|
Book Review and Commentary The Dynamics, Contradictions, and China’s New Order: Society, Politics, and Economy in Transition,by Wang Hui. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2003. Hardcover $22.95. 256 pages. (Edited by Theodore Huters). One China, Many Paths. Chaohua Wang, Editor. Verso. Paperback $36. 368 pages. Introduction An explanation and a disclaimer are perhaps needed to prepare readers for what follows. This began as a review of Wang Hui’s book on China; then the Review editor suggested it become a review also of One China... and a commentary. The latter seems vital; most westerners who might read either book, as with myself, have only barely awakened to the realities of what China has become and is becoming.1 Parts I and II of what follows will be concerned with the two books, both written by Chinese scholars concerned with recent and ongoing cultural, economic and political developments in China itself. Part III will be a commentary upon and brief survey of ongoing socioeconomic gains and problems created by and for China, as gleaned from other sources. Until very recently — and for all too many, still — China has been viewed implicitly or explicitly as though its challenges to us can be dealt with as they were at the time of the Boxer Rebellion; or, earlier, as they were with the Opium Wars of mid-19th century. Then China, long subdued and used by western powers, was a distant place where it was necessary only to “send the gunboats up the river.” Now, China — with many differences to be noted — must be viewed as Britain (in hindsight) should have been viewed as it became unchallengeable in the early 19th century; as the United States deserved viewing as the 20th century began. China seems quite likely to be the juggernaut of this century. This is not meant to suggest that China, either in the near or distant future, will become the hegemonic power that Britain once was and that the United States has been. In both cases that supreme economic power was duplicated in military strength. Britain’s fall from power began slowly but ended explosively; our decline is yet to be conceded, but it is surely on its way economically; or militarily, in that to use our military strength decisively now would likely bring on our own destruction. This is not meant to suggest that China will itself become the next hegemonic power in the future — if only because (for reasons we cannot pursue here), it seems unlikely that there can ever again be a global hegemon. Be all as it may, China now emerges almost explosively as a society that westerners must understand, For those who, like myself, have only in recent years embarked in that direction, these two books can serve well as both a guide and a stimulus to further reading. Wang Hui and all but three of the contributors to One China, Many Paths teach or conduct research in China; the others, Chaohua Wang among them, study or teach in North America. Both books have a wide reach, but both, broadly or narrowly, are concerned with the causes and consequences of the pro-democracy movement of 1989 at Tiananmen Square. As with Wang Hui, many of its authors were imprisoned or otherwise punished for their participation in that momentous event. I begin with Wang Hui’s book and, as well, his chapter of One China. I Wang Hui is a prominent cultural/intellectual historian, with several volumes in that realm already or soon to be in print. But, and in addition, in recent years he has been impelled to enrich his command of economic and social history and, increasingly, to exert himself in the political realm. Interestingly, in his effort to understand China’s deliberate, rapid, and unique progression toward its seemingly bizarre version of capitalism, Wang Hui makes frequent reference to Fernand Braudel’s studies of the pre- and early modern capitalist world and to the “world systems” core-periphery approach of Immanuel Wallerstein, himself much influenced by Braudel. What he finds most relevant for China are their analyses of the role of the state. Their and his thoughts should stimulate second thoughts for those pundits in the West who believe that state-independent capitalism could ever exist; or ever has. In addition to his function as a professor of humanities, since 1996 Wang Hui has also been co-editor of Dushu (“Readings”), China’s increasingly-read and influential intellectual and cultural journal. Dushu and those in China to whom it appeals have been seen in the West as a mixture of The New York Review of Books and New Left Review, with the latter’s politics. Wang Hui demurs: In his contribution to One China (originally an interview published in New Left Review (Nov./Dec. 2000), he argues emphatically that the term “New Left” is not applicable to China’s dissenters. He points out that as used in the West “‘New Left’...consists of a complex of connotations quite specific — generationally and in its content — to Europe and the U.S.; our historical context is Chinese, not western...; it is doubtful it can be useful for understanding China. I prefer to speak of critical intellectuals; but probably ‘New Left’ will continue to be used.”2 The “social movement” analyzed at some length in Wang Hui’s book refers to the Tiananmen uprising of 1989. Customarily, it has been viewed as a student protest. Wang Hui (a participant, but not a student) provides important reasons for seeing as a much broader movement, as regards both its participants and their issues. The book was edited by the Asian scholar Theodore Huters (of UCLA), He provides a substantial and enlightening introduction that sets the stage for western readers. For most of us, as for me, the long first section of the book — “The 1989 Social Movement and the Historical Roots of China’s Neoliberalism” — can serve as a strong stimulant for further reading. There Wang Hui details both the complex of reasons for the uprising and, as well, a critical analysis of “the antihistorical explanation of neoliberalism.” He then goes on to provide a valuable critique of the “three stages of thought” following Tiananmen, followed by a provocative critique of the growing strength and incongruities of globalization and “neoliberalism” in China, Much of that, if in different ways, applies as well to the rest of the world. The immediate consequence of Tiananmen was the killing, put officially as several hundred (but probably of several thousands) of those protesting. In addition, many thousands were imprisoned and/or internally “exiled,” including Wang Hui and many of the other contributors to One China. Wang Hui was sent for a year to an extremely poor village (Sha’anxi) in Central China. That harsh experience served as the primary stimulus to what he sees as his intellectual and personal transformation — from being (as Paul Baran once put it) a “radical intellectual” to becoming an “intellectual radical.” Baran’s trenchant distinction applies to all too many of us in the academic world; left, center, or right, Our society and our university training habituate us (usually unconsciously) to see our audience as other academics. In some circumstances that may be justifiable; but for those whose writings are meant to assist movements for social change it is self-defeating to write as though our audience is made up only or mostly of other profs. Strong though that tendency is in the western world, in China it has been and remains, except for a growing minority, even stronger. For centuries, indeed millennia, Chinese intellectuals have been an institutionalized privileged class, into which most of its members were born. In Italy (where I teach half of each year), I recently had the good fortune to participate in two panel discussions led by Wang Hui. His openness in those discussions was a clear indication that his painful year in exile was the beginning of a transformation, heralded by the book he wrote soon after he regained his freedom: The revolt against desperation: Lu Xun and his world. Lu Xun was of Sha’anxi, Wang Hui’s place of exile. Living there, knowing its people and observing, even participating in, their “desperation,” he writes, /indent I suddenly realized how far my life in Beijing was from this other world. In the months and years that have followed, I have endeavored to create a link between these two worlds, and via this link to proceed to understand the events and changes that we have gone through. To a great extent, my critiques of certain of the discussions that have gone on in the Chinese intellectual sphere arise out of a sort of self-critique,a critique based on a sense of the need to reconstruct the historical relationship between the world of the intellectuals and the other world outside it. (ix) (Emphasis added.) indent/ Wang Hui was of course not alone in this shift of perspective. The Chinese revolution of 1949, led by Mao, was the beginning of what has been an endless series of dramatic changes for better and for worse in all social realms, in processes of mutually transforming interactions. A primary set of reasons for Tiananmen — 40 years after 1949 — was that so much of the “for better” had been or was being abandoned, that the forces making “for worse” in either the state or private sector had never been substantially eliminated and, since Tiananmen, more often than not, were becoming always more severe. Wang Hui deals with all of these complexities effectively and at length. He also treats them concisely in an interview for Le Monde Diplomatique (April 2002). After an inner debate, and putting myself in the position of the reader, I have concluded that some excerpts from that interview are worth including here. What follows, unless otherwise indicated, is taken from that interview: /indent Proper attention has not been paid to the interaction between state and markets. Reforms, especially, post-1984 urban reforms, led to [an upward] redistribution of wealth, and a transfer and privatization of resources previously held by the state. This benefitted new special interest groups who commandeered the process. Sharp new inequalities emerged; a decline in social security, a widening gap between rich and poor, mass unemployment, and migration from rural to urban areas, None of this could have happened without the intervention of the state, which perpetuated the political system but shifted its other functions in society. This political continuity and economic and social discontinuity gave Chinese neo-liberalism a special character and helped it ascend....To understand the origins of neo-liberalism in China we must go back to the economic transformations from 1978 to 1989, and analyze the role of the state in the making of the market economy, and the failure of the 1989 social movement, whose social and democratic aspirations were crushed that year in Tiananmen Square. Criticism of the period made the state the chief enemy, but did not understand China’s new social contradictions — that while the Maoist state had protected inequality, under the guise of equality, through coercion and planning, the new reform state transformed inequality into income differences among classes, causing sharp polarization. Critics failed to grasp that there had been deep socialist desires in the mobilization of the 1980s: Not the old state socialism with its state monopolies, but a new socialism striving for social security, equality, justice and democracy, within a context of state monopoly and rapid market expansion. There were two phases of reform...; first, in [the] rural areas, 1978 to 1984..., these reforms gradually reduced the income gap between urban and rural dwellers....The countryside moved from the people’s commune, state monopoly model, to a socialist, small peasant, anti monopolistic model....The second phase, from 1984, was urban, and is seen as the decisive moment of market expansion. But at the core of its real social content was the decentralization of power and interests, the redistribution of social advantages and interests through the dispersal and transfer of resources previously controlled by the state....[M]ergers, assets transfers and plant closures changed productive relations. With growing unemployment, the state put transfers before closures, but still maintained the basic direction...; inequalities in resources under the old system became new inequalities in benefits. The positions and interests of workers, and even of government officials, were undermined. There was no job security for the old, weak, sick, disabled or pregnant. But the reforms gave an illusion of legitimacy because of their liberating effects, the debate they stimulated, and the grassroots participation. The stability of the state in the 1980s was based on its ability to maintain this momentum, as well as coercion. The 1989 movement was motivated by deep new inequalities. In urban areas, income levels were polarized: the workers’ iron rice bowl was threatened and incomes fell. Unemployment of workers rose, inflation raised costs, social benefits stagnated....In the countryside, rural reform stagnated after 1985, prompting disenchantment. With increasing conflicts of interest in the state, everything was ready for a crisis of legitimacy. People did not approve of the planned economy, and the transformed economy was suspect when the inequalities of the reforms became apparent. It was never a question of being for or against reform; the fight was over which kind of reform. The fight for democracy, social equality and justice was crushed by state violence in Tiananmen Square on 4 June, 1989, which ended the possibilities that the social movement had opened. The [social] movement should also be seen as part of a continuum leading to the protests against the WTO in 1999 in Seattle and the IMF in Washington in 2000; the expression of utopian hopes for egalitarian democratic reform and freedom. But instead of recognizing this significance of the 1989 movement, the dominant view has been that it proved the excellence of the Western system — but ignored the real meaning and critical edge and removed its significance as a protest against the new relations, the new hegemony, and the new tyranny. After Tiananmen neo-liberalism was the only discourse....After that, income gaps among all strata, groups and regions widened, and the new poor arrived. This turning point put the old socialist ideology based on equality into direct contradiction with practice, and the old functions of ideology could not be salvaged...After 1989 the government implemented a strategy both ideologically and economically strong, and that, combined with economic reforms, became a new tyranny. Neo-liberalism replaced state ideology to become the new ruling ideology, providing direction and reason for government policy, international relations and the emerging values of the media. The creation of a market society did not eradicate the conditions that caused the 1989 movement. It legalized them. The basic problems were never resolved. The problems of the 1990s — corruption, privatization, the declining social welfare system, ecological crises, unemployment, the commodification of rural labor, mass migrations — are intimately related to pre-1989 conditions. Problems have worsened and their scope widened because of globalization. Western capitalism and its global expansion cannot become the standard for China. It must be criticized, not just for the sake of criticism, but so that history and its new possibilities can be explored. The point is not to reject the modern experience, but to turn China’s historic experiences into a resource for changes in theory and practices. The Chinese socialist movement was both a resistance and a modernization movement. To understand how the pursuit of equality and freedom led to inequalities and hierarchies, you have to question the process of modernization and find ways towards democratic processes that avoid social polarization and disintegration. indent/ As will be seen in the discussion now to follow, Wang Hui’s views of the nature and meaning of the past quarter century are contested by those who are seen as “liberals” (as that term is meant in China). II One China is strikingly different from most collections, not only in its focus but in its nature. After a lengthy introduction by Wang Chaohua (in China, the surname preceeds the “first” name), the book is divided into four parts, brief comments upon which will be provided below. Part I consists of interviews with four of China’s leading intellectuals (Wang Hui among them) with substantially contrasting interpretations of Tiananmen and what it has meant, especially but not only, to the intellectual life of China. Part II focuses on “the character and consequences” of the huge economic changes since 1989, with the emphasis more on emerging serious problems than on progress. Part III is an implicit or explicit critique of what is seen as a deteriorating social realm — rising inequalities, “industrialized” education, distressing problems for women and the young and, what its author Qian Liqun calls, “the historical amnesia” concerning China’s recent and distant past. Part IV, as indicated earlier, is a recorded roundtable discussion among three now exiled participants of Tiananmen (one of whom is Wang Chaohua), now graduate students in the USA or Canada. Some indication of their conflicting but generally gloomy views regarding the future will be noted later. Of the thirteen other contributors, nine were in middle school in 1966, when the Cultural Revolution took hold. They, as with all urban teenagers, were sent to the countryside, “suspending higher education for nearly a decade.” All lived through the years preceding and following Tiananmen; their diverse interpretations of the relevant era are what make up this unusual combination of intellectual and political liveliness. Now to a few representative elements of the four Parts, noting that the term “liberal” in China (as in Europe) connotes the “free market,” in contrast with its meaning in the United States. Those called “liberal” in China, as Zhu Xuequin puts it in his Part I interview, “call for reform of the political system,” by which he means its authoritarian excesses, and/or its interferences with the free market. And he sees what he (but not Wang Hui) calls “the New Left” as focused upon “criticizing the market system” supported by liberals. Qin Hui, also in Part I, takes a position critical of both “the New Left” and the liberals. He sees the former as wanting “to revive collective traditions to resist the spread of Western individualism..., and “consider China’s socialist legacy as an antidote to the disease of liberalism..., which he calls “Chinese populism.” The liberals, in contrast, he sees as wishing to see “state assets [as] booty to be plundered, according to the principle ‘to each according to their power’...; I have been critical of both positions.” A fuller presentation would show the four positions taken in Part I to be in substantial contrast with each other; more importantly, they reveal that the political processes of China are far from reaching a position of easily-settled resolution. A reading of the essays in Part II underscores that irresolution. In his essay entitled “A Listing Social Structure,” He Qinglian points to the many dimensions of what he terms “power-generated capitalization,” processes more genially seen as the “reforms” of the past 20 years or so: the “marginalization of the working class and the peasantry, associated accelerating increases in inequality and at the same time, spreading and deepening corruption, “the forms of which since the 80s...have changed from what was mainly individual to organized corruption and..., since 1998 to an institutional or systemic stage.” His essay goes on to expand and probe those processes; and he is brought to this gloomy conclusion: “The most crucial element missing in this society is any social movements... [except for] demographic — migrations....What we need is an entirely new social movement — one capable of both ideas and institutions.” As does the entire world. The remaining essays in Part II do little to ease the pain expressed by He Qinglian; nor do those in Part III, concerned as they are with what is seen as a contaminated educational system, the continuing, even worsening inequality of women, their movement toward equality, like the degeneration of Chinese culture, debauched by globalization. Part IV, the colloquy of three exiled casualties of Tiananmen, with surface alterations, could be mistakenly taken for something of the same were it to occur among 50-ish veterans of the 1960s in Berkeley, Rome, London — or Prague. This is not meant to demean the Chinese participants or those imagined elsewhere. It is to underscore instead their sense of mixed desperation, frustration, anger...and lingering hopes. The need to replace the status quo with a safe, sane, and decent society has not national boundaries; globalization has put us all in the same socially rickety and dangerous boat. Which takes me to the my commentary upon the larger world in which China functions. III The analyses of recent decades in China found in both of these books have understandably confined their attention to China. This Part examines what present-day China is coming to mean for both its own society and the rest of the world — most especially, but not only, as regards its already great and persisting rapid economic development. Its meaning has already been substantial; in the future it is bound to be more so. Here but a mere summary, amounting to little more than an annotated itemization of a few intriguing matters. GDP. As measured in straight dollar terms, over $1.5 trillion and rising fast, it is already greater than that of the UK and Italy. However, if the measure is that of “purchasing power parity” (i.e., what that “dollar” will buy), “Chinese urban [individual] incomes approach the buying power of Americans making $12,500 a year..., equal for working couples to $25,000 a year.”3 Note “urban incomes.” Later the vast gap between rural and urban incomes (inter alia) will be noted. Finance and trade. China is second only to Japan among the foreign creditors of the USA, and is catching up fast; given the long and virtual stagnation of the Japanese economy and the slowdowns or recessions in most of Europe, it now seems possible that in a decade or so China will have taken Japan’s place as #1 in finance and will be closing in on GDP. China is already Japan’s #1 customer; and vice versa — both positions until recently occupied by the USA. The GDP of China has been growing at or above 9 percent for considerably more than a decade. But if China were to reduce the yuan’s exchange rate, would that not reverse such processes? Probably not. The recent >2% revaluation has had virtually no beneficial effect for either Europe or the USA Given the gigantic debts of the USA, the most important question should be, “When will the blowout come?” Labor. Say “China’s economy” and the immediate response of most would be “very cheap labor.” That is indeed so; just ask Mexico. Its “maquiladoras” — infamous for paying $2 for an 8–12 hour day — are now being “outsourced” to China, where $1 dollar a day is above the average. Wages are even lower than that elsewhere in Asia — such that the much desired yuan devaluation, although it might reduce Chinese exports, would increase exports from Southeast Asia and Africa. That said, despite rapid growth and the creation of a “middle class” of urban workers amounting to 200-to-300 million, unemployment and economic desperation are high in rural China. The principal cause for that distress has been that the “reforms” of the past 25 years for the rural population have meant the transformation of their “Mao-created” communally owned lands; these are now largely private properties on which more than 100 cities (each with populations over a million) holding tens of millions of small and many thousands of large factories, office buildings, and apartments; plus innumerable dams, uncounted thousands of miles of roads — ad infinitum. The land “reforms” led to the forced migration of hundreds of millions of desperate people from the countryside, the Chinese version of the “enclosures” of Great Britain: Thus supplied with a de facto slave labor workforce, whose life span declined by about 20 percent in the first half of the 19th century (Hobsbawm), Britain’s industrial revolution flourished.4 In Britain it also gave rise to the labor and socialist movements. As will be noted soon, it has become a main basis for the growth of widespread dissent in China. China’s Capitalists. Although previously China’s modern factories were largely foreign-owned, in the past quarter century, increasingly they have become owned by Chinese. Some Chinese became factory owners because they had been important Party functionaries; others joined the Party after having become successful capitalists. What is transpiring is a form of capitalist evolution unique to China as it became both a high-tech and a low-wage economy, in ways historically not possible for any other major nation. Something of the same high-tech-low-wage activity is occurring in India, setting aside that India’s politics have never been communist. And a reminder: China and India, both with sizeable percentages of their populations technologically astute, together hold well over a third of the world’s population. Dissent. A main theme of Wang Hui’s book is that Tiananmen was both broader and deeper than a “student protest.” Tiananmen took place in 1989, more than 15 years ago. Since then, China has gone through its own “industrial revolution. But this one occurred in the modern world, where communications, information, and understanding, all connected, can transform resentment into political action in ways undreamable in the 19th — or even the first half of the 20th — century. Nor, in this connection, is it irrelevant that the rural inhabitants of China themselves amount to about half of China’s population 1.3+ billion people, a goodly percentage of whom have by now lived and worked in one or more of those “100 cities” — with all that connotes for novel influences and enhanced understanding. Nor is it irrelevant to note the offsetting significance of a tightly-ruled and politically sophisticated “ruling class,” the Communist Party of China. The future in these respects is unpredictable. Worth noting, however, is that the Party itself consists of three factions: the hard-liners of the Right, those on the Left who wish to bring about a truly democratic socialist China (much influenced by the positive achievements of Mao), and those in the Middle who are — in the middle. Wang Hui is one of the several contributors noted earlier on the Left. So, what are the forms and the “numbers” of dissent? The numbers are staggering; herewith the headline from the International Herald Tribune (2005.08.24): “Land of 74,000 protests (But Little is Ever Fixed).” The issues? /indent For reasons that range from rampant industrial pollution to widespread evictions and land seizures by corrupt local governments in cahoots with increasingly powerful property developers, ordinary Chinese seem to be saying they are fed up and won’t take it anymore. Each week brings news of at least one or two incidents, with thousands of villagers in a pitched battle with the police, or bloody crackdowns in which hundreds of protestors are tear-gassed and clubbed...; by the government’s own official tally, hundreds of these events each week escape public attention altogether. (Emphasis added.) indent/ As with Tiananmen, there are many “issues” provoking dissent; unlike Tiananmen, and despite the frequent above noted “crackdowns,” ongoing protest has just recently been given a positive response from the Communist Party’s chief, Hu Jintao, as reported in The Wall Street Journal Europe (2005.09.30/2005.10.02): China to Tackle Gap Between Rich, Poor; Next ‘Five-Year Blueprint Will Boost Social Services, Address Growing Inequities. Well, we’ll see. Setting aside the very idea of a “five-year blueprint” (China’s way of debarking from Soviet usage, which was “plan”) for a what is assuredly a capitalist economy, it must be taken for granted that, especially in this case, “the proof will be in the pudding.” That said, it remains a hopeful response; and, given current tendencies in the USA, one to envy. To conclude: As just noted, today’s China is a uniquely controlled capitalist economy; many of its key decisions have been, are now, and for the immediate future will be made by an authoritarian Communist bureaucracy. China’s is the sole major economy in the world in which swift and coordinated governmental action can be amd has been taken and been effective — for whatever reason: for gain, for protection, for better or for worse. All others are presided over by “a power elite” dominated by mega-companies. Just as striking is that in China a significant percentage of Chinese-owned companies were once (and some may yet be) part of the CCP bureacracy. China’s is therefore also the only major economy which — if and when a global economic crisis ensues — has the ability in small or even substantial degree to control its nation’s political and economic behavior. Put differently, it is the only capitalist economy which, faced by crisis, has the power and the resources to pursue policies it sees as desirable, no matter what either the public or the quarrelsome “business community” may wish. If and when such a crisis emerges — and surely it will, as it always has — China is more likely than not to function relatively well within it and emerge from it both relatively and absolutely much stronger relative to all others. In short, the time has come to pay attention to China, whether out of fear, or hope, or sheer necessity. A fine place to begin is with Wang Hui’s book. Notes I wish to thank David Barkin, URPE’s Book Review Editor, for his patience and, as
well, for allowing me to alter what was originally a review of one book (Wang Hui’s) to
become a review of two books and a commentary, I wish also to express my gratitude
to the several URPE critics of my original version, whose many points I have sought to
take into account. This and other interviews and articles with or by Wang Hui can be found on the
Internet (Google). When “Wang Hui” is brought up, there will be many items, but not all
of them are for this Wang Hui. It is pertinent to add that Dushu, and most of the media in
China are tightly supervised by the State and that dissent must either be much muted in
the media or, as is increasingly done, be accomplished on the Internet (which the State
also seeks to control); or, as is the case with Wang Hui and others. to publish, or give
interviews abroad. Wang Hui has been especially active in these regards, whether in
France, Britain, Italy — where I came to know him and his writings — or elsewhere.
Such activity is, of course, dangerous; but there is reason to believe that the dissension
within the Party has had, up to now, provided at least some restraint on censorship or
punishment. (See the section on Dissent, below.) “The Chinese Century,” New York Times Magazine, 2004.06.04. This excellent
article is most informative; it is the source of many subsequent quotations, unless
otherwise indicated. Eric Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire, New York: Pantheon. 1968. 2005.11.09 |
