The question to Gandhi is now being asked again, this time by educated, sophisticated Chinese of each other.
This was the topic of a four-hour phone call a few nights ago between Chinese PhDs, both with extensive American experience and important midlevel career positions.
In a word, their conclusion was the same as Gandhi’s – it would be a good idea.
Their argument below is depressing, as if you need any more of that. I am paraphrasing in spots and retelling in what follows. My own Chinese language skills couldn’t have kept up.
For my colleagues and for many educated Chinese, the US and the west have been the model of civilization – educated, smart, democratic, highest technology and culture, in a word, modern. Human rights were honored, even if not always observed in the breach. This, coming from Chinese who know that historically, Zhongguo was always considered the center of the universe.
A little background
That the west was the center of modernity was an idea nurtured over a long span of time, probably going back to the era of treaty ports in the mid-nineteenth century. Out of the humiliation of the 19th century came the May 4th movement, which sought to replace millennia of deference to authority and superstition with “Dr. Science and Mr. Democracy.”
Ancient Chinese culture was … well, ancient and feudal. Chen Duxiu, founder of the Chinese Communist Party, saw modernism and personal independence as the conditions necessary for growth. This was in 1916.
The US remained the modernist pole star for the next hundred years. The term for the United States, meiguo, means beautiful country. But by 2010, many Chinese believed in the American dream and an American miracle more than did many educated, sophisticated Americans. Chinese were not ignorant of American deficiencies – racism, poor schools and health care for poor people, a developing oligarchy, gun nuts and chaotic politics – but democratic values seemed able to pull victory from the claws of every looming defeat, and all that was necessary was a little money to get world class schools, education, health care, and a peaceful life. John Dewey had been a popular figure in China, and above all, America was seen as pragmatic.
That was then, this is now
That was the image, and it is no more, my colleagues said in the wechat call. America has been the standard, but they also considered western Europe, and found it wanting as well. America – and the west – seem in thrall to an ideology, not one my interlocutors could identify, but it was definitely not pragmatic.
This democracy thing – perhaps more precisely, individualism – has met its match. The covid-19 virus is only the latest and most clearly defining symptom. Democracies, they said, seem unable to do basic things that improve the lives of most people. A hundred thousand dead is an acceptable level of loss? Policies that pit states against one another to obtain PPE? The interlocutors on the phone call couldn’t get to evolving deficiencies in laws, regulations and institutions that were the subject of Why Nations Fail (Acemoglu and Robinson). Nor had they read How Democracies Die (Levitsky and Ziblatt). The sense was the American promise was now – well, if not a lie, at least more marketing than substance.
I have many Chinese government friends and associates, some of whom have made moves to purchase real estate in the US for retirement or for their kids to go to school here, or just in case. Those days seem over, and not only because of the egomania of the leaders Xi and Trump. The America that was promised is now an uncertain risk. Who knows what part might fail next? Metaphorically, the American car used to be new and shiny and had the latest gadgets. It was safe, everything worked, and the warranty was sound. Now the American car is a used car, and if you look under the hood, it gets pretty scary. The warranty is barely worth the Constitution it is printed on.
This jaded view of the US and the west is not new. Chinese university students in America have been coming home to China for a decade, unimpressed by the lure of freedom of speech and democracy that comes at the cost of guns and mayhem and ridiculous health care expense. Now world news and opinion is flush with incredulity and alarm about the US.
There is little sense of individual responsibility and little concern for the other, said my colleagues. Freedom to die is apparently the mantra for those now rushing to bars without masks or distancing. Chinese would say, good luck to them. And, they say, the Cortland County New York wallet card should be made mandatory in Wisconsin, Georgia, Florida – anywhere the stupid people congregate.
The comparisons with China are easy and superficial, and my colleagues were speaking only in personal, offhand remarks. Their feelings about the Chinese government in January and February were very negative. Now, looking at the rest of the world, they have a different idea. China bungled badly in the first six weeks or so of the virus time, but with testing and lockdown, distancing and quarantine and tracing, it basically beat the virus in two months.
There was no expressway driving allowed. If people were infected, they were isolated away from their families. Temperatures were taken going in and out of residential complexes. People’s level of cooperation was very high. It didn’t matter if you were young or old, rich or poor, lives were treated as more important than the economy. Now that cases have shown up again in Wuhan, the plan is to test all 11,000,000 residents in the next couple of weeks. We can discount real implementation of that plan as fanciful, but nevertheless, the government will test and isolate and trace, and that will work. Individuals bear no cost for treatment of Covid-19, from testing to ventilator. There is no point in staying away from the hospital if you are sick because you can’t afford it. All things considered, including that the virus started there, they said, China had about the best possible response.
One can quibble. This was their considered evaluation.
In the US – well, you know the news stories. The rate of new daily cases has still not fallen in two months, to May 23. And that was with two-months notice before shutdowns began. On the phone call, my Chinese friends were appalled at the ignorance and sheer stupidity. The Michigan legislature shut down rather than confront gun wielding freedom-to-die fighters who deny medical expertise. If I don’t wear a mask, and I infect you, so what? Leaders tell old people to die for the sake of the economy, and everyone should drink bleach. Neither Dr. Science nor Mr. Democracy are in evidence. Who are these people? Left unsaid, I think, was the question of whether these can be real humans at all, but there certainly was a sense of the inmates running the asylum. Over the next few months, will we really accept 2000 deaths a week as the cost of doing business? Is this what human rights comes to?
My colleagues used Marx for reference. The first stage of capitalism was certainly ugly. Marx said that every pore on the skin of the workingman was filled with blood or dirt. But wealth bought respectability and human rights talk, and this worked pretty well until the real control and desires of the capitalist class were exposed in 2020. The political leaders and a lot of citizens are in thrall to the economic oligarchs.
A story about a woman named Peggy Popham from North Carolina summarizes the views of my colleagues that a good portion of Americans are just … well, nuts – The coronavirus pandemic created the perfect environment for apocalyptic Christianity to fuse with antigovernment libertarianism, New Age rejection of mainstream science and medicine, and internet-fueled gullibility toward baroque conspiracy theories about secret cabals ruling the world through viruses. About twenty percent of Americans have said they would not take a vaccine when available.
The rejection of science and rationality, they said, means the US can no longer be considered modern. Other Chinese agree. In a recent article, Wu Haiyun, editor at Sixth Tone, echoed the feelings expressed on the phone call, but she was referring to Chinese now in their late thirties and early forties – Trust in Science Saved China. Practicing It Will Keep It Safe.
This Chinese view is not itself isolated
Edward Luce at Financial Times writes about the world’s view of America now, and it is not pretty – William Burns, most senior US diplomat and now head of the Carnegie Endowment – America is first in the world in deaths, first in the world in infections and we stand out as an emblem of global incompetence. The damage to America’s influence and reputation will be very hard to undo.
The Guardian suggests that the world looks on in horror at the US response.
And Fintan O’Toole writes in the Irish Times – Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.
Another colleague of mine whose tax clients are mostly foreign nationals remarked that part of what he had done for forty years was enable people to live, work, or make a living in the US. Now, he says, he is dealing with the converse – people wanting to move assets or themselves out.
What is to be done?
Now, if you have choices about where to live in the world, where to go? If you have kids, what is a safe and humane place with expectations of solid education in which to bring them up? Where will a kid be more easily cultivated as a right-valued person? The virus seems the last straw.
For my colleagues, this democracy thing has come to mean not that citizens are empowered to obtain information and make educated choices, but that “my ignorance is just as good as your expertise” and more to the point, “every man for himself.” No democratic founder in Athens, the Colonies, or political philosophy in any era would support that view.
This is what the American image has come to. Evaporation of American soft power cannot be far behind. The vaunted American Dream has become a version of Is that all there is? Robert Frost considered whether the world would end in fire or in ice. Neither, it turns out. The world as we know it ends in willful ignorance and stupidity. The scientist, the doctor, the researcher, the humane and rational end up looking like navigators on Plato’s Ship of Fools. “Fake news,” is what my Chinese colleagues said about this alarming American discrediting of science – but they meant that people could not distinguish science from lunacy. Good luck to those Americans, is what they said at the end.
Just a minor note on dreams, American and Chinese
There is plenty written on the American Dream. We all have an idea of what that means. It is part of our civil religion, as Robert Bellah might have suggested in his 1967 Civil Religion in America.
The term “American Dream” was popularized by James Truslow Adams in 1931, saying that “life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement” regardless of social class or circumstances of birth.
In our cynical age, much of that writing notes how unattainable might be a story of improving generational prosperity. It nevertheless remains that every year millions of people still seek to come here and if fewer of them are European than before, it need only mean that the dream values of democracy, freedom, and the possibility of individual achievement away from government approval have taken firm root in Europe. The Dream persists.
There is plenty written on the Chinese Dream Zhōngguó Mèng. The term was used before, but only became part of ideology when articulated by Xi Jinping in 2012. The dream, he said, is the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation – under guidance of CCP. Xi’s formulation was translated in English as “the dream of the people.” But in fact it is pushed by CCP, in which the people are the workhorses to make China great. Pointedly, no one is moving to China to take advantage of democracy, freedom, and the possibility of individual achievement. And the Chinese Dream is one defined by CCP. It is not by the people, for the people, or of the people.
The Chinese Dream is intimately linked to both traditional Chinese culture and governance by CCP. Xi made the point in his July, 2021 speech marking the centenary of CCP. Bill Bishop makes the point in Sinocism – The result is what is now being sold to the Chinese as an inspirational and — for the purposes of foreign policy — globally inspiring “new form of human civilization” (人类文明新形势). The China Dream is the CCP Dream for China and for the world.
Making China great again is absolutely akin to the dreams of the Trump MAGA crowd – make America great again. Both are nationalistic narcissistic pronouncements coming from a top leader that ignore individuals in favor of authoritarian rule. Both use the ideas of the indispensable and exceptional nation in foreign affairs.
CCP has sought to make Confucianism a basis for a Chinese Dream interpreted by CCP. Confucian scholars will have none of that, of course. But CCP now puts Confucius to work locally, in China –
In China … the contemporary politico-religious narrative appeals on the Chinese citizens as heirs of a divine tradition, and as responsible to bring the divine mission of the nation to a good end. Expressions, symbols, and rituals that are part of a collective “Confucian” memory are used as part of a Confucian “civil religion” that has to affirm, among other things, the CCP’s “religious legitimation” as the highest political authority, and, in line with the concept of “cosmological Confucianism”, this authority is presented as only being able to fulfill its mission of realizing the “Chinese Dream” with the support of the people, that is, loyalty to the Party. Confucianism thus is an instrument that presents the modern Chinese nation-state and its policies as sacred institutions under the divine rulership of the CCP.
Bart Dessein. Faith and Politics: (New) Confucianism as Civil Religion. Asian Studies II (XVIII), 1 (2014), pp. 39–64. Available at https://www.academia.edu/41679522/MODERN_NEW_CONFUCIANISM_AND_CHINESE_MODERNITY_Special_issue_of_Asian_Studies_Vol_2_No_1
The international version of Make China Great Again is the Community of Common Destiny, the CCP version of Pax Sinica. Despite protests to the contrary, it is hard to see Xi’s community of common destiny for mankind as anything but a replacement for established international order with a unity of nations whose economic dependence on China leads them to defer to Chinese political demands. (See Liza Tobin Xi’s Vision for Transforming Global Governance: A Strategic Challenge for Washington and its Allies and Rush Doshi The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order).
It’s a good idea to read some of what comes out of CCP regarding the Chinese Dream, and there is no one better at pronouncing it than Xi himself. Xi’s speech on cultural inheritance and development was published this year in Qiushi Journal, the flagship magazine of the CCP Central Committee. From Xinhua – The article summarizes five prominent features regarding Chinese civilization — continuity, innovativeness, unity, inclusiveness, and peaceful nature.
Integrating the basic tenets of Marxism with China’s specific realities and fine traditional culture is the path that must be taken to explore and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics within the Chinese civilization, which has stretched for more than 5,000 years, the Xinhua article says, adding that this integration is the most important tool for the Party to achieve its success. More excerpts from Sinocism here.
Xi doesn’t mention the Chinese Dream in this speech, but the components of the Dream are everywhere in his words – Chinese civilization has outstanding continuity. Chinese civilization has outstanding innovation. Chinese civilization has outstanding unity. Chinese civilization has outstanding inclusiveness. Chinese civilization has outstanding peacefulness.
Ignoring the blatant misrepresentations of historical continuity, unity, and inclusiveness, and the outrageously false notion of peacefulness, we note that all of these aspects are collective or national aspirations, with no role for the individual except as a cog in the machine.
As to the failures of the American Dream to apply to all – yes to the slavery and racism and Native Americans and a thousand other failings. We discuss those failings, and imperfectly and over too long a time we seek to do better – as individuals, regardless of what the government does or does not do.
There is no open discussion in China of Uighurs, or Mao’s Great Famine, or murders of landlords in the early days of CCP, or murders at Tian’anmen or disappearances of those who object to CCP. In any case, the Chinese Dream makes no note of individuals. They are not part of the Dream and pointedly, individuals cannot openly discuss that which is forbidden to discuss.
The Statue of Liberty reminds us that we have achieved liberty, and the rest of our future is up to us. CCP exhorts us to love the Party, which will guide us toward the goals CCP sets. Therein lies the difference in the dreams.