The communist party ‘owns’ China

In the Peoples Republic of China the communist party literally owns the institutions of state and no interference in the decision making of these institutions is accepted by any group of interest. This is quite different from the West where lobbies write the laws relating to their interests. What this means is that the communist party has an absolute control over the way society functions. Now this does not mean, as most Westerners believe, that China is a dictatorship. Individuals and economic actors are participating in the decision making process by giving their ideas and opinions about what should be done. During this consultation phase civil society debates with the representatives of the party and the state about solutions and the media also relays these debates. Once the consultation phase concludes civil society retreats and lets the party and state institutions formalize the decisions and their implementation. And once the rules of the game have been formalized everybody is expected to participate in their implementation.

In China legislation is not an absolute as in the West where nothing is allowed to happen that is not already codified beforehand. In contrast societal actors in China have the latitude to experiment outside the field of what has already been codified. This means that Chinese are allowed to experiment social or technological innovations in real time while society in general and the authorities in particular are observing and thinking. Legislating the implementation of innovations only intervenes after observing the pro’s and con’s. This freedom procures Chinese societal actors the advantage of real world testing while their Western counterparts have to wait for legislative approval before being allowed to proceed. As a result Chinese innovations conquer the market and mature while their Western counterparts are still thinking how to legislate a future implementation of an innovation.

This raises a fundamental question. Does it make any sense to legislate something that is not existing? The best recent example of the Chinese practice of experimentation is given in the field of web sales and web payment platforms that innovated in the absence of a legal framework. The outcome is unquestionable. The Chinese companies have leapfrogged their Western counterparts and made China the world leading country in web sales and web finance. But what is even more remarkable is that, at least in these fields, Western companies are now the copy-cats… Ho ho!

In view of this description “dictatorship” is assuredly the wrong term to characterize the Chinese political system. It is best viewed as giving to its citizens the right to:

• innovate  (initiative, innovation)
• participate in discussions setting the groundwork for decision making (consultation)

But once party and state have formalized the rules it is expected that everybody plays according to the new rules.

Contrary to what Westerners believe China is among the freest countries on earth. This is a paradoxical situation indeed. But the paradox is understandable. Westerners know practically nothing about the civilization, the history, the societies, and the cultures of other people. And The little that is known in the West about “the other” is most generally a grotesque deformation of “the other’s” reality. Much of what the West knows about “the other” is derived from its own past cultural practices that were steeped in the context of its racist colonial past and so our Western inheritance is made of very warped memories indeed.

But there is even worse than those warped memories. Civilizations imprint indeed their axioms in the minds of the citizens of their affiliated societies and such imprints are not automatically available to their conscious minds. As a result the citizens of a society affiliated to a given civilization are thinking and acting automatically along the lines of their civilization’s axioms. We Westerners, for example, think about everything in dualist terms. What this means is that we are firmly convinced to be on the side of good while “the other”, in his difference, must necessarily be on the side of bad. And because of this ideological prejudice we automatically reject “the other” and everything that he represents.

Over time such automatisms have shaped our worldview which is acting like noise filling our minds. And because of the fact that to this very day Western societies have not succeeded to eliminate their prejudice for the other the minds of Western citizens still carry the full weight of the racism, the anthropocentrism, the Eurocentism, and the anthropic arrogance of their earlier generations. The fact of the matter is that our minds are carrying a baggage of thoughts that are absolutely indefensible in today’s globalized context. I’m not accusing anybody here of having indefensible thoughts. What I mean to say is that our context shapes the form of our automatic thoughts. In other words the form of Western dualism adapts to contextual changes but the substance of this dualism remains intact. Let’s illustrate this with an example. The image of Africa, that Westerners inherited from their cultural past, is one of a continent that has no history and is populated by savages. This image has been taught in schools and illustrated in cartoons until quite recently. It was, among other, the discovery of the Timbuktu libraries that finally forced historians to reconsider their mistaken stance about Africa. But in the meantime the minds of generations after generations of Europeans and Americans were grinded into believing that the white race is superior and that the dark skinned people of Africa, if they are human at all, are inferior humans. Unfortunately it takes a very long time for such erroneous beliefs to be erased from the collective consciousness of a society and so prejudice lingers on...

With this in mind let us compare the mental construct of westerners with the mental construct of Chinese at the time when they started to engage with the outside world. While a primitive Western Europe was still attached to the land under a feudal serfdom system, that reduced over 90 per cent of its population to a state of slavery, the Chinese society was the most advanced society on earth. Western and Chinese specific contexts impulsed a radically different attitude towards the people they encountered:

• Under the pretext to free Jerusalem and other Eastern Mediterranean ‘holy sites’ from Muslim control, in 1098, pope Urban II edicted the freeing of the ‘holy land’ which was a declaration of war on the Middle-East. The resulting crusades were remembered for their pious Catholic fury that resulted in horrendous massacres of “Muslim Infidels”, Jews and, “schismatic Orthodox Christians” of the east. The brutality of these massacres still lingers in the memory of Muslims to this very day.
• In 1403, the Yongle Emperor issued the order to start the construction of a "foreign expeditionary armada". The first voyage to the Indian Ocean with a total of 27,000 people was commanded by Zheng He. The fleet carried luxury gifts at the attention of the people of the Indian Ocean’s countries and their envoys were invited to accompany the fleet during its return journey in order to visit the Ming court and present gifts of their local products.

The reality of Western and Chinese encounters with the outside world could not have been further apart. To understand why their behaviors were so different we have to comprehend their specific context and more particularly the factors, within their context, that articulate such different thinking and acting mechanisms:  – axioms of civilization,  – worldviews and past cultural experiences,  – and levels of economic and cultural development at the time.

China is other. Its otherness originated in the transition period from tribal societies to kingdoms and empires. What I mean to say is that animism, the tribal worldview, was preserved and made the worldview of the empire. It will never be emphasized enough how unique a phenomenon this was. China is indeed a unique example of a civilization adopting animism from which it thus inherited its axioms. The empire later further developed animism through add-ons that integrated into the worldview the cultural memes that stuck over the generations (1).

The foundation of the Chinese civilization is rooted in an axiom that could not be further apart from Western dualism. I mean for the citizens of all societies affiliated to the Chinese civilization (China, Korea, Japan) opposites are not dualities. They are complementary polarities. Dualities and polarities generate a completely different mental outcome and so the thinking in the West and the thinking in the East give irreconcilable visions or interpretations about same observed realities. My personal experience, as a European living in China for the last 30 years, taught me that it takes a life-time trying to subdue the automatism of dualism at work in our Western minds in order to start appreciating the beauty of the dance between polarities that is at the core of Chinese thinking. Polarities are complementary while dualities are exclusionary.

The complementarity of polarities is best illustrated by the contact between the negative pole and the positive pole in electricity which results in a burst of energy that powers a transformation. In Chinese minds the contact with “the other” results in non-judgmental curiosity that leads to an appreciation of our differences. That’s when an exchange can take place. Compare this to dualism that focuses on the differences between “me me me” and  “the other” which exacerbates the tension and results in the mind automatically judging him as an inferior. Such a judgment is non-reasoned. It is automatic and this is why no exchange is possible. There is rejection of the other which then justifies us to believe that we are authorized to steal his gold, or to cheat him out of his craft, or worse. It’s the same mechanism that makes us think of animals as inferiors… or that the whole of nature is there for our taking.

I thought I had to inform the reader about this background noise that shapes our beliefs and behaviors before jumping in the subject of this article which is: China during the present shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world. To possibly understand how China navigates the present we have to be patient, avoid to be judgmental, and remain open to the image of “the Chinese other”. This image of China that I’m going to brush could come as a shock for many Westerners.  Along the way some Western pre-conceptions could be scratched, even torn apart, but that’s the price we have to pay to accept our differences. And only such an acceptance will possibly result in our appreciation of Chinese thought about societal governance and how, in Chinese minds, the role of government is to help make people’s daily life easier.

Remember that China has been thinking about political theory for some 4-5,000 years and that thinking fills a large archive of books that are being consulted to this very day. Contrast this with Western knowledge about political theory. We have barely been starting to think systematically about these subjects since a century ago.

The out-sized role that China is going to play in the future of human global affairs is best illustrated by the following 2 graphs. We better be realist and adapt to the inevitable impact China is going to have on human affairs. In light of this the reality that I expose here above can’t just be brushed aside.

                        Native speakers 2018          
               

Goldman-Sachs GDP/major powers. 2010 vs 2050

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1. A model of governance inherited from 2 sources

China is a unique combination of a civilization, a society, and a state. What this means is that:

• from its civilization it inherited axioms that posit the foundation of the nation’s grand narrative about what reality is all about. Among those the principle, that all entities have 2 polarities, is assuredly the most potent one.
• based upon these civilizational axioms and its animist worldview the Chinese society later accumulated a long succession of cultural moments. In this view culture is the total of societal behaviors, beliefs, and ideas being expressed at any given time. At each of these particular moments cultural memes emerge. But most soon fizzle away. Those very few memes that succeed to reproduce over the generations are being integrated into the existing worldview.  That’s how China’s animist worldview evolves through add-ons.
• once the tribal societal mode of governance collapsed, under the weight of increased demographic growth, the Chinese devised institutions of power that were tasked to ensure the same outcomes as were required earlier from tribal societies:   –  they need to supply the necessary conditions for people to be able to produce the best possible outcome in their daily lives,  –  they are governed by a meritocratic bureaucracy designated by means of exams.

Historically these principles have been accommodated to the reality of empire and more recently they got inspired by a philosophy originating from Western Europe. It is indeed Marxism that introduced China into Modernity. And in my view the combination, of Marxism with the 3 traditional elements of Chinese culture sketched here above, is what ensured China had the ability:   –  to free more than half a billion people from poverty in a record few decades,  –  to attract the center of gravity of the economy-world to, North-East Asia, the traditional territory of the Chinese civilization.


1.1. Inheritance from the empire

The Chinese inherited a theoretical body of knowledge from their millennial imperial governance system.  Through their literature they are schooled in how to manage a huge bureaucracy in conditions of chaos. Generation after generation are being immersed in this imperial literature and so the minds of educated Chinese are attuned to the very rich political philosophy and statecraft of their ancestors. No other country, to my knowledge, inherited such a knowledge base about state governance. And I posit that this knowledge base is one of the determinant factors that ensured the Chinese had the organizational capability to generate such an ultra-rapid industrialization.

Political decision making in China is considered by everyone to be the core mechanism that ensures the daily application of the Chinese worldview. Societal governance in China was always considered a matter of pragmatism. After leaving tribal societies for power societies it was understood by all that:  – the individuals could no longer manage the decision making of their group among themselves,  – decision making in large groups needed institutional mechanisms of decision making,  – the most competent individuals would ensure that the institutional mechanisms of decision making churn out the finest catalog of decisions for the group as well as for the individuals (mandate of heaven).

During the early stage of governance transition the wisest among wisemen (wisest shaman or flame) was the symbol of the cultural unity of the people within their territory (the rise of Tian Xia). Over thousands of years this symbolic authority gradually morphed into a more hands-on decision making approach but the power still remained in the hands of the wisest among wisemen (philosopher-king). And in a last stage of development, some 4200 years ago, the power was no longer transmitted to the wisest among wisemen. Yu The great passed his power to his son and so started the first Chinese imperial dynasty called the Xia.

But while the transmission of power in dynasties was no longer ensured to the wisest among wisemen the principle of competence was nevertheless retained in the adjudication of positions in the bureaucracy. This ensured that the Chinese empire was a meritocracy governed by scholars-bureaucrats (the mandarins).


1.2. Inheritance from Marxism

From Marxism China inherited a historical vision of Modernity that clarifies the stages of economic development put in motion by the application of the reason at work within capital. It is this historical and materialist vision of Modernity that gave the country the insight into where it would have to go and what it should do along the way. What I mean by this is that societal development is seen by Marxists as progressing from one stage of development to the next. Each stage of development is like progressing from one step to the next on a ladder of economic development. And it is considered that jumping over one step on the ladder invariably leads to a catastrophe. Marx referred to the stage of development before entry into Modernity as being  an “Asiatic mode of production” which is a pre-capitalist economic formation (2) and he was explicit that jumping from an “Asiatic mode of production” to socialism was an impossibility.

The first stage of development in Modernity is primitive accumulation of capital + industrialization
This is the realization of the “primitive accumulation of capital” or the accumulation of the capital base that is deemed necessary to invest in the successful industrialization of a country. Europe realized its initial accumulation of capital during some 5 centuries of ‘commercial capitalism’ that was more like the plunder of the rest of the world. China largely fulfilled this stage of development by capturing the surpluses realized in the countryside by its farmers following the successful reform of its agricultural sector in the eighties.
The primitive capital accumulation is invested in research and development and in production facilities. This phase is accompanied socially by the transfer of farming hands from the countryside to the cities where the factories are erected which then gives rise to a cultural shift from a traditional farmer culture to an urban technical and consumerist culture.
Contrarily to what many in the West affirm the investments by Western capital had only a marginal impact on China’s industrialization.

The second stage of development in Modernity is socialism
China realized its primitive capital accumulation and invested it successfully in its industrialization over the last 30 year. This brought the country to the world’s top economic spot according to PPP calculation of its GDP.

• What now? 
• Following the Marxist canon socialism should now be put in practice. 
• But what is socialism? 

This is what the Chinese leadership is debating presently. There is no example of a socialist country anywhere on the world that China could emulate so it has to "feel the stones in the river”… But along the last decades, seen by many as a developing “wild East”, communist party members could have forgotten what socialism really means and be manipulated into following the ideological vision that is being peddled in US business schools and in Western media. These concerns are certainly valid and could eventually lead to the implosion of China’s further development. But the fact of the matter is that the present Chinese leadership with Xi Jinping at the helm is ideologically clear-sighted and a sure-hand that has set its eyes on reaching socialist targets:

• narrowing of internal social inequalities,   
• strengthening societal cohesion through a thriving culture
• strengthening of state controlled enterprises and guidance of private enterprises,
• narrowing the technological gap to render possible a distribution of goods according to one’s need (communism),  
• narrowing the economic gap between nations (communism could not be less than universal), 
• ensuring the future well-being of humanity by sharing a common destiny for all nations. This means countering all the side-effects of Modernity that are threatening societal collapse and human extinction (climate change, mass extinctions, pollution of air water and land, and so on).

This discussion may seem like trivial intellectual blabber. But trivial it is surely not. Marxism understood along these lines would have avoided the Soviet-Union the folly of trying to jump from backwardness to socialism in one go which was essentially the reason why that experiment ended prematurely. A closer understanding of Marxism was reached by the Chinese in the seventies which allowed them to understand the deep meaning of the reason at work within capital. Their understanding then helped them to put it in application something the Soviet-Union never succeeded to do and this difference explains why one collapsed while the other is so successful.

The third stage of development in Modernity is communism.
This is the age of artificial intelligence, robots, and cultural emancipation. In this age the question on everyone’s minds is how, and from what, are humans going to live tomorrow? Communism was always a very vague idea in Marx mind. But he nevertheless had the prescience to imagine an economic stage of development when the role of human labor would become obsolete. As the physicist Stephen Hawking understood the most important  question for humanity today  is “who is going to own Ai and robotics ?”. The danger is indeed that the biggest capital holders, who are a very tiny minority of humanity, would take possession of AI and robotics while dreaming that this would give them the means to forget about the rest of humanity which would propel a dual track evolution. This indicates how urgent it is to start a discussion about communism.


Outside of these theoretical considerations Marxism, or more precisely its early Soviet bastardized model, contributed a useful discussion about “What to do” next that resulted in the Leninist model of “democratic-centralism” which China adapted to the character of the pyramidal structure of its 4000 years old empire. In other words “democratic-centralism” combined with the pyramidal structure of empire resulted in a new Chinese dynasty no longer governed by one family but by one party. As we’ll see in 4 this is what gave the communist party and the Chinese state their very specific structure.



2. The Chinese governance philosophy

The Chinese share a common understanding of reality that is based on the idea that all entities are composed of two polarities at the example of electricity that I gave here above. This is called the Yin-Yang principle that powers the transformative nature of reality which the Chinese call the ‘Way’ as in ‘the way of nature’. The ‘way’ of each species then consists in the dance of their 2 polarities:  – their individual particles,  – the grouping of individual particles into societies. The individuals contribute their economic, social and cultural initiatives which power the evolving complexity of societal realities while societies themselves are in charge of preserving their own survival in order to fulfill their ultimate mission which is to ensure the survival of the species. The role of societies is thus to accompany the initiative of the individuals in order to  – encourage their initiative when it is judged to be contributing to societal cohesion,  – put the brakes on their initiative, or eventually kill it, when it is judged to be detrimental to societal cohesion.

Having stated these core principles of the Chinese worldview lets see how public governance fits in the minds of the individuals. The family is the core institution in Chinese society and the primary demand by the citizens to their public institutions is to guarantee a stable, internal and external, environment that facilitates the task of the individuals to secure the daily lives of their families. When this demand is satisfied the individuals attend to their affairs without any concern for the governance of societal affairs. But when this demand is not satisfied the individuals will forcefully manifest their displeasure. And if the government does not bring a satisfactory answer to people’s grievances they could eventually assemble and demand that the government steps down. In Chinese people’s eyes a satisfactory and stable environment is a fundamental human right and so the role of government is to supply the required conditions to satisfy this fundamental human right. It was always considered that societal governance was a service that has to satisfy people’s legitimate rights of being served a satisfactory environment that helps the individuals to maximize the well-being of their families. This fundamental human right of the people implies that those who govern have the moral obligation to satisfy people’s rights and if they don’t satisfy this moral obligation the people have the right to demote the government.

Equipped with such a clear vision. about the role of government in society. Chinese ancestral thinkers posited a pyramidal structure with the families forming the base while the top was occupied by a father figure assuming the role of father of all families. In imperial times that figure was the emperor, in republican time that figure was the president, and in communist times that figure is represented by the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party which is chaired by the Secretary General.

Let’s now see how internal and external factors impact that fundamental human right and how those who govern are expected to address these factors.


2.1. Internal governance

The supply of stable internal conditions implies:

• that society is peaceful and the majority of individuals are satisfied. The government is charged with maintaining order by issuing regulations and policing activities that run counter to the order. But the legal footprint of government should always remain minimal. Car driving in China testifies to the fact that the legal and policing footprint are minimally affecting people’s behaviors.
• that the individuals are let free to innovate and to secure an activity generating an income,
• that the government should leave most of people’s income in their pockets by imposing the smallest amount of taxes. Trouble often arise because the individuals feel that taxes are eating too high a portion of their income.
• that commercial exchanges should be encouraged by the supply of stable money meaning that money is expected to keeps its value.

Along the entire history of the empire the supply of stable internal conditions was largely limited to these four factors. We have always to remember that Confucian theory insists that the people have the right to depose an emperor who fails at these responsibilities.

The contact with the West required ever deeper interventions in society by the power structures but the empire resisted this push and as a consequence it rapidly generated its own obsolescence and a long period of chaos ensued. Order eventually emerged out of this chaos after the communists took power in 1949. The people were enthusiastic. But their enthusiasm was soon threatened under the assault of ideological voluntarism. After two decades of confusion the country finally took the needed reforms and it plunged head-on into Modernity. Since then the government has been overwhelmed by never ending demands for more actions. Without any doubt this initiated a totally new era of governance.

The four factors supplying stable internal conditions as mentioned here above remain without any doubt in application in this new era of Modernity. But new demands emerged primarily in urban areas for jobs, housing, transportation, health, justice, and consumerism.


2.2. Governance toward the outside

The supply of stable external conditions implies:

• a successful defense of the nation from outside attacks. This was the sole factor demanded to be satisfied in empire time. More recently in China’s new era of Modernity new demands emerged:
• a successful integration of the nation in the international commercial networks
• a successful integration of the nation in the diverse international institutions regulating commerce, banking and finance, the relations between nations, and so on.
• a successful protection of Chinese citizens when abroad

It’s evident that the Western hegemon paradigm is a completely inappropriate framework for the Chinese. Tian Xia is the paradigm that guided China’s path during nearly its entire history: culture unification, territory, and governance. And so China is pragmatically focused on its own and the relation with the outside is limited to things that can benefit life inside the nation like business and locking in long-term security. Ruling the planet and exploiting the world are foreign to the Chinese worldview.

Confucius’ narrates in his book “The Analects” (3) how a country should not pursue adventures in foreign lands because there is a far better strategy which is to stay at home. In substance he explains that by making your country prosperous foreigners will be tempted to come to you with their knowledge and money. Proof that the stratagem works is dramatically illustrated by Deng Xiaoping’s “opening up” strategy that was literally adapted from “the Analects”… Foreign capital holders and their agents rushed indeed into China investing their capital and sharing their industrial culture and some of their technologies. Trump is wrong to say that the Chinese stole all that. Westerners offered it to China to be allowed to produce in the country.

Not only has China succeeded to industrialize rapidly, it also succeeded to extract over half a billion people out of poverty. The fact that no other country has ever succeeded such a feat is testimony of the validity of the Chinese governance philosophy. Additional testimony of the democratic character of the whole Chinese enterprise is supplied by Western polling agencies attesting that the Chinese are greatly trusting their government. These polls indeed credit the government with the support of between 80% and 90% of the population. This should be proof enough that the Chinese governance philosophy is worth the attention of the world.



3. Elections of Party and state bureaucracy

I sketched here above how the Chinese political system is combining the notions of peoples’ initiative + consultative participation in political decision making by the communist party. Peoples’ initiative means that people are free to initiate social and economic projects in order to realize the daily life dreams of their families. Consultative participation means that people are consulted for their opinions about matters needing decision making. Political decision making by the communist party means what the words say. In Chinese minds the role of government is to help people realizing their daily life in the easiest and smoothest way possible. This principle forms the core of Confucian political thought and the Classics further state that when the government does not satisfy this core principle the people are morally entitled to disband it and replace it with another team thus starting a new dynasty.

Having said that the highest management functions both in the party and in the state bureaucracy are being decided upon by elections.

The party forms a pyramidal structure with different levels. At each level the most important party functions, and public institutional functions, are attributed by voting. The party is indeed build from bottom to top by way of elections. In parallel of this bottom up build up there is also a top to bottom process to designate, among the members at a higher level who will sit as general secretary of the party and boss of the state at the lower level structure. This top down designation process allows members at a higher level of the pyramid to sit at the commanding positions of the level just down which allows for a smooth spreading of directives from top to down, and a smooth transfer of information to the higher echelon of power. Here follows a very rapid sketch of the designation mechanisms of the leading members of the party and the state:
    

• The communist party has approximately 90 million members distributed in local professional cells at the neighborhood or village level. Nearly 7% of the total population are members and they form the base of the party pyramid. The members participate in the life of their local cell and elect who, among them, will sit as their representative at the district commission and who will manage the affairs of the cell in the neighborhood. The same process is then repeated from district to county, from county to city, from city to province and from province to the national level.  

• Candidates for state positions at whatever level of the bureaucracy have to satisfy strict criteria, of education, past experience, etc... to be nominated. The Political bureau of the party will designate the members of the state council (top echelons of the state government), the ‘heads’ of national government departments and the provincial party secretaries and governors. The ‘heads’ of provincial departments are designated by a vote of the provincial party institutions. The provincial party institutions will also designate the mayors and party secretaries of the cities in the province. The provincial party institutions will designate the “heads” of each department of the provincial government as well as the party secretary and chiefs of each of their districts governments.    

• At the village level reigns representative democracy. That means that villagers elect their representatives to govern the public affairs of the village. The communist party also expressed its intention to expand representative democracy at higher levels of the pyramid but the policy will be formalized only after the organization of village democracy is deemed successful. The most important governance principle in China is never to impose a hard policy but to let society experiment. A rule can be written down by codifying the conditions that made the experiment successful.  

• What has to be stressed further is that all leading positions in the bureaucracy machinery, under party designated heads of governments and departments at all levels of the state pyramid, are being selected through state organized exams.

    


5. Opening up and reforms

The Western transition into Late-Modernity is well engaged already and the whole world is being sucked in the maelstrom. That countries are willing to adapt, or unwilling to adapt, to this new reality changes nothing. Late-Modernity acts like a gigantic black hole. Nothing can escape being sucked in it. Politically we could say that Late-Modernity is the most totalitarian undertaking ever of humanity.

China only transitioned for real into Modernity around 1980. It was a calculated decision, taken as a self defense stance, against the push toward globalization and world domination by Western big capital holders. The Chinese leadership understood at the time that:

• or China rapidly succeeded to build up as an economic might that can resist the push of Western capital and its institutions of power and so would be able to ensure the survival and thriving of its nation into the future
• or China would not be able to build up as an economic might and would then no be able to resist that push and in such a case the Chinese nation would sooner or later face the risk of extinction at the hands of the West that would not hesitate to deliberately break it into pieces in order to ease its exploitation by Western capitalist interests.

The decision by the Chinese leadership must have been a harrowing process indeed. So much more so that it implied abandoning the traditional ‘principle of prudence’ that was considered necessary along the whole time-span of empire in order to protect the survival of the nation from falling into eventual destructive side-effects. I have argued this aspect of ‘the principle of prudence’ that lays at the heart of the process of societal governance in “from Modernity to After-Modernity”. Book 4. “4.6.1. Societal reproduction - Individual for change”.

The risks taken in 1980 have obviously paid off. China has grown tremendously economically over the last 30 years and has since accumulated the necessary financial means to resist the pressure of the West. This pressure is not gone as we can observe in the South China Sea, on the Southern and Western flank of the Eurasian corridor, and with the trade war being waged against it by the US. But China will not again be bullied in unequal treaties as it has been over the last centuries. That’s why it is a certainty that China will not compromise its state economic policies in future trade negotiations with the US.

Having said that the last thirty years have seen a frenetic rhythm of changes taking a toll in the form of severe air, land, water pollution and a severe choking of the possibility to further strengthen societal cohesion. The engineers who form the present leadership are well aware of the toll this economic craze has exacted. This craze was the means to gain the strength to resists Western bullying. Proof of their understanding of the severity of the problems the world is facing is seen in their rapid decision making to gradually eliminate the use of coal, their investments in new energies and in new modes of transportation. No other country on earth is acting with such an urgency to adapt to the constraints of climate change and other side-effects of Modernity than China.

In the meantime the music of Modernity has not yet stopped and so people and countries continue to dance at its rhythm. But with China’s growth the contextual setting, in which this dance now takes place, has transformed into a battle-ground extending to the whole world. On one side are Western big capital holders who wish to impose their societal model to the whole world by force if necessary. On the other side is the Chinese communist party which ‘owns’ the entirety of Chinese state capital and not only does it refuse, to submit to the societal model of Western big capital holders, it is gradually setting up the institutions that tomorrow will govern a multi-polar world that promises to respect diverse economic and governance systems.

These are two societal models that are completely incompatible:

• The model of Western big capital holders is to extract the largest share possible of all profits generated within the borders of nations which invariably results in extremely high levels of inequality within national borders and extremely high levels of inequality between nations. This model is best illustrated by the working of US society that is characterized by the extreme inequality between its citizens and the extreme privileges the US nation enjoys in comparison with all other nations.
• The Chinese model has still not really matured into adulthood. It is still in development but one can already grasp what will be its characteristics in maturity. A cautious approach is nevertheless suggested. Since the Chinese model has still some way to go it could possibly be derailed before it reaches maturity and the fact is that Western big capital holders and their political and financial servants are actively engaged in trying to derail it. With this in mind let’s now examine the characteristics of a mature socialist China. These are  – or already in application,  – or in the planning stage,  – or they are still no more than ideas in discussion within the communist party:
  
  • the core Confucian idea, that political governance must at all times be in the service of the great majority of the people, will automatically drive Chinese decision making into socialism.
  • the Chinese political system will continue to guarantee and will also encourage its citizens to actively use their rights to :  
  • innovate  (initiative, innovation)   
  • participate in discussions setting the groundwork for decision making (consultation)
  • in the coming years accumulating big capital will be made the privilege of the state. This does not mean that everything will be state owned. The citizens will be allowed, like today, to invest in whatever local activities of their liking but national networks or investments in fields considered to be strategic for the nation shall remain the privilege of the state. Foreign investors will be recognized the same rights as national citizens.
  • social inequality will never be eliminated completely but the system will ensure that those who have less income, less education and so on, are content with their situation. The system will also strive to discourage ostentatious consumption.
  • in terms of culture, meaning the totality of ideas and behaviors, the system will discourage market driven approaches while encouraging and rewarding authenticity.
  • In dealing with the rest of the world a socialist China will:   
    
    • encourage and defend all nations to become members of international organizations put in charge of the rule making and the implementation of these rules of the game relating to all fields generating international interrelations.   
    • act to reduce the inequalities between nations.  
    • Act to protect all nations’ right to their own culture and worldview.   
    • act to guarantee the world is at peace.   
    • Act to protect the habitat of all living species

    
But the fact of the matter is that China is stuck in a quandary. On one side it has to continue to push the development of Modernity, as fast as possible, down the throat of its citizens. On the other side it has also to counter the destructive effects unleashed by a Western inspired Modernity. And it has to realize all this while defending itself from Western temptations to sabotage the country’s plans through terror, propaganda, or war like interventions in finance, trade or the military. This is a monumental task indeed; a task that is not often well understood by observers particularly those who are being manipulated by Western propaganda.

There is a contradiction between – pushing further expansion of Modernity – and countering the devastating effects of a Western inspired Modernity. How to continue to push your citizens on the path of a Western style Modernity and urbanization while knowing full well that the world has already entered a process of forced re-balancing that is being enacted by nature or by the Tao. As I wrote somewhere else the transition from Late-Modernity to Early After-Modernity will be a forced transition out of over-population, over-consumerism, and a general absence of prudence in the necessary confrontation of an increased consciousness with the principle of systemic reality.

The quandary for China is at the decision making level for sure. But it is also a matter of fact that the results of sabotage by Western forces or the devastation wrought by the diverse side-effects of a Western style Modernity will be felt ever more acutely at the level of its people’s daily lives. The Chinese population barely entered Modernity and only took its first bites out of consumerism but it soon will have to face the fact that the dream was merely a mirage… Will the Chinese communist party succeed to sufficiently counter the destructive effects unleashed by a Western inspired Modernity so that its citizens realize that they are much much better off than the citizens of western countries? The answer to this question shall declare the winner in the competition between Western big capital holders and Chinese state capital.



6. art in China is a different story from art in the West

The notion of art, as it is being known today, is a recent creation dating back to the European enlightenment. The new rich long distance merchants wanted to impose their new values of individualism, materialism and private property on their societies. So they commissioned craftsmen painters, who worked for the church, to illustrate the application of these new values through “3 obliged subjects” that would come to dominate Western painting along the next 400 years. What I mean by “3 obliged subjects” is the following:

• landscapes around the mansions
• portraits of those living in the mansions
• stills of the objects on the tables in the mansions

Detaching painters from the church was a risky business that had to be remunerated handsomely. Artists working for the church were the lowest on the social stratification ladder while artists working for the new rich merchants grew rich rapidly. Becoming rich their social standing increased exponentially. And the more the societal acceptance of those new values increased, under the impact of their ‘illustrations’, the more famous they themselves became. This explains how artists started to be seen as rare individuals who project an image of beauty and truth that somehow reflects a difference with the common man. And so one comes to understand how artists have come to be seen as exceptional individuals who ended up being sanctified for the convincing powers of their visual signs.

Modernism was a rejection of these ‘3 obliged subjects’ as well as the earlier Christian paintings. Modernism has its roots in High-Modernity. A time of triumphing rationality, science and technology, that disrupted the habits of slow moving 19th century Western European societies. Influenced by the ferments of intellectual life of its time the avant-garde expressed the need to illustrate reality at a deeper level but it largely failed. Merchants and propagandists then sized the opportunity of the resulting crisis of Modernity to impose the power of the market but this resulted in the exclusion of meaning and the imposition of form as the subject of the artworks ‘reserved’ for the market.

It is in this very specific context that Chinese artists encountered Western Modern painting.

Art in China never had this accent of exceptionalism that art reflects in the West. The Chinese worldview is not the narrative of a religion. It always was the narrative of scholars-bureaucrats, mandarins, or educated ones who had successfully passed exams. For 4000 years education in China served to groom the scholar in the service of the imperial bureaucracy. The scholar was also a philosopher, a poet a musician, a calligrapher, and an artist. In other words the scholar was considered a professional in the management of the institutions of empire but when writing, playing music drawing calligraphy, or painting he was no more than an enthusiastic amateur… But perhaps the most important difference with Western artists was that the scholar was a man of knowledge, who at the image of the ancestral shaman, was directly applying his knowledge to his painting or his music… This is particularly the case in calligraphy and Xieyi painting.

Calligraphy combines philosophy, poetry, and visual rendering of written characters. Xieyi painting is somehow like an extension of calligraphy. It requires the same support and the same tools. Xieyi is a visual condensation of Taoist philosophy that also includes a short calligraphic comment about the subject that has been ‘illustrated’. What I mean by this is that Xieyi is a visual rendering of the Tao of the object that is being illustrated. So you definitely need to be well versed in traditional Chinese philosophy, or in the Chinese traditional worldview, before starting to even think about painting in the Xieyi style.

Evidently things have changed somewhat in new China after its hurricane-like entry into Modernity but the memory of Traditional Chinese philosophy, and the national worldview, have never been forgotten. The country opened to the rest of the world just after the end of the cultural revolution that had been ten years of complete chaos. And for artists the opening of the country was an opportunity to taste the ‘freedoms’ so much lauded by Western propaganda. It was also the time when a minority tasted the promises of the Western art-world.

The result was a wild run indeed. Many artists savagely ‘aped’ past and present Western schools. A very short few among them were lured by the Western art market and their names now are synonymous with big sales figures that make younger new entrants dream of becoming famous. But the fact of the matter is that aping the West resulted in no more than a gigantic cacophony that, at the image of what happened in the West, plunged the minds of all in the deepest of confusions. Monetary value was also a concept never heard of. In this complete confusion a small minority of painters tried to reconcile Chinese traditional Xieyi painting with Western painting. Others ran after Western merchants who had started collecting works by the end of the seventies beginning of the eighties.

Some of these collections total thousands of works that were bought each for the equivalent of a peanut and these merchants are now negotiating with the art-world to cash in royal profits. But what is a thousand times worse is that these Western collectors are now trying to impose their criteria of choice on China’s society. This operation can’t be seen any other wise than as a blatant political interference in China’s cultural and artistic affairs. The way the game is being played by these collectors is to impose on Chinese society the idea that the works they bought have attained artistic authority for the simply reason of the high financial valuations they are achieving on the market. First they operated a selection of works at a time when Chinese artists had no notion at all of value. The works they bought were thus dirt cheap and furthermore, even if this was done unconsciously, their selection was made according to Western ideological and artistic criteria. Secondly the art market in China was non-existent and to some extent it is still today. So the game of these Western merchants consisted in playing their dirt cheap ideologically framed Chinese artworks on the Western art market which is largely controlled by Western capital and by Western participants in the art-world like art reviewers, art appraisers, auction houses, galleries, museums, and so on…

Confronted with such a market reality Chinese artists understandably obliged in order to make a buck and produced what Western collectors were interested to buy. What attracted Western collectors was what made a splash in the media. So selection criteria overwhelmingly favored works, that were critical of the Chinese authorities or of Chinese culture and, gained the front pages of Western media. Seen from a historical viewpoint this shall, without any possible doubt, be remembered as a marginal or anecdotal Western ideological fork on the road of Chinese art that was bought, maliciously or not, with Western easy cash. I hope Chinese collectors will have the brains to stay away from these works and make their own selections according to their own criteria. Only Chinese made collections can validly reflect the vibrations of Chinese society. Western established collections can only project the ideological vision that their financiers, consciously or unconsciously, are projecting.

What I infer in this critique of Western collectors of Chinese art is that there is no such a thing as an artistic exceptionalism that is valid universally. The world is not the expression of one but of multiple cultures and worldviews. For centuries Europe got away with the projection of the myth of its own universal exceptionalism. The US followed in Europe’s footsteps but it’s hegemony was short lived. It is indeed ending with the shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world.

After China’s opening to the rest of the world many of its artists got stuck in aping Western Modernism and the more advanced among them are stuck in the nihilism of Postmodernism without understanding that all this is well “passé” already. Our ship-world has already left the harbor of High-Modernity and is navigating in the waters of Late-Modernity. But Chinese artists have had no time to observe the world. All their attention has been concentrated on following the extremely rapid changes their society has been undergoing over the last 30 years. So their heads have been stuck in the non level playing field of the market of their own country and their eyes and minds are missing the action of the world that will unavoidably reverberate tomorrow in China itself. Only a handful are trying to reconcile what happens in their country with Western Late-Modernity. Those who succeed to reconcile these 2 stories will be remembered as the effective initiators of Modernism in China. I’m particularly thinking here about Wu Guanzhong, Liu Dan, and a few others.

Thirty Years after the country opened itself to the rest of the world the cultural and artistic scene is in total chaos. The contours of what is evolving in two heavy trends are nevertheless clearly observable:

• a play by Western market actors: since the opening of the country some Westerners assembled collections of contemporary Chinese artworks based on Western criteria. The most important among those criteria was the preference given to works expressing disagreement with the country's ways. These collections are presently fetching reasonably high valuations on the Western centric art market and are touring the exhibition circuit trying to push those valuations even higher. But the really interesting gamble is that the Western art world is presently using this reality to try to impose the idea that the works, of the artists represented in these Western assembled collections, are China's most significant contemporary artworks. Wow!

    

• Modernism morphs into a revival of traditional Chinese culture: After having been under the spell of Western cultural influence along the last 30 years a revival of Traditional Chinese Culture is slowly emerging that acts as a radical critique of the values of Modernity. It is definitely an antidote to individualism, materialism, consumerism and more particularly the vanity of Western high end fashion. So paradoxically Modernism in China seems to bring the country in an opposite place than it did in the West. It is reintroducing artistic and societal sense which is starting to strengthen China's societal cohesion while in the West Modernism concluded in total confusion and participated in the societal atomization of Late-Modernity.

    
These trends, more particularly the 2nd one, are still in their very early stage of emergence. But because of their selection criteria, the works in Western assembled collections appear already out of bounds with the fusion that is taking place between Modernism and traditional Chinese culture. So my bet is that these Western assembled collections will gradually be falling on the way-side of the mainstream Chinese art market and will end up being perceived as historical aberrations as they rightly should be.

But how can Modernism possibly fuse with Chinese traditional Culture?

We have to remember what Modernism was all about. I addressed this question in my last post. In summary the introduction of the application of rationalism and science in economic production shattered intellectual and cultural certainties. In this particular context Modernism questioned the validity of all past worldviews and after rejecting all of them it postulated that the role of art is to discover the truth at deeper dimensions of reality than the first dimension image that projects on the retina. What distinguishes the approach of Western and Chinese artists in the search of such deeper dimensions is that:

• while Western artists rejected the past they had nothing to fall back on. As I have shown earlier each paradigm shift in the West took the form of a rupture  that erased all traces of the past from the level playing field so that something totally new could take its place: tribal societies / animism transformed into empire / religion and empire / religion morphed into Nation states / Modernity. The rejection of the past, by avant-garde artists in Paris at the turn of the 20th century, was such a rupture with the past understanding of what reality is all about. So a new understanding had inevitably to be created from scratch. But the avant-garde failed in its self assigned mission and so the whole adventure of Modernism in the West concluded in the intellectual confusion that “whatever is art”. After a few decades of this confusion a reaction emerged in the form of Postmodernism. But while its diagnostic of the situation was correct Postmodernism erred in the remedies:  – rejection of beauty,  – content to be defined by ideation about bits and pieces of reality (4). Sadly the remedies of Postmodernism proved to foster nothing else than absurdities and this was directly responsible for an accentuation of the individual’s societal disconnect that ended in societal atomization which is when societies are effectively dead… and as such Postmodernism served as a very useful antidote against all opposition to big capital holders.

• Modernism in China entered as an outside influence and resulting in aping Western Modernism and Postmodernism. Thinking and questioning the past was not really part of the equation. It was more the promise of dollars from Western market participants and the lust for Modernity’s promised consumerism that shined in the minds of Chinese artists. But thinking never quit the minds of a minority of scholar-artists who were very fast unsatisfied with that whole aping thing. The real turning point or the awakening has to be seen as a reaction to Western arrogance and interference that forged the perception of a need to better understand the origins of China’s own culture, worldview, and civilization. That’s how the thinking about Chinese Traditional Culture fused with Modernism and resulted in a rejection of the Western model of rupture with the past. Continuity, in the particular context of China, is not at all a conservative ideological rejection of Western ways but more like an affirmation of the Chinese identity in reaction to Western ideological pressure.

    
The tiny minority of scholar-artists who are trying to fuse Modernism with Chinese traditional culture have had no time to observe the rapidly changing geo-political and ecological realities and are thus missing out on the emergence of Late-Modernity in the West. We are confronted here to a reality that we observed at play again and again in history. I mean the different stages of an evolutionary process being present simultaneously. Late-Modernity emerged in the West while some countries had still not entered Modernity at all. In the Meantime China entered High-Modernity at the speed of light and so only very few of its artists have grasped the true nature of Modernism. These same few have now to come to terms with the reality of Western Late-Modernity that soon enough will put their country and their fellow citizens on notice that the music of Modernity is stopping to play. That’s when the notion of After-Modernity will come knocking on the doors of their minds.

Chinese Late-Modernity, like its present form in the West, will announce a historical shift away from Modernity. But the coming paradigm shift to After-Modernity is going to have far wider and deeper consequences than the ones caused by Modernity even if it shocked the traditional Chinese culture into catatonia. It is urgent that Chinese intellectuals and artists awake to the fate of humanity. We are indeed entering a historical transition of gigantic proportions. Modernity is falling and the seeds of what comes after Modernity are just starting to prepare to sprout. This is a process that will unfold over decades but what is important to know is that the process already started.

“The arts at the service of life” is an expression that is particularly well adapted to our present times: “… to re-make contact with its natural evolution, biological and societal, it is imperative that humanity catches the genie of egotism, or is it egoism, and imprison the ego in its bottle anew. But the most important lesson that we should never forget again is that human life relies on knowledge to ensure its preservation and knowledge relies on the arts to spread in the minds of all. A society that lost its memory about the role of knowledge and the deep meaning of the arts is a society that is dead and solely continuing to move further under the impact of inertia till it collapses. Late-Modern Western societies are such societies...” (5).

Over the span of its history China developed a pragmatic philosophy of life that could be its prime richness going into the future. Lets remember that art should trace the path of the Tao; not only the Tao of mountains but also the Tao of societies and the Tao of life. The knowledge about the Tao of life and the Tao of societies should help us shed some light on what awaits humanity in After-Modernity. The truthfulness and the authenticity, gained from the knowledge of the Tao of life and of societies, will be the most momentous prize that Chinese artists could ever be dreaming about. Their success at re-catching that truthfulness will also be their greatest gift of common sense to the whole world.
___________




Notes.

1. Wikipedia gives the following definition of biological evolution: “Heritable traits are passed from one generation to the next via DNA, a molecule that encodes genetic information”
In societal evolution worldviews act the same function as DNA in biological evolution. That means that cultural memes that are reproduced over the generations are integrated in the worldview of a society thus becoming its heritable traits.
This idea of societal evolution is the subject of:From Modernity to After-Modernity. Book 2, Volume3: Culture, worldviews, civilizations”

2.  in “The Grundrisse” (Fundamentals of Political Economy Criticism). The chapter on “Forms which precede capitalist production” page 397.

3.  “The analects” by Confucius.

4. Jean-Francois Lyotard’s 1979 book “The Postmodern Condition” is a diagnostic about the collapse of worldviews in Western societies and the hegemony of all things initiated by capital whose control of science destroyed philosophy and later financialized the arts out of their societal function. While the diagnostic of the situation was correct Postmodernism erred in the remedies: rejection of beauty and content to be defined by ideation of bits and pieces of reality. But by rejecting beauty Postmodernism was going against the grain of biological and societal evolution which necessarily leaves it being a loser. The primacy of ideation was not necessarily wrong. What was wrong was to fail to grasp that ideation had to be connected to worldviews which Lyotard had diagnosed had collapsed and so the ideation ended up being tied to bits and pieces of the whole of reality. This intellectual misfiring was responsible for the erring by postmodernism into the absurd.

5.  In Book 2, Volume 5. Chapter 2.  3.3. “The arts under Modernity”