Читать книгу What Does China Think? - Mark Leonard - Страница 8

In 1993, Cui Zhiyuan, a Tsinghua University professor who was then teaching at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote a seminal article calling for a new ‘Liberation of Thought’, arguing that after freeing themselves from orthodox Marxism, Chinese intellectuals should liberate themselves from their unquestioning admiration of Western capitalism. His goal was to break the boom and bust cycle that saw China embrace a new ideology every generation, and to encourage Chinese people to think for themselves. Rather than accepting the mantra that ‘there is no alternative’ to the neo-liberal agenda, he argued that China should draw on many sources to develop a new way, or as he put it an ‘alternative modernity’.

His call initially fell on deaf ears. China was still reeling from the Tiananmen massacre. Most of its intellectuals were cowed by the government’s violent response to the protests, co-opted by the Communist Party or living in exile. Party leaders were restarting their economic reforms. And the rest of the elite were too busy making money. But Cui Zhiyuan’s ideas are having an impact today, as China’s economic growth leads to a new self-confidence.

Even the nationalist Wang Xiaodong acknowledges that his country is outgrowing ‘reverse-racism’. In a recent talk, he cited the words of a well-known entrepreneur to make the point: ‘In the 1980s I went out of China for the first time, to Singapore … I was shocked by the culture, the technological progress, the urban splendour, the vibrancy of life. Our delegation dreamt “Could our country have a city like Singapore in fifty years time?” We were not hopeful. History has proven us wrong. It took just twenty-five years. Last year I went to Singapore, and in my view, it cannot compete with our Shenzhen, Dalian, Shanghai and Beijing.’

The self-confidence that comes from China’s economic miracle has – paradoxically – freed some of China’s thinkers to question the central tenets of the market revolution that produced it. Now that Chinese thinkers take their country’s giddy growth rates for granted, they are asking if the ideology of the 1980s and 1990s is really delivering all that it promised. Deng Xiaoping’s commitment to economic development, above all else, is being attacked by those who want to reduce inequality and stop the pillage of China’s environment. In the realm of political reform, some Chinese intellectuals are increasingly questioning whether liberal democracy is the right model for China in the long term. And in the realm of foreign policy, they are challenging the notion that nation states need to be marginalized by the stateless forces of globalization.

The intellectual emancipation that Cui Zhiyuan invoked is finally coming. In the same way that Europeans during the Enlightenment proclaimed that ‘God is dead’ and sought to craft a world in man’s image, Chinese intellectuals are today proclaiming their independence from foreign models and plotting the future on their own terms. The quest, according to the political scientist Gan Yang, is to draw on China’s historical experiences and create a new idea of modernity – rather than importing theories wholesale from abroad. He says:

Today we can see in China three traditions. One is the tradition forged during the twenty-eight years of the reform era … of ‘the market at the centre’ including a lot of concepts like freedom and rights. Another tradition was formed in the Mao Zedong era. Its main characteristics are striving for equality and justice. The last tradition was formed during the thousands of years of Chinese civilization, traditionally referred to as Confucian culture. In the past we have often behaved as if these three traditions were in conflict with each other. But they are not.

This is not the first time that Chinese have sought to combine foreign know-how with national identity. Confucian reformers in the nineteenth century strove to bolster the imperial system by using foreign ‘functional knowledge’ (yong) to preserve Chinese ‘essence’ (ti). And Deng Xiaoping labelled his market reforms ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’. But where earlier generations started from a position of debilitating weakness, today’s reformers are coming to terms with China’s growing strength. And, what is more, this attempt is being bolstered by an intellectual debate raging beyond the halls of power.