Читать книгу What Does China Think? - Mark Leonard - Страница 9

This book is about the development of a new Chinese world-view. It shows how China’s quest for intellectual autonomy will act as the foundation for a new model of globalization. It follows the attempts by Chinese thinkers to reconcile competing goals; exploring how they can get access to global markets while protecting China from the gales of creative destruction they could unleash in its political and economic system. It shows how China will come to challenge the flat world of American globalization with a ‘Walled World’ of China’s own creation. Inspired by discussions with over 200 Chinese thinkers and officials over a period of three years, this book tries to chart China’s recent intellectual emancipation from Western ideas on economics, politics and global power, casting light on how Beijing’s new thinking could change the world order – thereby changing the West itself.

I do not purport to represent the multitude of views held by 1.4 billion people, or even the views of all Chinese intellectuals – many have been silenced by imprisonment, intimidation or exile. The thinkers represented in this volume are insiders. They have chosen to live in mainland China – learning to cope with the regime’s regular spasms of control and loosening up – in their quest to push for change within the system. Even they have sometimes fallen foul of China’s erratic censors. Several of the protagonists of this story have been stripped of important jobs in think-tanks and journals during the years that I have been writing this book – even as their ideas have received greater backing from the government. In spite of the ever-present threat of repression, incarcerations and censorship, intellectuals in China do count. Many of these thinkers have been called upon to brief presidents, prime ministers and senior party officials. In fact, they have more influence than their counterparts in many Western countries.

Paradoxically, the power of the Chinese intellectual is amplified by China’s repressive political system where there are no opposition parties, no independent trade unions, no public disagreements between politicians, and a media that exists to underpin social harmony rather than promote political accountability. Intellectual debate, in this world, can become a surrogate for politics – if only because it is more personal, aggressive and emotive than anything that formal politics can muster. Intellectuals can articulate the concerns of broader social forces – workers, farmers, entrepreneurs – and push for change in their name. The Chinese like to argue about whether it is the intellectuals that influence decision-makers, or whether groups of decision-makers use pet intellectuals as informal mouthpieces to advance their own views. Either way, the debates between thinkers have become part of the political process, and are used to put ideas in play and expand the options available to Chinese decision-makers. Although many scholars complain that Chinese intellectuals have lost their traditional role as the social conscience of the nation – and been co-opted by the government or drawn into arid specializations – the clashes between different factions, such as the ‘New Left’ and ‘New Right’, do capture real social divisions on the ground.

Thinkers like Wang Hui and Zhang Weiying, Yu Keping and Pan Wei, Zheng Bijian and Yan Xuetong are still practically unheard of outside of China. But we will soon find our world changed by their thinking. Each has won the ear of the government with plans for reform that will change the nature of China’s economics, politics and foreign policy. They are engaged in an old-fashioned battle between Left and Right – about the size of the state, the shape of political reform and the nature of power. However, from their heated arguments a new philosophy is emerging, one that will have important implications for the world.

Of course, big decisions will always be taken by big leaders: China may not have embraced the market without Deng Xiaoping; Thatcherism would not have happened without Thatcher; the dissolution of the Soviet Union would not have happened without Gorbachev; and the Iraq War may not have been launched without George Bush. And yet it is impossible to understand the broad sweep of historical change without studying the intellectual movements that crystallize around certain ideas, on which the leaders can draw. Thatcher did not invent monetarism herself but drew on ideas which had been bubbling away for many years. George Bush was influenced by the ideas of Neo-Conservative intellectuals. Deng Xiaoping did not suddenly decide to open up China’s market; he was influenced by perspectives developed by Chinese intellectuals who had been in contact with the West. And today there are new ideas bubbling up within China that could form the core of a new Chinese philosophy, the idea of a ‘Walled World’.