The China Horizon

Glory and Dream of a Civilizational State

Weiwei Zhang

• Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781938134753
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique comparée

This is a book of China's own political narrative written by one of China's leading and best-known thinkers. It is the last part of the author's "China Trilogy", which is a best-seller in China, with over one million copies sold. The book in itself is a centerpiece of the unfolding debate within China on the nature and future of the country and how it compares with the West. It addresses a hugely important issue of the day, i.e., in what way China is overtaking or may overtake the United States as the world's preeminent power. The author provides an original and thought-provoking study on how China has managed, through its own development model, to catch up and even surpass, to various extents, the United States, in terms of gross GDP, net household assets and social protection.

The book elaborates on how China has engaged itself in reshaping its institutions to ensure its smooth rise, drawing on the strengths of its own traditions, socialist legacies and elements from the West. It analyzes the weakness of the Western political institutions and discusses how China has developed its own institutional edge over the West. The author argues that as a civilizational state, China has evolved a logic of its own for development and its own political discourse which questions seriously many Western assumptions about democracy, good governance and universal values.

The book recaptures the essence of China's past glory and discusses the horizon of the Chinese dream as well as how China should meet the various challenges ahead. It offers a unique and original perspective on the future of this coming superpower. Like The China Wave, this book is both discerning and provocative, and serves as a required reading for everyone concerned with the rise of China and its global implications.

Contents:

• From Catching-Up to Surpassing
• From Myth to Truth
• Beyond the Western Institutions
• A New Political Discourse
• Glory and Dream of a Civilizational State
• Conclusion: The Logic of a Civilizational State

Readership: Researchers, policy-makers, general readers interested in the rise of China, its model of development and its global impact.
Key Features:

• It is a book of China's own political narrative written by one of China's leading and best-known thinkers
• It is part of the author's "China Trilogy", which is a best-seller in China with over one million copies sold, and the book in itself is a centerpiece of unfolding debate within China on the nature and future of the country and how it compares with the West
• It discusses a hugely important issue of the day, i.e., in what way China is overtaking or may overtake the United States as the world's preeminent power
• The author worked as a senior English interpreter for Deng Xiaoping and other Chinese leaders in the mid-1980s
• It provides an original and thought-provoking study of China's rise, its model of development and political discourse
• Its main arguments are widely shared by China's political elite today

CHAPTER 1

FROM CATCHING-UP TO SURPASSING

1.1 “Going Abroad Makes One More Patriotic”

The China Wave has been well received by the Chinese readers since its publication. As a result, I am often invited to give speeches. On such occasions, and as far as possible, I insist on having a Q&A session after my speech. I usually tell my audience: “you may raise any questions you want, the sharper the better, and if necessary, an open debate is also welcome.” Is there any point of doing research on the China model if it is not amenable to questioning? Any research in this field should stand to the most rigorous questioning and examination. Not long ago, having delivered my speech on China’s rise at a well-known university in Shanghai, I was asked by a teacher present, who spoke with a measured sarcastic tone: “Prof. Zhang, your lecture gives people the impression that we Chinese live a very happy life. If that’s the case, why do so many Chinese want to emigrate? Could you persuade them not to do so, but to stay in China?” Some chuckles from the audience, who probably felt the trickiness of the question, I smiled and answered: “You’ve put the right question to the right person, for I know many Chinese emigrants in person. Rather than discouraging people to emigrate, I would encourage them to do so, as I have made a rough estimate that among those Chinese emigrants living in the West, 70% of them, at least, have become more patriotic. Usually those who are most critical of their country at home tend to change their minds faster once they’re in the West, as they tend to have too rosy a picture of the West before they go overseas and their impression of the US and Europe comes mainly from watching movies and advertisements of the Western countries, vastly out of touch with the reality in the West.” I further remarked: “Going abroad often makes one more patriotic. This is far more effective than the Party’s political education.”

I told him then, “If you plan to emigrate to the US, I can give you a tip, as I am familiar with the city of New York. You could go there by flying from Shanghai’s Pudong Airport or Hongqiao Airport and land at the Newark Airport or any of the other two airports in New York, and you may well experience a shock, a shock of traveling from a first world airport to a third world one. If you are courageous enough, I suggest that you put up one night in Newark to see whether you could walk around in the evening.” I also gave him a piece of additional information: “there is a medical school in Newark, and one of my friends once studied there, and he told me that the best discipline at this school is the treatment of gunshot wounds, as there are frequent gun-fires there.”

Without belittling many positive aspects of the United States, it is a truism that the United States has its share of serious problems. Yet, in China, some so-called public intellectuals have projected a flawless and perfect image of the United States upon many Chinese. I said to him, “any individual with some basic knowledge of the United States knows the fact that the country consists of ‘three worlds’. If for all kinds of reasons, you fall into ‘the third world’ within the United States, you may well be surrounded by problems of drug abuse, looting, murder, and even street gunfire, and you may be consumed by fear and frustration.”

Even if you work hard enough and finally manage to become a part of the American middle class or the second world, as many Chinese students have done, one may ask these people a few simple questions: “over the past two decades, have you experienced real income growth?” “Has your net household asset increased?” “Are you confident about your future retirement life in the United States?” I guess that negative replies may not be a small number. You may even join those Americans who press for answers to why the American Dream does not shine anymore and you might even turn sympathetic towards the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. Of course, if you are able to become a part of the “first world” of the US, good luck! I will congratulate you, but such chance of success is likely to be much slimmer than in China.

As a matter of fact, the world has undergone tremendous changes over the past three decades: if you have lived in China in these decades, your wealth may have grown 5–10-folds; if you have emigrated to the US, your wealth may have experienced a depreciation of 1/5 or 1/4 in the aftermath of the financial crisis. It’s a heart-felt pain for many Chinese emigrants who have not only missed out the golden opportunity of China’s rapid wealth expansion but also become victims of the financial crisis, debt crisis and economic crisis. This situation dovetails with an old Chinese saying: the course of fortune often alternates every three decades.

What lies behind this sea change of fortune is a simple fact that China is rising with an unprecedented momentum and on an unprecedented scale in human history, and the wealth of the majority of Chinese have expanded fast. To be sure, such a rise comes at a cost, but it is evident that the United States has indeed not done well. Over the past 20 years, the wealth of most Americans has not increased, but decreased. Whether the United States is able to reverse this decline depends on whether it can pursue some substantial reforms. The world is changing; China is progressing; the US is backsliding. The gap between the two countries is closing up, and in certain domains China has overtaken the United States.

For a long time, the West has been the synonym of “developed nations” in the minds of most Chinese. Yet, the more Western countries I visit, the more internal gaps in the West I observe. Cases of “developed countries are not developed” abound. It is easy to find many “third world areas” within the so-called first world. In The China Wave, I quoted Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, who lamented, after visiting Shanghai, Beijing and Dalian in 2008:

I couldn’t help but reflect on how China and America have spent the last seven years: China has been preparing for the Olympics; we’ve been preparing for Al Qaeda. They’ve been building better stadiums, subways, airports, roads and parks. And we’ve been building better metal detectors, armored Humvees and pilotless drones. The difference is starting to show. Just compare arriving at La Guardia’s dumpy terminal in New York City and driving through the crumbling infrastructure into Manhattan with arriving at Shanghai’s sleek airport and taking the 220-mile-per-hour magnetic levitation train, which uses electromagnetic propulsion instead of steel wheels and tracks, to get to town in a blink. Then ask yourself: Who is living in the third world country?¹

I don’t think Friedman’s description is far from reality. In virtually all major American cities, there are large pockets of third world areas where no outsiders dare to enter. The same is true for the peripheries of many large and medium-sized cities in France and many districts in Marseille as well as many Italian cities.

The tendency to degenerate into the “third world” status also manifests in other aspects of the Western society: in 2003 a heat wave swept over France, claiming the lives of over 10,000 elderly people. On the New Year’s Eve, thousands of cars are usually burnt by the disgruntled youth in France every year. Street safety in Paris has deteriorated to such an extent that local Chinese complain about there being only two types of Chinese in Paris: those already robbed and those to be robbed. In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit the southern part of the US, the American relief efforts were so poorly organized that the city of New Orleans instantly degraded into a city of crimes and death. Naples, the biggest city in the southern Italy has suffered from a garbage crisis, stinking for months, and politicians there could not even reach a consensus on how to deal with it. A former leader of Italy once told me: “I have suggested to your Premier that Chinese companies may wish to purchase and manage the Rome Airport and the Italian airline.” I myself also told some Greek scholars that the Greek government’s competence in governance was far from satisfactory. I counseled them that some professional assistance from China may be helpful.

But within China, some so-called public intellectuals disparage their own country every day, opening and closing each of their comments with what the West is like and what China should do to model on it. This sounds strange or even ridiculous to those who have long lived in the West. In fact, both the West and China have their respective strengths and weaknesses. China should neither look up to the West nor look down on it. Rather it should look at it squarely as it is. Only in this way, can we understand the West accurately and objectively.

A recent popular saying in China goes like this: “Green mountains, clear waters in the West, but life is lonely and boring, whereas as dirty and messy as China is, life is exciting.” This saying is only half true. True, most Chinese dread loneliness once abroad, but such a saying reveals only the “beautiful” part of the West, ignoring its “dirty and messy” part, from squalors to drug abuse to high crime rate. Although, environmentally, China has paid dearly for its industrialization and modernization like all major Western countries did in the past. Yet, overall, the China model seems more efficient in addressing the wrongs than the Western model, as shown in China’s redoubled effort over the past few years in promoting solar and wind energy and electric cars in order to achieve sustainable development. China is moving decisively towards a “harmonious cosmos of the heaven and human life,” as ancient Chinese philosophers upheld. Now China has progressed from the phase of resolving the basic needs for its people to a new phase of what’s called “building a comprehensively well-off society”. With such a commitment, China’s environmental problem will be overcome in due course, and country will become “green mountains, clear waters and exciting life.”

Let us return to the emigration issue. With China’s rise, the issue will become increasingly apolitical, or in the words of Chinese writer Qian Zhongshu “fortress phenomenon” (weicheng xianxiang), where those outside the fortress want to enter while those inside to exit (or grass is always greener on the other side). Experiencing different ways of life in different places is already commonplace with globalization, and there is no need to read too much into it. Besides, as China is a country with the world’s largest population, any rumor can swindle large numbers of people. For instance, a rumor like “going to Iraq can make a fortune” may easily attract 100,000 people, and another rumor like “going to Afghanistan can create a fortune” may draw another 100,000 people in China. Over these years many so-called public intellectuals in China have cooked up innumerable rosy and shinning stories about the United States. No wonder many Chinese have emigrated naively assuming that the United States would provide them with “superb social welfare benefits and free medical care” without a single clue of the US legal system, low levels of social protection and strict tax regulations. After staying there for a while, they wake up to the truth and regret.

The Chinese population is so large that immigration remains a minor issue. According to official statistics, about 190,000 Chinese emigrated abroad every year from 2011 to 2013.² Furthermore, from my observation, most of those middle class Chinese who, for various reasons, have moved to the West, still keep most of their assets in China. They know only too well that, in the next 20–30 years to come, China will remain the country of prime opportunities. Capital inflow into China still far exceeds capital outflow over the past few years. The size of China’s foreign exchange reserves grew from US$2 trillion in 2009 to US$4 trillion in 2014, exceeding the US$1.28 trillion of Japan, the world’s second largest (32% of China’s).³ Floods of overseas Chinese students have returned home. In 2012, the number of Chinese students returning from overseas hit 279,290, an increase of 46.56% over the year before, equaling 70% of the total number of those going abroad to study the same year. The year 2013 witnessed another historic level: the number of Chinese students returning to China rose to 353,500, a rise by 29.53% over that of 2012; that is, an increase of 80,600 people. In contrast, there was a 3.58% increase in those going abroad for further study.⁴ Experts estimate that in the ensuing five years, China will reach a turning point where returning students will outnumber the outgoing ones. This means that China will change from a country of “brain drain” into that of “brain gain”. Some people are concerned that corrupt officials may emigrate overseas. In fact, there is no need to fret about this. With China’s further rise and growing influence, the blacklisted corrupt officials will be returned sooner or later, as what has happened since 2014.

Those who prefer to politicize the immigration issue might as well bear in mind the case of Taiwan, a so-called democracy for more than 20 years with a population of 23 million, less than that of Shanghai. But it is estimated that there are at least 1.5 million Taiwanese working, living, or studying in the Chinese mainland. If one has to politicize the issue, isn’t this a case of “voting with one’...