Please Listen to Ai Weiwei

During the  1980s, I had the privilege of studying in China for a year. It was an unforgettable experience. I went through a full-fledged culture shock and survived a winter on dishes of Chinese cabbage laced with five peanuts at a time. Eating peanuts with chopsticks was no easy matter. Back then China was poor. Reform, however, was kicking in and the sheer dynamism of a huge country just emerging from years of civil war and failed socialist experiments was impressive. In the following months I discontinued my courses and rote-learning at university to make a journey through China proper. Talking to people on trains and a ship on the Yangtse River greatly improved my Chinese and made me get to know the country. Wandering through cities showed me the beauty of the architecture and the delights of its dishes. I came back with bags full of books, old and new. It fostered a love for an ancient country with a great culture, cuisine and above all, people, that has stayed with me ever since.

In those days, Beijing boasted an artisan village, that constituted something of a free-zone for all kinds of young people who did not want to conform to the strictures of China’s Party-state. Some of my fellow students lived there and went on to become respected academics. Ai Weiwei was there too pioneering new art forms and ways of political discourse. Ai has since grown into one of China’s most renowned artists and a freethinker. In those days before the 1989 Tiananmen Incident, the village was only possible because reformist leaders such as Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang allowed for a certain measure of freedom. Some in the West saw the village as the beginning of a civil society that would ultimately foster freedom and democracy in a rapidly developing nation. Wealth would soon lead to democracy, they reasoned. They had failed to take account of the resilience of the Party-state and the fabric of Chinese society. The failure of the student and workers movement in 1989 marked the end of attempts at democratisation for the foreseeable future.

In a recent interview with the BBC, Ai Weiwei has said that it is too late to curb China’s global influence. He rightly points out that the West should have worried about China decades ago. The problem is that Western politicians and China scholars have for very long entertained a far too rosy and rather condescending picture of China. As China developed, so the story went, it would grow more like the West. There was no such thing as cultural differences. During China’s early reforms, critical voices amongst Western academics were silenced or side-tracked. As China’s economy grew, a growing number of businesses acquired a stake in the development of the country. There was little or no attention for the nature of China’s political regime. Now China is a growing global power with an agenda of its own, there finally seems to be a rethink.

Western understanding of China, to my mind, has been marred by a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Chinese Party-state. China scholars focusing on politics have viewed the country as a version of the secular Marxist-Leninist system. It was seen as little more than a carbon copy of the Soviet Union. After 1989, despite some setbacks it would surely develop into a democratic market economy. In this view, the People’s Republic of China represented a radical break with China’s Confucianist past. Events since the Tiananmen Incident have shown there is far more continuity with China’s past than once thought. This is not the place to go into the details of the CCP’s ideology, but some main outlines here are relevant. In China –Imperial or Communist—the leadership has always claimed to possess the monopoly on truth. In a sense, Confucianist or Communist, the regime in power has been what Westerners would call a theocracy. Only, the Chinese “God” has always been an impersonal force of Heaven or History. Its aim is to align society with a perceived order of Heaven (Confucianism and static) or History (Communist and dynamic), in which there are fixed relations of senior and junior between people. Equality is virtually unknown as a positive value in Chinese thought. Unlike Western nations, Chinese politics is not geared towards the individual freedom and well-being of its citizens, but towards the collective wealth and power of the state to which individual interests must always submit. Individual well-being is merely a possible side effect of the power of the state. As the Mao-cult and Xi Jinping’s assumption of imperial powers show, even under Communism this mindset only ever allowed for one supreme leader.

Ever since the late nineteenth century thinker Yan Fu, Chinese intellectuals have been intent on restoring China’s legitimate pre-eminence on earth through the acquisition of wealth and power. Since the 1980s, China has successfully sought to emulate Japan in its drive for economic development. Relying on a solid bureaucratic system and traditions of entrepreneurship, the state has been extremely effective in its concerted and planned drive towards modernity. In forty years’ time, China has lifted its more than one billion population out of abject poverty into a relative ease. A great feat by any standards. There is now a thriving middle class of business owners and professionals. The Party-state is nervous, however, of too powerful billionaires and any critical thinking. Billionaire Jack Ma has had to step down as director/owner of Alibaba. Countless others have seen their wings clipped. The clampdown in Hong Kong suggests there is far more contention in Chinese society than one would suspect. Many ordinary Chinese know societies such as Taiwan and Hong Kong are freer, more democratic than theirs. The Party-state is fearful of ideological spillovers from places it does not control. Clearly, not everyone in China shares the elite’s authoritarian and imperialist ideas, although nationalist pride runs strong throughout the country. China’s press and internet are largely shut off from the outside world and closely monitored. The Party-state has allowed private enterprise and society at large to develop within a Party cage. Since a couple of years, all privately owned companies must have Party members in their boards of directors. This is to ensure that every business works in the interests of the Party. The example of Huawei and its 5G network is a telling tale of this strategy. All social organisations belong to the Party or are closely monitored. Islam and Christianity are officially tolerated, but as events in Xinjiang show, can be brutally repressed. China is not only economically very successful, it is probably the world’s most efficient police state.

Yan Fu’s idea behind the drive for wealth and power was always presented as a legitimate goal against and revenge on Western colonialism and imperialism. The Opium Wars (1839-1842) against the British had left deep wounds in Yan’s and generally Chinese pride. Late in the nineteenth century, however, official Confucianism was discredited as the worldview that could find an answer to China’s humiliations. The search was on for a way forward that combined Western technology with Chinese morals. This is the backdrop against which modern Chinese politics has played out. Communism first promised to be a solution that fitted China’s bureaucratic culture. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, however, pressed home on the Chinese elite that Marxism-Leninism was not after all the ideological guarantee for China’s path to pre-eminence. The search for a better worldview has been going on ever since. From the early 1980s, there has been a quiet return of traditional Chinese ideas. Marxism-Leninism has been qualified as being “with Chinese characteristics”. In recent years, a group led by Xi Jinping’s advisor Wang Huning seems to have found the answer in China’s Legalist philosophy. Along with Confucianism, Legalism was once one of the main philosophical schools in China’s antiquity. For those with an interest in philosophy, its main philosopher, Han Feizi, is well worth a read. His theories formed the ideology of the Qin-state (of terracotta army fame; Qin is pronounced Cheen). Legalists ruled the state not through morality (as the Confucianists did), but through a leadership mystique that resorted to laws and strict regulations within an historically dynamic framework. A tightly regimented country was to develop the economic muscle to direct its military power towards all the other Chinese states. In 221 BCE, through a policy of divide and rule and after many bloody wars, Qin ultimately succeeded in its aim of the unification of the world as the Chinese knew it back then. This was the beginning of an Imperial and bureaucratic China, that lasted until 1911.

In recent years, the People’s Republic of China has begun to display a large number of Legalist traits. To all intents and purposes, Xi Jinping has made his leadership permanent, the rule by (not: of) law has been greatly strengthened and economic development has continued at a breath-taking pace. As I have outlined above, in attempt to shore up Party influence, society has been regimented more tightly. Furthermore, unlike his predecessor Deng Xiaoping, who urged the Chinese to keep a low-key posture on foreign and military affairs, Xi has been far more assertive abroad. He has reorganised and modernised the armed forces. His foreign policies have become more aggressive, especially against the United States, which is perceived as the world’s number one nation. At the same time, China has conflicts with most of its neighbours. These involve a large number of territorial disputes that threaten to develop into armed conflicts. More importantly, China has presented itself as a major geopolitical player. It has launched its Double Belt policy towards the West. It has sought to encircle India and divide the European Union. Along this route, it is building naval bases to support its growing fleet. Additionally, it has developed ties with countries that can provide it with much needed natural resources. It has been especially active in Australia, Africa and Latin America. Finally, it has increasingly been using its press and cultural outlets to influence views around the world. It often does so in the same high-handed way it is used to dealing with matters internally.

All of these are worrying developments for the West. China is changing from a country that pursues a peaceful economic development into one that projects its power through economic and other means. Already it is devising organisations and ways to by-pass the international system. Unlike the EU and other major international players, China resolutely insists on bilateral international agreements, as it will usually be the senior party. It is busy building its own global financial system with its currency, the renminbi, at its core. Lately it has started to unroll its own, officially backed e-currency. It has issued large loans to countries through which it has gained power and influence. All of this would sound normal for a large country with economic clout, but it is the aim for which this is done that gives pause for thought.

Ai Weiwei is right. It is too late to curb China’s growing influence. In a sense, it would also be unwanted to do so. China is a very large and increasingly prosperous country that legitimately deserves a prominent place in this world. Its people, products, science and culture have much to recommend. Its people are rapidly becoming a valuable part of the world community. The international community should however be in no doubt about the intentions of China’s political elite. China has a deeply intolerant political system that will not hesitate to export its brand of authoritarianism to other states. It will continue its attempts at becoming the most powerful nation on earth. Whether it will succeed in this is by no means a forlorn matter. Whether internal democratisation will ensure that this rise will be a peaceful and freedom-loving one remains to be seen. In the meantime the world should be firm in its commitment to our international system of free, equal and sovereign nations. Multilateral agreements should make clear to China that friendship and trade are welcome, but that armed intervention and threats are not. Territorial disputes should be resolved, not through threats or force of arms, but within the framework of international law. China’s leaders should be told that our political freedoms, such as the freedom of expression, are matters of principle and non-negotiable. That includes open and free discussions of China and its policies in other countries. That also includes a debate with China on internally observing certain norms that the world community has agreed upon as basic rights for all. Citizens, after all, should not be the slaves of the state. Only then can we continue to enjoy China as a valued member of the international community. For that, I am sure it is still not too late.