority with (sometimes) empty words that it could establish far more forcefully with progressive action at home. Still, think of it as a marketing exercise to promote American interests.
As an aside, the outrage in America when PRC MoFA spokespeople are critical of the US is surprising, given that America is the land of insult comics, trash talking, and playing the dozens. You’d think we’d be ready for this.
Haha, that's brilliant — your last paragraph. Yes! You'd think we'd be ready for it. Still, our skin's thicker than that of the Chinese, whose feelings as the MoFA spox will still sometimes remind us are still often hurt. I love your idea of cognitive empathy for the Trumpers but sympathy for the downtrodden and insecure. Great framing!
I read this a month ago, intended to reply, and then put it aside, and perhaps it's been "discussed out." But I think there might be more to say, and if not no one will be hurt by it. Much of the commentary has strayed from Daly's original question of why an American might apply a "double standard" to the actions of the US government and politicians and those of the Chinese government (given that the PRC doesn't really have "politicians" in the sense that they exist in electoral democracies). So I'd like to get back to this question, thinking about why I, as a person of very different social positioning than Kaiser, have the same kind of double standard as he has discussed in this quite wonderful essay.
I think at one level, which others have not addressed, this double standard has emotional roots, and rightly so. I may speak excellent Chinese and I may have done teeny, tiny things to influence a few hundred people in China, but I am, for better or worse (some of each) an American. So it hurts more when American politicians and officials do things that violate my own ethical standards or visions. As much as the camps in Xinjiang have offended me, if Trump wins and establishes camps for "illegals," it will offend me a lot more. Kaiser, I'm not sure to what extent your family's origin in China (as opposed to mine, in England and Germany centuries ago) might shrink this emotional difference for you as compared to for me. But certainly, when I read of things that offend the universalist side of me in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia or Myanmar, none of which I have ever visited or read much about, they strike even less of a chord in me than do equally or less atrocious actions in Xinjiang. So there is a scale of emotional outrage that is probably unavoidable for all of us non-saints.
In this connection, I remember what I called my "Michelle Obama moment." I was in DC in spring 2008, after she had made the comment that "for the first time in my life, I'm proud of my country." I don't even remember anymore why she said this, but she was roundly slammed by American "patriots." Anyway, I had a free evening, and got tickets to the Capital Steps, whom I'd enjoyed on recordings for years. The W impersonator was bitingly good and funny, and the Bill Clinton impersonator was even more irreverent and better. I was watching them less than half a kilometer from the White House. I was thinking of what would happen to a gifted Chinese satirist who did comparable imitations of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao somewhere less than a kilometer from Zhongnanhai. I was proud that I lived in a country where this kind of vicious satire was possible. But living in such a country for (then) 60+ years had given me a lower threshold for outrage when this standard was violated.
A second level concerns what US politicians say about China. Their absolutist pronouncements, in addition to being hypocritical, are simply wrong, and I feel a (minor) duty to speak out against them. Another anecdote from everyday life: last year I was sitting with some hiking buddies at a local state park, chewing the political fat, and one of them, a very intelligent environmentalist building contractor, wondered if in "an authoritarian country" we could be having a similar discussion. "Sure," I said, "I've had hundreds of such discussions in China." I never went to China until after the Cultural Revolution was over, but I read of such discussions even then, if people were careful enough (and sometimes, alas, when they weren't careful enough). At the same time, we know that a lot of speech here, while free in the sense that we can't be jailed for it, has negative consequences. That's probably as it should be, but what about Michelle Obama's comment, which seemed briefly to pose a danger to Barack's candidacy? And the same can be said of the inverse: witness Bernie Sanders's absolutely accurate statement of fact that China had brought hundreds of millions out of poverty. So it seems to me that a moderate position such as Kaiser takes in the essay--somewhere between relativism and absolutism--is the only sincere position I can take.
Finally, there's the question of evolution toward a democratic order, which seems to be an article of faith for American progressives/liberals. I was confident, 15 years ago, that China would liberalize at the next-after-next "peaceful transfer of power" (sorry, couldn't resist that) which I expected to happen in 2022. By that time, most of the leadership generation would have either been educated in democratic countries or at least heavily influenced by those who were. Also there was the precedent of Taiwan, which others have mentioned. Whoops.
Kaiser, I'm going to have to push back - I see several MAJOR holes in your argument and evidence. Not the overarching one of structuring a relativistic framework that is working toward a universalist one, but several of your examples. 1) "Intelligent white Americans would, I would hope, never turn to Black Americans today and say, "Slavery ended in 1865. Get over it!" " - ahem, Colin Kaepernick. Or, you are saying white American football fans are not intelligent. 2) Robert Daly needs to come clean about his background - ALL of it - just as you do for yourself. I'm not interested in another white male engaging in what-aboutism-over-China when he hasn't owned his own house. Where is he from? Where does his family wealth come from? What has been his own work in his own society to rectify issues of inequality and inequity? Is he as self-aware regarding his place in his own society as you are? If not, then I'll be glad to see him out to pasture like the rest of the U.S. Foreign Policy "elite" who have brought us nonsensical comparative frameworks claiming pure objectivity and violent, excessive, unnecessary wars. 3) The next generation of global citizen analysts - I hope you're raising them and I certainly am raising one - Gen Z know that they do not have the luxury of time. Climate change is here and it is coming for their future. Even if they don't have the power to stop the inequitable battles over power/resources and consequences for those less powerful, at least they are willing to call a spade a spade. Is the Relativist framework real? Is the Universalist one real? Says who? And under the guises of what kind of power? I think they would argue - and I am doing so here - that you fell for it. You got suckered. You're so busy being on the defensive that you've become an apologist for... for whom? Hard to say. 4) Back to #1, why is it about cutting Black America slack in the way you've phrased it? Really, it's about excusing White America for its wealth generation from Violent Slavery and then all they've done to cover it up. As long as they keep going on what-aboutism wrt Black America's struggles, then who is looking at them as they run off with all the land, generational wealth and privileges/entitlements that come with that? You're not seeing America with a clear view - as, no doubt, any "intelligent Chinese person" who has read American History and observed American sociological patterns would be able to perceive. Using the same lenses that any "intelligent American person" would use to observe and remark upon Chinese society, then one can easily see that it is White America we need to put under the microscope and figure out how to deal with Universalist or Relativist frameworks for improvement. 5) I agree with you that we already have relativist frameworks in place for foreign policy that are supposed to be operating in some kind of universalist direction - prime example - Israel. Israel always gets excuse after excuse. They can break international law and U.S. laws, committing mass murder, orchestrating real estate auctions of stolen land, with the U.S. Foreign Policy establishment endlessly saying that they are "working toward" getting Palestinians a state... Do we really want more of this kind of thing in the world? I think your friend Richard Daly needs to answer these questions. Neither one of you should be having a discussion about Relativism or Universalism without laying out a proper, truly global comparative discourse as foundational ground rules. Kaiser, I say this with all due respect. You are amazing, wonderful, and I love all that you do. But none of us are getting any younger and the world is on fire.
Kudos for you very smart and thought-provoking essay! I have a quibble though: In my view, freedom of thought and speech is of a different quality than all other values. Without freedom of thought, progress becomes impossible, and eternal stagnation is the consequence.
Imagine two countries, one a well and rationally organized place without free speech, and the other racked by inequality and bigotry, but enjoying free speech. Which one will be better after a hundred years? Or in other words, why did the industrial revolution happen first in England and Holland, but not in France?
I believe, the obsession with "unification of thought" played a part in the decline of old China, and is having a pernicious effect on today's China.
Of course that means that people like you are destined to play an ever more important role: Chinese people loving and understanding their country, but having the freedom to develop new ideas and hopefully (eventually) helping their country to escape from the "stability" aka stagnation imposed by Mr. Xi and his friends. A bit like the Chinese revolutionaries in Japan during the late Qing... Good luck and regards!
France was hardly free of inequality and bigotry in early modern centuries, though. I'm inclined still to think that freedom of speech is one of the more potentially destabilizing rights, and one that a society needs longest to acclimate to and remain relatively stable. It certainly is among the most important, but my whole point is that it's been absent in Chinese states arguably at least since mid-Tang, and to introduce it now, suddenly, given the fact that all Chinese now have a device capable of incredibly powerful amplification of speech, and the fact that there are so many Chinese, the Party probably sees the potential for catastrophic destabilization and wants to be gradual about what it lets go of. I wouldn't hesitate to say that it hasn't been loosening its grip nearly fast enough in the last decade: in fact, it's very much tighter than it was. But I wouldn't argue for a total, sudden release.
Thanks Kaiser for your reply! I understand your point and, indeed, nobody wants a return to the anarchy of the early 20th century. But my concern is that without free speech all progress is blocked, as even the mere proposing of reforms is prohibited. Free speech may carry some risks; but the absence of free speech brings not just the risk but absolute certainty of stagnation. It's quite possible to imagine a prosperous country without democratic elections or freedom of association; but a country without free speech remains second-rate forever. Foreigners shouldn't take that as a pretext to sit in (hypocritical) moral judgment; but Chinese people do deserve better. Anyway I hope you will be able to continue publishing your essays freely! With best regards
To add to Kaiser's reply, freedom of speech, specifically the freedom to express one's idea socially without state persecution, have many different manifestations and legal interpretations. One such interpretation is that it allows for political actors to speak in bad faith, and manipulate popular perception for one's own political gain, provided that this is done in the name of idea competition. This form of pluralism is "destabilizing," because it has a tendency to weaken some democratic institutions on which a modern democratic state relies on to be effective. For example, in the US, our trust in elected officials is a narrative rooted, in part, on the security of the elective process and the population's universal commitment to fair elections; if we assail this narrative, we weaken the system's legitimacy and decrease our affinity for the rule of law, alla Fukuyama. I tend to agree that these destabilizing forces pose a serious threat to governments, even those that exercise great beneficence.
There are other facets of the freedom of speech and thought centering around civil protests and non-interference of state apparatus on civil and scholastic discourses. These tend to be stabilizing forces: as they strengthen the population's willingness to use voice (over exit, to borrow Hirschman's terminology), promotes trust, and encourages the expression of ideas for incremental improvements over social disruption. However, even in this scenario, there are winners and losers, and the losers can sometimes be political elites, whose legitimacy can be severely challenged if the narratives turn from specific grievance to governmental misconduct. In this way, the Chinese ruling party mistrusts its own population and perpetuates the idea that greater speech freedom -- in all forms -- equals greater political instability. I do not share this view.
The other point of yours that I want to push back on is the notion that "unification of thought" leads to "pernicious effect on today's China" and that it tends to lead to stagnation and lack of progress.
First, "unification of thought" is too simplistic of a characterization of Chinese political milieu. I find Jin Keyu's descriptions in "A New China Playbook" to be much more accurate, albeit gives the society and government a tinge more credit than I would. (I would be more critical about, for example, the treatment of journalists in China and politicization of HKU.) However, even critical, there is a dedication from many people throughout society -- sometimes within party cadres -- to pluralism and honesty, in part because there are a billion people who have internalized stories about ministers and intelligentsia throughout Chinese history who have given their lives, speaking truth to power, and one doesn't simply overcome these calls of morality through the corruptive forces of power or fear. Examples include provincial and university staff who suffered various degrees of political persecution for pushing against politicization of certain Chinese curriculum. These are not singular examples, and exist at a massive scale throughout Chinese society.
The "pernicious effects on China" -- no doubt there's plenty of that happening. You can look at the internment camps in Xinjiang to know how domestic security viewed through the lens of thought engineering can play out viciously, cruelly and relentlessly. However, there is tremendous progress, in part because the Chinese is not dedicated to uniformity of thought; neither the government nor its people seek out uniformity as an end in of itself.
Kaiser's essay pitches two snapshots of Chinese societies: one in 1970s and one in 2024. Even factoring in the regression during the Xi tenure, you see legal and political reforms in both commercial and societal spaces that can positively be thought of as heretic in the 1970s. For example, private enterprises now employ as many people as they deem necessary versus no legitimate wholly private enterprises in the 1970s; Weibo is a messy metropolis of censored Chinese brain-dump -- lie flat, white paper holders of the world unite! -- versus the red guards of the 1970s who patrolled newspaper articles at every level for any "rightist tendencies" and punished those -- including my grandfather -- for any counterrevolutionist thinking. One cannot say this is not progress. I think it is worth asking how and why did this change happen and how to encourage more of it; it is also worth noting that caricatures of the authoritarian regimes -- in this case, the Chinese one -- have made it harder for people in the US to perceive the sliding scale of democratization and adoption of human rights.
The last thing to note is your two countries comment: "one a well and rationally organized place without free speech, and the other racked by inequality and bigotry." You use this example to illustrate the importance of Freedom of Speech for an individual but also its role in fostering innovation and technological advancement: "why did the industrial revolution happen first in England and Holland, but not in France?"
I respond with the following parody of your question -- pardon my glibness. Which firm would you rather work in: a well-run, meritocratic organization that puts emphasis on work ethics and consistency in its focus on the firm's strategic values, or one that is disorganized, highly political, and each stakeholder -- from management to individual contributor -- is free to reinterpret the firm's organizing agenda? In other words, why did AWS succeed in capturing the market with its cloud offering, but the Google Cloud is so much of a dud?
I hope my parody highlights the false dichotomy without the charge of politics. China isn't just a "rationally organized place without free speech" and the US isn't just an unequal place with it. Even if they seem to be on the surface, there is still the penchant from its citizens to exercise their agency to address issues such as inequality, racism, the lack of a sense of social and economic safety, and, yes, freedom of thought and expression. It is just as much about the mechanisms -- at the local and national level -- as it is about the social and political realities here and now. It is about the perception of responsiveness of the government to the "right" priorities. It is about the clarity and obstacles in one's own economic mobility. It is about the perception that the bad people are punished and the deserving ones are rewarded. Kaiser alluded to this, and I will go further to say to recall my first two paragraphs that these good environments are often fostered by freedom of thought and speech; they can also be hampered, just the same.
Just like the narratives regarding company culture shouldn't only be about their corporate structures and whether they focus on freedom of interpretation of firm's organizing principles in deciding whether or not you want to work there. It is also about an employee's sense of agency and how they are rewarded (or punished) for exercising that agency. In the corporate world, it is also about the viability of the firm's strategy; it is also about luck.
In this way, the average Chinese on the ground in Beijing may feel a greater sense of "freedom" than their American counterpart in New York or San Francisco, a fact that is often lost to folks looking at China from the outside.
Wow and Double Wow. This essay clearly reflects the fact that you have thought very deeply about Daly’s initial question. I like your reference to the U.S. Constitution and cultural diversity and religious diversity. During our recent lunch, I mentioned the American penchant to simplify good vs evil. This is best embodied in the cowboy movies we watched as kids: bad guys wore black hats and the good guys wore white hats. No gray hats! Many of our political leaders have used this simplistic model in their characterization of post-1949 China as the black hats — manifested in the many many evil deeds practiced by the CCP leadership. Bottom line is that after reading your essay, I am more convinced than ever that we need a much more nuanced approach towards China. The “us versus them” framework is inadequate to capture the numerous complexities that distinguish our two countries from one another. Our behavior has exacerbated levels of xenophobia in China that we have rarely seen in the post-Mao era. I commend you for taking the time to reveal how unfortunate it is that few of our current and even past leaders have taken the time to reflect more deeply on why the bilateral relationship has soured. The desire for easy answers has not proven very helpful if avoidance of conflict is truly our ultimate goal. Keep on thinking more and writing more about these important issues. Your effort is not wasted…. the broad array of U.S. Sinologists need to read your essay as do our policymakers dealing with Chinese affairs. My hope is not to get everyone to agree with you, but rather to get more people to move away from the simplistic notion that the PRC leadership can do nothing good.
Great essay, Kaiser. I particularly enjoyed your citing of a variety of thinkers on the subject, some of whom I was not very familiar with. You did your homework.
But here’s what I’m often left with when you discuss America, China and the contrast in political cultures/values/progress - it’s the people of Taiwan (not to mention the people of South Korea who also share your pull of “gravity” from the past) plaintively asking you (and Mr. Fu, too):
“Do I ever cross your mind?”
https://youtu.be/4hu0gulrcyE?si=f-97WFC__3yGhXrw
You're right, I didn't mention Taiwan (or South Korea, or Japan, or other polities in the region that might have had similar gravitational pull or been subject to the same inertia). This would have required a very long digression and opened a whole can of worms about the operation of historical gravity and why some polities seem able to break free of it with relative ease. I've actually put quite a bit of thought into that and might address it in another essay (actually I have, in Taiwan's case, in a bit of an aside in one of my very early essays this year, about Taiwan's election: https://www.sinicapodcast.com/p/taiwans-democratic-election-and-chinas).
I use gravity as a metaphor in part because the total gravitational force is proportional to mass, which is analogous here to population. That's certainly part of it: It's easier by far for 23 million people than for 1.4 billion. Add to that the long, welcome gravitational influence of Taiwan's benefactor, the U.S. Recall that in my essay I talked about how engagement changes a place, allowing as it does another powerful polity to exert its own gravitational pull? Well clearly the U.S. influence has been far greater in Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan since the end of the War in those polities than in the Chinese mainland. Let's add in the infrastructure that was put in place during Japan's 50-year occupation of Taiwan, the relatively high median education level of the 49ers and the wealth they brought with them (including the entire hard currency reserve of the whole of China) and surely you agree that there were very different circumstances.
I certainly agree that the circumstances in Taiwan, SK and Japan have been different. Hugely different. But they’re quite relevant as well. Because they show us that the weight of 2,000 years of history is by no means determinative of how a nation (or part of a nation) can choose to organize themselves politically *today*.
In 1978 and 1979, while I was studying in Taipei, i got to know some dangwai activists, whom I greatly admired for their bravery, and I remember that one of their explicit demands was for something called duoyuanhua - pluralism. At the time, I don’t even think I had any more than a fuzzy idea of what that meant. But I thought of that while I was reading your essay.
Yes, Kaiser, I agree that some kind of pluralism is called for in our international order. But the point those brave activists were making 45 years ago - and really, was it that much different from Sun Yat-Sen’s demands made another 50 years before that? - was that China itself could and should become a pluralistic society. A China that allows for a diversity of thought on how to move the country forward. A China that no longer operated in the top-down, “my way or the highway” manner of the imperial past.
Indeed, a truly pluralistic China is possible, and I believe, necessary for the Chinese people - or any people - to reach their full potential, just as a pluralistic international order is probably the best possible way for the world to develop as a whole - certainly better than a hegemon ruling a uni-polar world, even if it happens to be the US in that role, haha.
Ironically, it seems the rulers of China have never stopped making a big deal about “hegemony” and how awful it is. Yet what is the CCP if not the hegemon of the Chinese political world?
Is China more pluralistic in important ways than it was under Mao? Absolutely. But is it more pluralistic than it was when Xi Jinping took power? I don’t think so. In that respect, it’s going in the wrong direction, politically and culturally, and that should worry all of us who care about China and its people.
But maybe there’s a new generation of “dangwai” activists demanding duoyuanhua on the mainland. I bet there are. And maybe we should support them.
In Taiwan, against all odds, the old generation of dangwai activists who demanded pluralism eventually achieved their goals. Who’s to say it can’t happen in China?
And that’s why I think Taiwan should cross your mind - a bit more often!
Part of the reason that China isn't as pluralistic under Xi is that the leadership feels, with good reason, like it's been in the crosshairs. Read that excellent piece by Mike Lampton and Tom Fingar in the Washington Quarterly from last year, about the two modes that China swings between. Less repressive domestic politics always pairs with less assertive foreign policy, while repression always pairs with a national security focus and more belligerent foreign policy. As they correctly note, one big driver that moves China in the bad direction is U.S. policy, or perception thereof. The perception of external threat — the sense that the U.S. and its allies regard the PRC's government as illegitimate, that they're pushing for regime change, that (especially in recent years) there's an intent to contain China and starve it of key tech inputs — is a big driver of that closing-down of pluralism. The more that "all of us who care about China and its people" engage in high-handed moralizing, lavish affection on Taiwan and encourage, overtly or tacitly, de jure independence, the worse things get. Less is more, when it comes to China. Much of the reason we enjoyed that period from late 2001 to about 2008 of untroubled US-China relations and relatively liberal domestic policy was that the U.S. was distracted and couldn't be bothered with China. Really — less is more. We should try that.
I’m very much in favor of improving relations with China, and the Xi-Biden Summit has certainly helped in that regard. Just the simple optics of the meeting and the subsequent panda diplomacy helped. All good.
What I’m not in favor of is blaming perceived US threats to China’s security for what happens domestically in China. I haven’t read Lampton and Fingar’s article, but I really doubt they would argue that US foreign policy had much, if anything, to do with, for example, Xi doing away with presidential term limits in 2018, or deciding to put people in camps in Xinjiang.
Regarding the two term limit - would it be rude to suggest that the awful megalomania that China endured during the Mao years, and which led directly to Deng’s call for term limits, has come back now in the Xi years, and has led to those very same term limits being thrown out? A single man’s quest for absolute authority - a story old as time - seems to me to be the “big factor” in why Xi took this radical step - backwards.
And I sincerely doubt “high-handed moralizing” and lavish praise for Taiwan from people like me had anything to do with it. Actually, I’m sure it didn’t. No way am I going to be ludicrously “guilt-tripped” for somehow contributing to Xi’s repression by simply speaking the truth as I see it. When it comes to the truth, less is not more.
I have a more simplistic way of looking at this. Since my limited knowledge of the PRC is third hand at best, I'll stick to US politics. I seek cognitive empathy especially for those Americans who hold the most loathsome political views, but my sympathies are reserved for those with the least power and security in our society. Naturally, I dislike most those with wealth and power who prey on those with the least. Likewise, my deepest antipathy to the US political system is the favoring of those with the most over those with the least.
That’s the way everywhere, though. People get power and then use that power to get more. That power comes from taking power from others.
People often criticize foreign political systems to promote their own. That’s the purpose of statecraft. It’s certainly annoying as an American to see my government claim superiority with (sometimes) empty words that it could establish far more forcefully with progressive action at home. Still, think of it as a marketing exercise to promote American interests.
As an aside, the outrage in America when PRC MoFA spokespeople are critical of the US is surprising, given that America is the land of insult comics, trash talking, and playing the dozens. You’d think we’d be ready for this.
Haha, that's brilliant — your last paragraph. Yes! You'd think we'd be ready for it. Still, our skin's thicker than that of the Chinese, whose feelings as the MoFA spox will still sometimes remind us are still often hurt. I love your idea of cognitive empathy for the Trumpers but sympathy for the downtrodden and insecure. Great framing!
I read this a month ago, intended to reply, and then put it aside, and perhaps it's been "discussed out." But I think there might be more to say, and if not no one will be hurt by it. Much of the commentary has strayed from Daly's original question of why an American might apply a "double standard" to the actions of the US government and politicians and those of the Chinese government (given that the PRC doesn't really have "politicians" in the sense that they exist in electoral democracies). So I'd like to get back to this question, thinking about why I, as a person of very different social positioning than Kaiser, have the same kind of double standard as he has discussed in this quite wonderful essay.
I think at one level, which others have not addressed, this double standard has emotional roots, and rightly so. I may speak excellent Chinese and I may have done teeny, tiny things to influence a few hundred people in China, but I am, for better or worse (some of each) an American. So it hurts more when American politicians and officials do things that violate my own ethical standards or visions. As much as the camps in Xinjiang have offended me, if Trump wins and establishes camps for "illegals," it will offend me a lot more. Kaiser, I'm not sure to what extent your family's origin in China (as opposed to mine, in England and Germany centuries ago) might shrink this emotional difference for you as compared to for me. But certainly, when I read of things that offend the universalist side of me in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia or Myanmar, none of which I have ever visited or read much about, they strike even less of a chord in me than do equally or less atrocious actions in Xinjiang. So there is a scale of emotional outrage that is probably unavoidable for all of us non-saints.
In this connection, I remember what I called my "Michelle Obama moment." I was in DC in spring 2008, after she had made the comment that "for the first time in my life, I'm proud of my country." I don't even remember anymore why she said this, but she was roundly slammed by American "patriots." Anyway, I had a free evening, and got tickets to the Capital Steps, whom I'd enjoyed on recordings for years. The W impersonator was bitingly good and funny, and the Bill Clinton impersonator was even more irreverent and better. I was watching them less than half a kilometer from the White House. I was thinking of what would happen to a gifted Chinese satirist who did comparable imitations of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao somewhere less than a kilometer from Zhongnanhai. I was proud that I lived in a country where this kind of vicious satire was possible. But living in such a country for (then) 60+ years had given me a lower threshold for outrage when this standard was violated.
A second level concerns what US politicians say about China. Their absolutist pronouncements, in addition to being hypocritical, are simply wrong, and I feel a (minor) duty to speak out against them. Another anecdote from everyday life: last year I was sitting with some hiking buddies at a local state park, chewing the political fat, and one of them, a very intelligent environmentalist building contractor, wondered if in "an authoritarian country" we could be having a similar discussion. "Sure," I said, "I've had hundreds of such discussions in China." I never went to China until after the Cultural Revolution was over, but I read of such discussions even then, if people were careful enough (and sometimes, alas, when they weren't careful enough). At the same time, we know that a lot of speech here, while free in the sense that we can't be jailed for it, has negative consequences. That's probably as it should be, but what about Michelle Obama's comment, which seemed briefly to pose a danger to Barack's candidacy? And the same can be said of the inverse: witness Bernie Sanders's absolutely accurate statement of fact that China had brought hundreds of millions out of poverty. So it seems to me that a moderate position such as Kaiser takes in the essay--somewhere between relativism and absolutism--is the only sincere position I can take.
Finally, there's the question of evolution toward a democratic order, which seems to be an article of faith for American progressives/liberals. I was confident, 15 years ago, that China would liberalize at the next-after-next "peaceful transfer of power" (sorry, couldn't resist that) which I expected to happen in 2022. By that time, most of the leadership generation would have either been educated in democratic countries or at least heavily influenced by those who were. Also there was the precedent of Taiwan, which others have mentioned. Whoops.
Kaiser, I'm going to have to push back - I see several MAJOR holes in your argument and evidence. Not the overarching one of structuring a relativistic framework that is working toward a universalist one, but several of your examples. 1) "Intelligent white Americans would, I would hope, never turn to Black Americans today and say, "Slavery ended in 1865. Get over it!" " - ahem, Colin Kaepernick. Or, you are saying white American football fans are not intelligent. 2) Robert Daly needs to come clean about his background - ALL of it - just as you do for yourself. I'm not interested in another white male engaging in what-aboutism-over-China when he hasn't owned his own house. Where is he from? Where does his family wealth come from? What has been his own work in his own society to rectify issues of inequality and inequity? Is he as self-aware regarding his place in his own society as you are? If not, then I'll be glad to see him out to pasture like the rest of the U.S. Foreign Policy "elite" who have brought us nonsensical comparative frameworks claiming pure objectivity and violent, excessive, unnecessary wars. 3) The next generation of global citizen analysts - I hope you're raising them and I certainly am raising one - Gen Z know that they do not have the luxury of time. Climate change is here and it is coming for their future. Even if they don't have the power to stop the inequitable battles over power/resources and consequences for those less powerful, at least they are willing to call a spade a spade. Is the Relativist framework real? Is the Universalist one real? Says who? And under the guises of what kind of power? I think they would argue - and I am doing so here - that you fell for it. You got suckered. You're so busy being on the defensive that you've become an apologist for... for whom? Hard to say. 4) Back to #1, why is it about cutting Black America slack in the way you've phrased it? Really, it's about excusing White America for its wealth generation from Violent Slavery and then all they've done to cover it up. As long as they keep going on what-aboutism wrt Black America's struggles, then who is looking at them as they run off with all the land, generational wealth and privileges/entitlements that come with that? You're not seeing America with a clear view - as, no doubt, any "intelligent Chinese person" who has read American History and observed American sociological patterns would be able to perceive. Using the same lenses that any "intelligent American person" would use to observe and remark upon Chinese society, then one can easily see that it is White America we need to put under the microscope and figure out how to deal with Universalist or Relativist frameworks for improvement. 5) I agree with you that we already have relativist frameworks in place for foreign policy that are supposed to be operating in some kind of universalist direction - prime example - Israel. Israel always gets excuse after excuse. They can break international law and U.S. laws, committing mass murder, orchestrating real estate auctions of stolen land, with the U.S. Foreign Policy establishment endlessly saying that they are "working toward" getting Palestinians a state... Do we really want more of this kind of thing in the world? I think your friend Richard Daly needs to answer these questions. Neither one of you should be having a discussion about Relativism or Universalism without laying out a proper, truly global comparative discourse as foundational ground rules. Kaiser, I say this with all due respect. You are amazing, wonderful, and I love all that you do. But none of us are getting any younger and the world is on fire.