Part II—Civilizations Apart, Stuck Together: China and the United States (Page 2)

Chinese Mandarins, American Knights: Law and the Matrix of Values Development

As important as the values of a nation are, equally significant is the mechanism by which they evolve. In this section, we will examine the different matrices of values development in the United States and China. More specifically, we will consider them within the context of the law, their history of development, how they shape the progression of values in each country, and the strengths and weaknesses of each system in a world of ever-accelerating change.

We must begin by defining a matrix of values development. A matrix of values development encompasses both the informal and formal systems by which the values of a people are advanced in a general sense and adapted and applied to a specific time and context. The matrix both shapes the values of a people and has values of its own.

This last point might seem a bit confusing to those who are unfamiliar with the sausage-making process that is the creation of laws and policies, but even for them, it is easy to understand with an explanation. Within any regulatory system of complexity, there are rules and there are rules about how the rules are made. These interrelate. In an absolute monarchy, one in which the highest value is obedience to the supreme sovereign, the rulemaking process is simple: Whatever the king or queen says immediately becomes law. So let it be written, so let it be done. Depending upon the relationship between the state (which is either the property of the ruler or an extension of him) and the faith of the people, these commandments may take on a religious significance greater than their legal one. In a pure democracy, there will be a procedure for making a proposal, debating the proposal, taking a vote, and (probably) recording the vote before a law is implemented. The laws are less likely to take on a religious or moral significance than they are to reflect the moral and religious beliefs of the people at the time.

A matrix of values development encompasses both the informal and formal systems by which the values of a people are advanced in a general sense and adapted and applied to a specific time and context. The matrix both shapes the values of a people and has values of its own.

The procedural rules thus described reflect and shape the values of the society in which they exist, be those values absolutist, theocratic, democratic, or something else. And these rules are a part of the larger matrix of values development. The matrix also encompasses the people who make the rules, the environment in which they work, the hierarchy of rules and rule makers (with not all rules and rule makers being equal), and the public’s perception of/investment in said rules.

As will be established in this section, China is not (nor has it been for centuries, with the possible exception of Mao’s reign) an absolute monarchy. This holds despite the emperor’s historical claims to the Mandate of Heaven, which was never unconditional and could be lost through bad governance. And the United States is not a democracy in practice. Rather, China’s governance and matrix of values development is consensus-seeking and mandarin. America’s matrix of values development is adversarial and medieval.

A note before we continue: Laws and values are treated as being harmonious and synonymous (in the main) in this section. This is not a matter of ill-considered conflation. Rather, it is entirely intentional. Laws and values may differ, but not by too much or for too long. If they do, either the laws will be ignored, the people and the government will be in contention, or the values of the people will change. The focus of this section is on the law, but the theories herein are more broadly applicable to American and Chinese culture and matrices of values development—a point we will briefly consider in a popular culture context.

In failed states and banana republics, the law may be little more than theoretical—something to be dismissed or overcome through bribery—but neither the United States nor China is a banana republic (at present). They, both the United States and China, may enforce their laws inconsistently, but by and large, their governments and their people are closely and proudly (if imperfectly) bound to their respective national values, identities, and myths.

Now, we consider the core of the American matrix of values development—that of our medieval court system.

The expansiveness and power of American courts are noteworthy. America is not the most litigious country, a distinction that belongs to Germany. Nor does it have the greatest number of lawyers per capita—that nation would be . . . Israel. Yet a purely quantitative review of the legal system in the United States fails to capture the importance of the courts in determining the direction of the nation. This considerable power of the courts is exercised through two means—case law and constitutional review.

The common law system (also called the case law system), in which judges can create laws by way of judicial opinion and decisions, is not universal. And it stands in stark contrast to one of its major competitors—the legal system established by the Napoleonic Code, in which laws are created almost exclusively by statute. The common law system is older, deriving from the English tradition of the monarch or his subordinates deciding cases as they saw fit. The Napoleonic Code is a radical revision (implemented under the guidance of Napoleon I) of the earlier civil code of France, with the power of the courts and the upper classes they represented being greatly lessened.

The fundamental difference between these systems is that of induction versus deduction. The common law is inductive: A decision from a particular case is applied to other cases that are analogous by degree (such is reliance on legal precedent or case law, meaning law developed from settled cases). The courts work, often in theory more than practice, towards the development and refinement of universal legal principles. The Napoleonic Code—the model for much European and South American law—is deductive: The law is defined and codified by the legislative branch and applied to individual cases, with precedent having little weight. In practice, neither system is pure. American and English courts enforce statutes, some of which greatly curtail the discretion of the courts. And precedent is not entirely disregarded in the Napoleonic Code countries, but its authority is more often persuasive than binding. Nevertheless, the distinction between the two is still of quite some import. (And yes, one could argue using a different line of reasoning that Napoleonic Code is inductive and the common law is deductive, but we are thinking as lawyers in this section. Let us acknowledge that there is a counterargument for every argument, pick a side, and do the best we can for our clients, billable hours permitting.)

The great strength (and weakness) of the common law is that it relies on specifics. Many cases may be so similar that they are functionally interchangeable (there are a finite number of ways to shoplift from a Walmart), but a significant minority do not. And this is where the threads of legal reasoning tangle. Cases stand to be appealed on either procedural grounds or grounds of legal interpretation. Procedural appeals occur in cases of every sort. Improper admission or rejection of evidence, problems with jury selection, and (in criminal trials) failure by a prosecutor to disclose exculpatory evidence or the defendant not being afforded effective assistance of counsel are all common grounds for appeal. But in the matter of novel cases, there is the additional question of what precedent or guiding principle applies.

Most common law systems suffer from serious inefficiencies and inconsistencies. For example, the Indian court system—established under British rule—is famously backlogged, with at least one case being entered in 1800 and remaining unresolved as of 2019. But even amongst common law nations, the American judiciary plays a distinctively powerful role that contributes to the intricacies of our matrix of values development and makes for a legal system that is inimitably boggling.

This is where the history of the United States Supreme Court and one of its most famous decisions come into play.

The United States Constitution has less to say about the courts than one might think. The structure of federal district and appeals courts (“inferior courts”) is undefined, as is the number of judges to be appointed to the Supreme Court. While the jurisdiction of the federal courts is described expansively, addressing “all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution,” the role of the Court as an active interpreter of the Constitution was never stated or clearly articulated. This role was not established by United States Congress nor the Constitution, but by the Court itself. Before Marbury v. Madison, an 1803 case regarding an end-of-presidential term appointment of a federal judge, the role of the Court was restricted to that of trying cases and reviewing appeals. It sometimes determined if the lower courts were abiding by statutes and the Constitution, but it did not declare laws invalid. This ability of the Court to function above the legislature, effectively becoming a lawmaking (and lawbreaking, if you will) entity as much as a case-deciding one, was the work of Chief Justice John Marshall.

A growing number of nations—Spain, Germany, and Greece, amongst others—have constitutional courts, but none predate that of the United States or share the same degree of worldwide notoriety. Furthermore, the authority of the United States Circuit Courts of Appeals to establish precedent specific to their jurisdiction, and the existence of state supreme courts, which evaluate statutes according to their own criteria, adds layers of complexity.

The effect of this complex system of distinct and sometimes overlapping jurisdictions and constitutional interpretations is to make governance in the United States resemble that of the Holy Roman Empire, a land with one emperor, but many kings. And as the power of the courts grows, the system becomes more medieval, not less.

Professor Robert A. Kagan analyzed the role of courts (the appeals and supreme courts included) in American life, describing our governance as being one of adversarial legalism. This model is not necessarily the most legalistic, most legislated, or most restrictive. Other nations may have considerably more (and stricter) laws on anything from product labeling to assault to environmental regulations and laws on recycling. The difference is in the degree to which the courts and lawsuits brought by private parties can transform policy. Activist attorneys—those who seek to expand concepts of liberty in ways never envisioned by the Founders, to greatly limit the rights of businesses to high and fire employees, and to redefine basic concepts of identity—have had considerable success. They have persuaded the courts to radically reinterpret both the United States Constitution and federal statutes a great many times.

Within this profoundly anachronistic legal system and matrix of values development, change is made not by democratic politicking or technocratic adjustment, but by pleading at the court of the relevant sovereign. Not every decision in America is made this way. In addition to the state and federal legislatures, certain established bureaucracies are large and powerful, with rules and rulemaking procedures of their own. But our point stands in a general sense. And that state (but not federal) judges are often elected, does not negate the feudal nature of the courts. The Holy Roman Emperor was elected as well, and the incumbent advantage of judges is so great as to give them what amounts to lifetime appointments.

Within the framework of adversarial legalism, attorneys are not mere advocates for clients, they are knights jousting before an audience of lords and commoners.

The judiciary and its many fiefdoms hang above every other social system—from schools to businesses to all points in between. The adversarial legalism described by Kagan shapes not only our legal interactions, but our social, business, and personal ones.

Within the framework of adversarial legalism, attorneys are not mere advocates for clients, they are knights jousting before an audience of lords and commoners.

Much of this fighting is mercenary, fame-seeking, or some admixture of the two, but to assume that greed or narcissism is the sole motive energy for members of the legal profession is to deny evidence to the contrary. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) historically (if not presently) took defense of the First Amendment seriously, as did its attorneys, even when they strongly opposed the beliefs of those they were defending. Probably the best known of these cases was National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie. In this legal drama, a Jewish ACLU attorney, David Goldberger, argued for and won the right of neo-Nazis to march through a community in which a considerable number of Holocaust victims lived. (The organizer of the march eventually agreed to move the event to Chicago, where it occurred with little violence.) Jokes about even Nazis wanting their legal representation to be kosher aside, the case demonstrated adherence to principles over convenience, self-interest, or fortune. Goldberger did achieve notoriety, but much of it took the form of infamy, with Goldberger finding himself both the subject of considerable public criticism and—as one might anticipate—less-than-welcome at his local synagogue.

Brown v. Board of Education (ending school segregation), Miranda v. Arizona (of Miranda rights fame), Roe v. Wade (abortion rights, amongst other things), District of Columbia v. Heller (right to bear arms), Obergefell v. Hodges (right to marriage for same-sex partners)—The fact that average American can recognize (if not fully understand the ramifications of) at least a few of these case is noteworthy. The courts, originally intended as the weakest branch of government, have become the coercive social-engineering engine of both first and last resort.

The defining element of legal adversarialism (and the American matrix of values development of which it is a part) is its promotion of courtly combat. It holds the argument, the performative fight, and the power of persuasion as the best and most efficient tools by which social norms and values should be developed and imposed. And he who won the argument becomes the most relevant truth.

As power concentrates within the judiciary and quasi-judicial structures, the stakes of argument and adversarialism increase, as do the intensity, prevalence, and sophistication of adversarial tactics. Evolutionary pressure forces each iteration of amateur and professional advocates to perform better than the last, whose techniques have been widely disseminated. At worst, passion, meaning opinionatedness and bellicosity, may grow to be seen as inherent goods, irrespective of their utility.

The super-prioritization of either consensus or combat can lead to a deviation from what C.S. Lewis called “natural values,” which he tied to the Dao (as interpreted through his personal religious beliefs), and by extension, constructal law. A minority of great conviction, regardless of the truthfulness of those convictions, may prevail over those whose understandings of the world are grounded in reality but who are less inclined to fight for what they see as being self-evident truths.

This bloodthirstiness, with all its love of winning and desperate fear of loss—eat or be eaten whenever you open your mouth—is both part and parcel of the omnipredatorial culture and an active driver of it.

Conversely, deviation from the Dao resulting from a desire for consensus results in errors of a different sort—those bending towards the unexamined assumptions of the quiet majority and the most conservative of philosophers. It may also lead to competitive compliance, an example of which can be found in the focus on testing within China. Other examples present themselves in every part of life.

Consider beauty (and the lack thereof).

Matrices of values development are recursive in that they are both self-referential and can, more or less fractally, repeat across scale. Most of this section addresses matrices of values development within the legal and bureaucratic context, but their mechanisms of operation apply throughout the society into which they are integrated.

In South Korea, a nation strongly influenced by Ruism and consensus-seeking (and thus an adequate proxy for China in this argument), plastic surgery intended to reduce one’s aesthetic flaws and produce a uniform appearance of attractiveness is ubiquitous. Per capita, the South Koreans spend more on cosmetic procedures than the people of any other nation. Nearly a third of women between the ages of 19 and 29 report having undergone at least one such operation. Stated simply, Koreans, the women most of all, are competitive in the realm of appearance.

And then there is the American opposite of this—body positivity, which attacks the very notion of aesthetics. The body positivity movement was started independently by two different agents—an engineer in New York distressed at how those around him treated his overweight wife and Fat Underground. The latter was a feminist organization in California that produced a manifesto demanding equal rights for the obese (with the underlying assumption being that the obese did not already have equal rights) and declaring the weight-loss industry an enemy.

These competing strategies to address the matter of one’s social acceptance or rejection based on appearance are exemplars of their respective culture’s matrix of values development in action. Within the consensus/Confucian matrix, one strives for victory by achieving excellence in conformity. Within the adversarial matrix, one strives for victory by arguing against the standard one determines to be unfavorable. The Morlocks do not trundle to the courthouse nor do the Eloi flit to the mandarin’s chambers, yet they respond to social pressures just as one would expect, relying upon the tools their cultures afford them.

In the consensus matrix, the majority preference—for beauty, in this case—is the dominant force. In the adversarial matrix, a vocal minority—those who argue that the many should rid themselves of their natural and evolutionarily essential partiality for prettiness—hold sway.

In both instances, there is a ratcheting effect that will eventually lead to absurd outcomes. Korean physical standards become iteratively more particular and difficult to meet. And American demands for fat acceptance, well fed by their many successes, gain mass by the day. Within a few generations, one can imagine Korean technology advancing under market pressure to the level of providing complete face replacement and genetic engineering to reduce the odds of one’s offspring being unattractive. Such procedures and enhancements stand to be cripplingly expensive. Americans, on the other hand, are likely to be rhetorically strongarmed into such uncritical acceptance of the ungroomed and unhealthy that People of Walmart is decried as promoting unrealistic and misogynistic pictures of perfect pulchritude. Thus, every Harrison Bergeron will find himself weighed down and masked in the name of equality and emotional safety.

The direction of the value amplification—be it either in favor of conventional and conformist attractiveness or for the abolition of beauty as a recognized construct—is determined by the rules of the matrix of values development. Without some governing system, either matrix of value development may self-destruct under the pressures of modernity, but the failure mode and output vary according to matrix dynamics.

With that critical bit of context in mind, we turn to the Chinese matrix of values development—its Confucian, mandarin-driven courts, body of traditional statutes, and bureaucracy.

The law within China has a different genesis, a different role, and different history than that of anything in the West. Early Chinese law was distinctly non-Western and placed more emphasis on the maintenance of social harmony and fulfillment of duty according to Confucian principles than on individual rights in the decontextualized, abstract sense. And the family, not the individual, is regarded as the foundation of society. This is not to say that Chinese law did not practically take into account individual concerns or the circumstances in which a crime was committed. The Chinese courts could and did address such concerns, and we will consider the mechanisms by which they did so.

For the sake of our examination, the Chinese courts have been defined by two unique characteristics. The first is that their judges were not professionals dedicated to the practice of law. They were mandarins, educated in Confucian values and social theory generally, but not as attorneys per se. The second is that the courts have had (and still have) little autonomy to change the fundamental nature of law. They were (and are) an organic part of the larger system of government, serving as subordinate to the sovereign, the larger bureaucracy, and the abstract social good.

From the beginning of the mandarinate to 1995, there was no dedicated preparation system for judges. During the Qing dynasty, most adjudications and investigations were performed by local magistrates. These magistrates were responsible for tax collection, education, religious rituals, and other civil and military functions within their districts. They had no training in the niceties of the law. A given magistrate might have had a secretary or assistant knowledgeable in the Qing legal code to guide and advise him, but such was not required by statute or custom.

This does not establish that the Qing system of justice was one of hanging judges and drumhead trials. There was a considerable system of case evaluation during the Qing dynasty, with the provincial governor trying capital cases and being able to examine and modify any lower-court decisions in his jurisdiction (much like an appeals or circuit court). The Ministry of Punishment served as another check against injustice and reviewed all death sentences, which could either be implemented quickly or after an additional mandatory review during the annual Autumn Court, during which the most serious cases were examined. Finally, the emperor had final authority to accept or adjust sentences as he saw fit, including granting clemency—a power not unlike that of the state and federal chief executives.

Despite this extensive formalization of legal procedures, the system remained resistant to professionalization, with the practice of law being effectively criminalized during much of the Qing dynasty and the nation having no law schools until 1904.

Forbidding attorneys in a court may seem strange practice to those from the United States, a nation where the advertisement of legal services has become an art form. But one should not attribute this restriction to some desire of the emperor to rule unencumbered by the loquaciousness of learned legal minds. Rather, it reflects the thinking of Confucius himself, who saw the law as a weak and imperfect tool of leadership, inferior to that of guidance by example. Had the Chinese Legalist school of thought—one more cynical in its view of human nature and more concerned with controlling behavior than in cultivating morality—prevailed, the Chinese legal code and systems of governance might have looked quite different.

The Master said, “If the people be led by laws, and uniformity sought to be given them by punishments, they will try to avoid the punishment, but have no sense of shame. If they be led by virtue, and uniformity sought to be given them by the rules of propriety, they will have the sense of shame, and moreover will become good.”

Confucius

The lack of professional attorneys and judges and the Confucian skepticism of the power of law did not lead to an underdeveloped body of statutes. And it did not result in incompetent or unnuanced results in a time during which family and social relationships were complex, relatively static, and far more critical to the maintenance of an orderly society than they are today.

A defining element of the Confucian-influenced legal tradition was that it was a respecter of social rank and propriety. The relationship and social distinctions between accused and victim were often taken into account. A review of the Great Qing Code—which addressed matters civil, criminal, military, and governmental—reveals how carefully complex social and family obligations and hierarchies and the maintenance of societal and family harmony were enshrined in law. And the competing interests addressed in the Code gave the mandarin prosecutor-investigator-judge much to consider when handing down verdicts and punishments.

While some of these regulations related to social station, many of them were not so much classist as they were familial, intended to maintain the Confucian ideal of a family in which every member contributed to the common good. Thus, one would receive a lesser punishment for stealing from relatives than he would for stealing from strangers, with the underlying duty of families to care for and assist their relations seen as a mitigating factor to the crime. According to related theories of responsibility, one would receive a greater punishment for causing injury or offense to a family member to whom one was categorically subordinate.

An interesting example of the capacity of the mandarinate/judiciary to weigh these pieties and concerns and to develop compromise punishments can be found in the Case of Woman Xie.

In Xie, the father-in-law of the case’s eponym attempted to rape her while her husband was away at work. Xie rebuffed her father-in-law’s unwanted advances by liberating the offending organ with a blade, which resulted in his (and presumably his organ’s) death. Xie was thereafter detained and tried.

When deciding on an appropriate sanction for Xie, the government faced the complex issue of how to consider several competing statutes and legal theories. First, there was the matter of an attempted sexual assault, for which the assailant (had he survived) would have received a punishment of 100 strokes of a heavy bamboo cane and exile 3,000 li (about 930 miles) from home. The second part of this sentence—exile—may seem trivial to modern Americans. But it was a serious penalty in an era in which local relationships and family were important and a trip of nearly 1,000 miles was more challenging than the few days’ road trip of present. Had the assault been completed, the father-in-law (again, had he survived) would have faced death by strangulation (Article 366: Section 2).

Next, there was the matter of fornication between relatives (with relatives including the wives of certain family members) for which Xie’s father-in-law, had he done as intended with force, would have faced death by beheading (Article 368: Section 2).  

Our review of the relevant statutes suggests that raping one’s daughter-in-law was thought to be (at best) poor form in Qing dynasty China, just as it is in the United States today. The law reflects as much, giving the courts serious matters to consider. But other familial concerns—singularly irrelevant to modern legal theory but critical in Qing dynasty China—also demanded the attention of the jurists.

Competing against these laws against sexual assault were extremely specific statutes on the striking with intent to kill one’s parents or the parents of one’s husband, for which the penalty was death (Article 319: Section 1). For a woman to so much as curse her mother- or father-in-law or her husband’s paternal grandparents was also punishable by death. (Men cursing their parents or paternal grandparents faced the same punishment; however, men’s in-laws were not afforded equal protection from offense.) (Article 329) And the Code had no explicit self-defense theory upon which the courts or emperor could rely, further complicating the assessment of the case.

After several rounds of review, two years of detention for the suspect, and an action on the part of the emperor, Xie’s case was resolved. Although Xie’s original sentence was death, it was reduced to a fine paid in lieu of corporal punishment, with the emperor ordering that the case be treated as a binding precedent—an uncommon occurrence. Xie was not forgiven, nor was the slaughter of one’s relations valorized, but nor was she significantly punished.

Thus were a group of mandarins and the emperor able to craft a sentence that neither violated core Confucian principles nor placed potential future victims of similar assaults in an untenable position. Given that the average time to disposition of a non-capital felony case in the United States is 256 days (not counting appeals), a few years to address the complex legal concerns and theories in Xie’s case seems reasonable. And the events of this case occurred around 1830 (about 27 years after Marbury v. Madison for those who are interested) in a country in which long-distance transportation and communication and transmission of legal documents were difficult.

The mandarin scholar-leaders dynamically adapted traditions, punishments, and customs according to circumstances and the dictates of fairness, just as Confucius believed they should. One could reasonably argue that the Chinese system of justice proved at least as effective and nuanced in its reasoning as did the American system in the cases mentioned in Part I of this series. But the Chinese system worked on incremental, not transformative, principles. The emperor had other ways to exercise his authority if he wished to induce radical social change.

In such a system—one that favored gradual evolution of thought, in which general scholars served as investigators and judges, and in which legal professionals were forbidden—there was no role for an activist legal community. Some local reformers, such as Liu Heng, worked within the government, but their reach was limited. The attorney as knight—the American interventionistic model—would be no less out of place in the court of the emperor would than a Connecticut Yankee in that of King Arthur.

While this system had its strengths, the need for modernization of the Great Qing Code and legal customs became evident after China’s interaction with the British and American imperialists. Thus, modernization began with fits and starts. Several Chinese researchers traveled to continental Europe in the early 20th century to determine what made its legal systems effective and what parts were worthy of emulation. These scholars ascertained that all of these systems had a shared heritage of Roman law. Under their recommendation, the study of ancient Roman law was actively encouraged in China, and a new legal code based on such law was implemented, with the Great Qing Code being supplanted. (This supplantation was imperfectly executed throughout the Sinosphere, with the Code being referenced in a Hong Kong case—W v. Registrar of Marriages—as late as 2013.)

Later iterations of Chinese law incorporated (at various times) an American-style bill of rights and Soviet and German legal constructs. That these sources were all founded on radically different notions of human rights and responsibilities, the role of family, and the function of government would appear to make them singularly incompatible. Such has not proven to be the case. The Mainland legal system—much like modern music with a heavy emphasis on sampling—can be said to have borrowed from the many while remaining a creature apart.

And despite these apparent theoretical contradictions, the Chinese matrix for values development is still essentially intact. The system continues to assign a higher priority to collective than individual wellbeing—the many over the one—and favors a non-activist court system. And it, like the Napoleonic tradition, makes little use of precedence, although this appears to be slowly changing.

When left to its own devices, the Chinese legal system tends toward a gradualism that stands in sharp contrast to the destabilizing social engineering of its modern American counterpart. And its matrix of values development has proven stubbornly resistant to anglicization.

Hong Kong—its legal system already mentioned—provides interesting examples of what happens when common law courts established under British rule and the Great Qing Code meet, with the latter becoming a reference, much like case law, for the former. There remains in Hong Kong a lingering respect for families and family clans as institutions capable of some autonomy, including in regards to the resolution of inheritance and succession issues. This harkens back to ancient custom in China, in which the courts acted as much as mediators in family matters as strict imposers of order—a practice that may continue for generations more.

The professionalization of the Mainland Chinese courts is a recent development. The courts during the Republican/interregnum era (1911-1949) applied laws variably, depending upon local factors. Urban courts relied more heavily upon Western notions of law when addressing civil cases, and rural courts were predictably more conservative and inclined to rely on Qing Code. The subsequent actions of the pre-Cultural Revolution Communist China (1949 to 1965) courts fall within something of a lacuna of history. However, the available records suggest that they—the courts in Beijing most of all—served as testbeds for varied legal theories and practices promoted by the political system. In the Cultural Revolution, the subordination of the courts was pronounced, reflecting Mao Zedong’s view of legal procedure as a necessary evil. They performed erratically and with minimal autonomy from the Communist Party and its overarching goals during that era—namely suppression of counterrevolutionaries.

Normal court functions resumed not long after Mao’s death, which is not to say the courts were aligned with Western standards. A critical reassertion of the rule of law was the trial of the Gang of Four—the four most prominent and ruthless leaders of the Cultural Revolution—which began in 1980 and concluded in 1981. As imperfectly conducted as the trial was, it demonstrated a move away from revolutionary justice and towards a system of process—with indictments, judges, defense attorneys, and a hearing. Thus, the great non sequitur of Maoist rule came to an end and China resumed its slow advancement towards a modern, but distinctly Chinese, legal system.

From 1978 to 1995, one’s case might have been decided by a law school graduate, a military veteran, a court staff member, or a high school graduate recruited by the court system. In recent years, the role of judges has become more distinct, and judges are required to pass proficiency tests, with similar tests being offered to would-be attorneys.

This represents a significant shift in the Chinese legal system, demonstrating the rise of working legal professionals and an increased respect for the profession. Yet the fundamentally subordinate nature of the courts remains unchanged, as it likely forever will. At present, the Supreme People’s Court, the highest in the nation, reports directly to the National People’s Congress, which has the authority to add or remove judges as it sees fit. At worst, we could accuse the Chinese legal system of being a puppet of the political system. But such may be less accurate than it is a misunderstanding of the long-established role of courts in the Chinese tradition. Most charitably, we could describe it as embodying neither rule of law nor rule of man, but rule of common weal.

With our recently improved knowledge of the Chinese legal system and matrix of values development in relation to those of the United States, we can advance this section’s thesis. The mandarins and knights are behind us, but never far away. And Milgram—last mentioned in the first article in this series—trails them both: Regardless of law or matrix of values development, the average man is passive. He is neither knight, nor mandarin, nor inclined to question either.

Now, we ponder what effect, if any, this matrix has had and is likely to continue to have on China’s economic, cultural, and technological development.

Belief, Philosophy, and Development in Practice: China, the West, and History

When considering the above Chinese beliefs and values and how they and their matrix of development differ from those of the West, at least two questions may come to mind:

1. Is there something inherently limiting in Chinese beliefs—in the abstractness of Daoism, the rule-following and conservativism of Ruism, the nonattached morality of Buddhism, or the interaction of the three—that caused China to fall behind the West, despite the former’s considerable history of applied science and technology?
2. If the answer to the first question is in the affirmative, does the ongoing influence of these beliefs dictate that China will forever remain a follower of the West in more ambitious intellectual domains?

The first question is exactly the sort of negative inquiry (Why didn’t the dog bark?) that invites speculation from all and sundry, with no single opinion/answer being undeniably, irrefutably correct. But an examination of a few theories stands to be worthwhile, if for no other reason than that doing so provides some insight into how the (largely Western) theorists describe the developmental arc of China’s history and civilization.

We must distinguish between the metaphysics of a belief system—how that system defines and describes reality—and the values of a belief system, which dictate personal behavior, social interaction, concepts of justice, and (at least occasionally) affairs of state. The thesis presented in this section is that the metaphysics of Chinese beliefs likely did little, if anything, to slow China’s development, whereas the values of certain Chinese belief systems—Ruism in particular—might have had a deleterious effect. The distinction between these two—metaphysics and values—is critical, and it is one that we will consider more in the next section.

Scientist, historian, and sinologist Joseph Needham suggested that China’s philosophy of organic materialism—the view that nature is an integrated system that is unamenable to reductionism and experimental control—was a mixed blessing. It both allowed the Chinese some early technological advances that relied upon their capacity for holistic assessment of the universe and impaired the development of empirical investigation techniques. He also speculated that the Chinese view would eventually integrate with and complement the modern physical sciences, which are increasingly likely to present phenomena as emergent and complex.

Conversely, in Why the West Rules—For Now, historian Ian Morris developed a more geographical argument (covering a much longer timespan) for Western domination of the world. He posited that certain advantages in the natural environment allowed the Western peoples greater access to wealth and energy, which facilitated their economic and technological development. Thinking such as this would assign philosophy, no matter how great the thinker who developed it, the role of product more than producer of civilizational advantage. This position—similar to the one taken in this text—does not relegate philosophy to irrelevance, but sees theory as trailing practice and economic incentives. Understanding starts with authentic observation, which is inductive, organic, and universal to all intelligence (including that of the non-human variety). The better part of reasoning is post hoc and flawed.

Finally, Ken Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy suggests that the difference between Western and Chinese civilization was negligible until the 19th century. It was during this century that Europe’s easy access to coal and resources from the New World allowed it to pull ahead. As for the counterargument that access to the New World was the product of existing European technological superiority, we need but think back to the Ming dynasty and the great adventures of Zheng He. We can recall that China’s failure to reach the Americas was more the result of a political miscalculation than one of maritime ineptitude.

And these are just three of many theories attempting to explain the past and present differences in Eastern and Western economic development. There are others. Using them as a starting point, let us consider what we do know:

Assertions of present and near-past Western technological supremacy are correct. The West has dominated the world for several centuries. This will likely end soon—not long after the Chinese economy overtakes that of the United States—but a forecast of sunshine tomorrow does not negate the reality of today’s rain (or vice versa). China had no equivalent to the European Age of Enlightenment and the subsequent rise of positivism, the latter of which shifted Western thinking away from the abstract and unfalsifiable to the physical and empirical. The lack of these intellectual upheavals may have slowed the development of Chinese science, technology, and engineering. But may is not a synonym for must.

Relevant or not, the West’s philosophical shift was recent. The Enlightenment began in the 17th century, and Auguste Comte developed positivism in the 19th century. As for who—China or the West—was ahead before then depends upon whom one asks. What can be noted with certainty is that the Western world rose to unquestionable prominence, pulling far past China in science, technology, and material wealth, during the reign of the forever insecure and extremely conservative Qing dynasty. This dynasty was strongly incentivized by its outsider status to avoid radically altering the culture and traditions of a distinct people—the Han majority—lest it be accused of destroying a civilization that was not its own to harm.

As for Needham’s argument of theory before practice—meaning that the non-empirical theory of organic materialism prevented Chinese technology from advancing beyond a certain level—history offers a firm rebuttal. Before the latter half of the 19th century, Western natural philosophy was permeated with untested theories—of the humors, of luminiferous aether—which were so off the mark as to be meaningless. Yet innovation preceded understanding.

The first marine chronometer—a tool essential for calculating longitude was developed in 1730 by John Harrison, a carpenter who built his first wooden clock when he was 20 years old. Harrison had no formal scientific training and began his work decades before positivism came into being. His first design was too inaccurate for navigational purposes, but such did not deter him. And the 30 years Harrison spent refining his design (completing his award-winning iteration in 1761) were not dedicated to pondering abstract concepts, but in active experimentation—the same sort of experimentation used to perfect designs throughout human history and prehistory.

We should not neglect to note how quickly philosophies and views can be adapted to their times. Rates of innovation are elastic in that they are sensitive to market forces, hence the extremely rapid development of technology during wartime and the motivational power of prize money—the pursuit of which drove Harrison for decades. And culture is neither concrete nor water. It is closer to a non-Newtonian fluid—apply a little force and it responds as would a liquid, apply too much and it acts as a solid.

Chinese metaphysics cannot be faulted for the civilization that developed it falling behind the West. Rather, the emphasis on stability over growth (a product of both Manchu policy and Ruism) within China during a critical era of global development produced an environment in which there was no immediate pressure to advance said metaphysics.     

Chinese metaphysics cannot be faulted for the civilization that developed it falling behind the West. Rather, the emphasis on stability over growth (a product of both Manchu policy and Ruism) within China during a critical era of global development produced an environment in which there was no immediate pressure to advance said metaphysics.           

The Self-Strengthening Movement (1861-1895), an attempt at infrastructure and military modernization that concluded a few years before the Hundred Days of Reform began, succumbed to the abortive pressures of a sclerotic Confucian mandarinate. But this is not an unequivocal testament to the failure of a given philosophy (or philosophies), for such resistance to change is likely as much the result of structural and economic factors of a more mundane and temporal origin. Let us not forget that Christianity demands obedience to authority and that one offers those who smiteth thee on the one cheek the other also. Yet the historically Christian nations have proven to be some of the most intellectually productive, rebellious, and militarily competent.

Now there is the matter of us—the Americans—resting on our laurels. To determine why we do this, we must engage in an investigation into the effects of structurally induced complacency. To answer how this will affect future rates of innovation in the United States, we will need to pull from our knowledge of history, economics, sociology, and psychology.

In any culture, scientific thinking and a spirit of honest inquiry are the exceptions more often than the rule. We are a hierarchical species, finely attuned to indications of power and status. We may prefer the confidently wrong over the hesitantly right, and the profoundly wrong can be some of the most confident of all. Science offers no certainty. And we are certainty seeking animals. Every theory remains (at least in theory) a theory that any person acting as a scientist, regardless of credentials or the lack thereof, could potentially challenge and disprove. To be true to their profession, scientists must have loyalty to process and rigor, not to people, and not to personal comfort of either the social or material sort. At best, this is a tall order. At worst, it is a mile-high one, suited to none but the most tenacious amongst us—those with a refractory (and occasionally masochistic) passion for the truth that is strengthened by the withering heat of nearing it.

Amongst the many warnings given in President Eisenhower’s address, one of the more relevant is that “in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” Consider this and the effects of the near monopolization of research funding by the government—of undeniable importance during Eisenhower’s time, and far more so today—and think back to the contrasting matrices of values development.

Highly literate in a canonical arcana few outside their group have the method or means to effectively challenge, with a language (or dialect) of their own, and governed by a leviathan paymaster—such describes the Qing mandarinate to a T. It describes our emergent technocratic overlords no less well. The American scientific/academic funding complex is nominally positivistic, not Confucian, but its structural dynamics stand to transmogrify it into something functionally indistinguishable from a consensus-oriented matrix of values development. In any stable, centralized society, a certain respect for bureaucratic order and conventions overwhelms and erodes the spirit of risk-taking and free thought. At its worst, this can prove singularly corrosive to innovation.

The larger American matrix of values development remains feudal, but the scientific/academic funding complex is a system somewhat unto itself. Yet it is not strictly mandarin. Here are the key differences between it and the Chinese matrix:

1. The traditional Chinese matrix was populated with generalists, whereas the scientific/academic funding complex is populated with specialists.
2. The traditional Chinese matrix interacted with the public regularly, at least at the level of county magistrates, whereas the members of the scientific/academic funding complex are shielded from interaction with the unwashed peasantry.
3. The traditional Chinese matrix placed great emphasis on social cohesion within the family and larger community. The scientific/academic funding complex addresses family and ordinary social relations obliquely. Essentially technocratic, this matrix treats community relationships (outside the academy/matrix) as either experimental curiosities or archaic insofar that they interfere with the ability of the siloed matrix to propagate its foundational worldview.

Describing the American scientific/social science/technological class as mandarins would be inaccurate. A better term for American experts might well be siloed mandarins due to the disconnect they have from both those in other fields and society at large. And the system of which they are a part could be fairly described as the siloed mandarinate matrix of values development (hereafter shortened to siloed matrix).

The siloed matrix is fundamentally similar to the Chinese consensus matrix in that both value harmony and agreement over combativeness and competition. The siloed matrix differs from this in that harmony is valued within the field of expertise, but not necessarily in relation to anything or anyone else.

The most relevant effect of this construct is that it can slow the advancement of understanding and innovation, even in fields one might assume are pure and outside the realm of politics. For example, theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder observes that mathematical elegance has come to be taken as an essential element of working theories in her field. She also argues that adherence to this prerequisite, which is difficult to violate within the consensus-driven siloed matrix of values development, has interfered with the process of discovery by positing ideas that are not even wrong. In a field in which access and credibility are controlled by a select number of institutions and officials—one that is gatekept—consensus is enforced in many ways. Financial restrictions (denial of access to grants), limitations on employment opportunities (denial of tenure), and subtle social pressures have the potential to be every bit as effective tools as is the violence of governments. Imposed consensus is not identical to groupthink. Groupthink typically lacks an economic element.

None of this is to say that Daoism, Ruism, or Buddhism have not influenced the development of China, just as Christianity and the earlier pagan traditions absorbed and supplanted by it surely did as well. But within this specific domain—that relevant to the growth of empirical knowledge—we cannot establish with any certitude that the traditional religions and philosophies of China in their metaphysical aspects impaired her development.

What we can establish is that the matrix of values development in which a body of knowledge exists can shape its direction and rate of advancement. This is not a matter of metaphysics. It is a matter of socioeconomic, cultural, and political factors of far greater complexity. In the United States, one of the few fields that is proving highly adept at advancing humanity’s understanding of its fundamental nature is marketing. Driven by and driving technological innovation—in everything from artificial intelligence and data science to the fundamentals of psychology—marketing is big, complicated, and effective. But its paymasters—companies—demand results, not ego-stroking and consensus. Both the strength and importance of marketing and the power of market incentives to produce good (actionable) research will be considered in the sections that follow.

Much of what we have addressed thus far occurred in the past, where innovation occurred. The present and future are no less relevant.

Metaphysical Drag and Values Drag: Effects on Industriousness and Innovation

After considering the past, we turn to questions of the present: If the answer to the first question is in the affirmative—meaning that the tenants or practices of China’s major beliefs somehow slowed the nation’s technological and scientific progress—is this relevant now? Does the ongoing influence of these beliefs dictate that China will forever remain a follower of the West in more ambitious intellectual domains?    

Perhaps this line of inquiry seems unnecessary. We have already made some effort to establish that the first question should not be answered in the affirmative, at least in regards to the metaphysics of Chinese beliefs. Yet not all may agree with the line of reasoning used in the previous arguments. Thus, we will proceed as though our reasoning has been proven inadequate and consider the relevance of metaphysical drag. Additionally, we will take into another matter—that of values drag—and argue that neither it nor its metaphysical cousin will prove of no more consequence to China in the next century than they will to the United States.

The first possibility is that despite all evidence to contrary, adherence to Chinese metaphysics has somehow slowed the development of a robust, technologically sophisticated society and that this metaphysical drag impairs innovation to this day and will continue to slow innovation in the future. The second possibility is that the Chinese metaphysical beliefs are compatible with the accumulation of knowledge but that Chinese values have produced such a hidebound and deferential culture that the creative capacity of China’s people has been stunted.

First, metaphysical drag.

The capacity of a people to modernize their beliefs—as the Westerners did during the Age of Enlightenment—has already been examined. What has been given less attention is the ability of people to hold profoundly contradictory ones. Needham’s theory—that organic materialism interfered with the development of science in China—is appealing at first look to those singularly oblivious to human nature. It assumes that humans require logical consistency to thrive in their intellectual pursuits. Such is profoundly wrong. We are rationalizing animals, not rational ones. And the human capacity to adjust theories automatically and instinctively while maintaining the illusion of consistency is astounding. In the previous section, we noted that a people can have profoundly inaccurate beliefs in one domain but advance quite effectively in another. Thus, the peoples of Europe could develop increasingly effective navigational technologies while continuing to believe in the aforementioned luminiferous aether. This is a matter of an uneven rate of knowledge development, which is different from that of outright contradiction—the topic we consider below.

Christianity, a religion that demands (but does not always receive) belief in miracles from its adherents, has been the faith of several prominent scientists. Freeman Dyson (of the Dyson sphere, not the vacuum cleaner) furthered the theory of quantum electrodynamics, collaborated with Edward Teller to design the TRIGA nuclear reactor, and contributed to Project Orion—a plan to use atomic bombs to propel spaceships. He managed all of this without a Ph.D.—something in which he took pride. He also considered himself a “practicing Christian up to a point but not a believing Christian,” who took the resurrection of Jesus as fiction. And Christians and Buddhists alike have found no great difficulty in justifying war, despite the emphasis their faiths place on non-violence.

Even were the metaphysics of Chinese beliefs so profoundly incompatible with rational thought that anyone who studied with more than semi-serious intent for a long weekend was left in a state of enduring befuddlement, the Chinese could still progress. They, like the rest of humanity, could believe one model of the universe to be true while living in accordance with a radically different one. The human capacity for irrationality is probably one of the species’ greatest strengths. It is better that we advance haltingly, haphazardly, and with messes of contradictions than that we are so chained to logic that we never advance at all.

Next, we turn to values drag.

Ruism places tremendous emphasis on respect for one’s elders and for awareness of appropriate conduct for one’s social station—a matter we have seen to be critical in its tradition of jurisprudence. And its prioritization of stability over growth—on good governance and national development more than colonial expansion or omnipredatorial consumption—may have lessened the need for technological development. Finally, the ability of China’s civil service system to competence capture—meaning recruit the best and brightest into government and keep them from growing restive—has been mentioned as well. But there is another matter to take into account.

Daoism and Buddhism both promote a resignation to the transient, flowing nature of life so much so that attempting to change one’s circumstances may come to be seen as futile. Ruism emphasizes fate no less. This ties to fatalism—a doctrine and worldview more widely believed by Asians than Westerners. There is something to be said for the argument that a fatalistic view carried to its logical conclusion would lead to passivity and acceptance of the will of one’s superiors and the whims of nature. Fatalism could interfere with scientific investigations if only because the fatalistic would see no point—Nothing can be done to change our fate, so why worry about the cause of anything?

But one should not assume that the fatalistic are purely so. One is but occasionally so resigned to fate that he considers effort without any value at all. Few men will open their mouths, look upwards, and wait for either manna or guano to fall from on high, confident that they will eat comfortably or die uncomfortably (from salmonella), per the dictates of heaven. There is nuance to the non-fatalistic fatalism of China that may not be obvious from a culturally naïve reading of core Buddhist and Daoist texts.

An example—

Chinese students have been found to believe that academic success is the result of hard work—something one can choose (or not choose) to do—more than do Americans, who often see academic success as a product of intelligence. This would suggest that the Chinese believe more strongly in their ability to change their fate through effort than do Americans, but this conclusion is complicated by the relative frequency of the growth mindset. Compared to the Chinese, American students have this in greater abundance—meaning they believe they can change, grow, or develop their intelligence and personalities—their core being—by way of training, a fascinating notion that has been almost entirely debunked.

Stated simplistically, Americans accept as true that one can improve what he is on the most fundamental level and then achieve greater levels of success with what he has become. The Chinese believe one cannot exceed certain inborn restrictions—a more fatalistic view—but that one can improve what he does by making the best of what he has always been. And this simplification is imperfect (as simplifications are wont to be). One must keep in mind the Buddhist emphasis on achieving enlightenment—not exactly a mechanism of self-improvement as it emphasizes non-self­ but hardly indicative of resignation to stagnation.

In practice, much of what has been described amounts to a distinction without a (meaningful) difference. Hard work to improve one’s innate self and hard work to improve one’s performance (while leaving the self unperfected) can be functionally indistinguishable. Practice is practice. Hard work is hard work. Improvement is improvement, regardless of the theory behind it.

Fatalism should be a values drag—causing students and families to accept their fate. Yet the evidence bears out nothing of the sort. The Chinese have considerable confidence in the power of struggle to improve one’s condition. There are few other explanations for the herculean efforts they make better the individual, family, and national lot.

Perhaps the Chinese are less fatalistic than the research suggests.

Research comparing Chinese and Western perceptions of fate is primarily designed in the West and administered to the Chinese living in the United States or Europe. Thus, there is the distinct possibility that what the researchers are incorrectly categorizing as fatalism are actually beliefs more influenced by wu wei. To change one’s nature—as one with a growth mindset is wont to do—is to swim up a waterfall. To work within the limits of one’s abilities (and to make the best of them) might not qualify as effortless action, but it would seem less effortful than efforts to forge a new self ex nihilo.

Now we turn to the final source of values drag considered in this essay—complacency.

Complacency is not a philosophy, nor is it metaphysics. But it is a value of sorts—the valuing of a tolerable present over the chance of a grander future—and it may prove every bit as restrictive as the more inflexible moral conventions. The Qing and Ming dynasties were complacent, regarding China as the center of the world and outsiders as barbarians unworthy of emulation. China paid dearly for this. By abandoning the fruits of Zheng He’s exploits and his legacy of adventuresomeness, the Chinese authorities put themselves and their nation at a significant disadvantage relative to the Western colonial powers. The British, for example, skimmed $45 trillion off the Indian economy from 1765 to 1938 by way of taxation without representation, and the rest of the British Empire likely profited the mother country similarly. It is highly unlikely that the Chinese leadership is ignorant of this lost opportunity or would wish to make another mistake of this magnitude.

The age of colonialism has come and gone, and China, even in the days of Zheng He, showed no great enthusiasm for conquest in the proper sense of the word, preferring trade and tribute. As much the result of Chinese pragmatism as it is of the country’s decidedly non-proselytizing religions—with neither Daoism nor Ruism rewarding one for saving souls—the Chinese objective in global affairs is one of profitable, undiscriminating commerce. The Chinese may not be entirely averse to interference in the internal affairs of other nations, but they have proven no more interested in this than is necessary to promote the flow of goods, services, minerals, and money. This pragmatic strategy is exemplified and implemented in the form of the Belt and Road Initiative—a modern reimagining of the silk road.

The goal of the Initiative is partially one of soft power, with the establishment of Confucius Institutes and language-training centers around the globe, but it is primarily commercial. And unlike the ever-profligate American Empire of Debt, the Initiative may improve taxpayers’ quality of life, rather than serving as a form of reverse socialism—extracting money from the citizenry and awarding it to massively wealthy corporate interests.

The Chinese elite of today are not complacent. They are no more self-satisfied with their state of knowledge and the sophistication of industry in their country than they are with their role in global trade. Rather, their national education plan consistently emphasizes the importance of science and technology and describes several programs to attract talented foreign researchers. These programs, certainly those to lure the best and brightest from around the world, are substantial and properly funded. The borders of China may now and long into the future prove impenetrable to the average Harbin-swilling, backpack-schlepping English teacher. However, the government is willing to leave the gates ajar wide enough to allow those with real competence into the country and to permit profit to enter not much more impeded. And if research and researcher are of real utility, the powers that be will have no problem overlooking parking-ticket caliber transgressions that cause America’s fainting-couch feminists and their university stooges to cry havoc. The Chinese are capable of engaging in economically and scientifically gainful international collaborations with the outside world (despite their growing insularity) even when American institutions are less comfortable with the matter.

Yes, China’s cycles of openness and closure must have done something to slow the propagation of foreign knowledge in China and Chinese knowledge to the outside world, just as they restricted her commercial activity and growth. But without the early consolidation of China into a single nation, this would have been impossible. There is no evidence to suggest that European powers would not have done the same, but that they could not. The lack of a centralized power in Europe able to unilaterally reject an idea or forbid an activity was a strength presenting as a weakness. It is what allowed explorers and innovators to shop their ideas to one royal household after the next, such as Christopher Columbus did several times before the Spanish finally agreed to sponsor him. Yes, the errors of the close-minded mandarinate and the Qing dynasty were real, extensive, and (at least to the people of China) tragic. And yes, the Chinese matrix of values development promoted incrementalism in legal innovation, and (possibly) in technology. But we should not assume that the resultant mistakes will be repeated.

By the Chinese.

The United States is another matter, and this leads to another possibility that would cause us to answer the question put forth in this section in the negative. The Chinese rate of innovation may not equal that of the United States at its best, but the United State may fall so far from her day of glory that the Chinese need not prove overwhelmingly inventive to best her. The current Chinese research funding scheme is quite similar to that of the United States—large amounts of money being distributed by a central authority. There is no compelling reason to believe that this top-down approach to science will not work as well (or as poorly) in one country as it does in another.

And there is some reason to believe that China may manage her centralized system of scientific funding better than will the United States. Politics as science is not science at all. At best, it is harmless idiocy. At worst, it can starve entire nations. Certain countries have learned this the hard way—China included—with that possibly being the one way this horrifying lesson can be learned.

Science can (and often does) serve political ends—from the development of better weapons to the creation of new technologies to control human behavior. Tyrants and tyrannies may well advance the fields of science and engineering. (The Nazis did.) But if research is to lead to the systematic discovery of knowledge—is to be of consequence—its backers must be willing to accept results that do not match their expectations. Scientists can be forced (to work more, to work harder, to publish manipulated or fabricated results that confirm this or that). Science—reality itself—is amenable to no one and nothing. Supporters of research forget this at their peril. A scientist (rather than a careerist with a science degree) who finds himself in the position of being beholden to anyone more interested in predetermined conclusions than in honest discovery would do well to find a different source of funding.

In China, this is difficult. In America, it is not much less so. But the Chinese have the advantage of having learned the wages of seeking consistency with ideology over consistency with nature. This was the result of an education that was expensive for humans and sparrows alike.

There is the distinct possibility that our science and research will suffer—has already suffered—under centralized control. The United States avoided many of the hardships of the 20th century. The closest we experienced to an agricultural failure was the Dust Bowl, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of plainsmen abandoning their farms, but relatively few deaths. And compared to China, Japan, or the Soviet Union, the United States was spared much of the agony of the Second World War. We did not suffer any great political upheavals equivalent to the Cultural Revolution, the Cambodian Genocide, or the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some of this mercy was granted by virtue of our having two of the best possible defenses against European and Japanese belligerence—the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans; however, much of it was the result of inefficiency. Our government has been too politically divided and too much a mess of overlapping jurisdictions and sometimes contradictory laws to solve our problems. Our Holy Roman Empire of judicial and legislative principalities has its advantages.

A weakness can be a strength, just as strengths are often weaknesses: The government too inept to find solutions is the one too disorganized to inflict them, in all their centrally planned horror, upon the people. And until a few decades ago, private, decentralized research played a far greater role in American advancement than the champions of government intervention might care to admit, establishing that science is not the exclusive bailiwick of government.

We should be wary of surrendering authority over knowledge to those within the siloed mandarinate matrix of values development. If this handover is completed—if science is made to conform to the correct thinking of fanatical sheep—it may not take much for China to at least keep pace with America’s scientific advances. We risk falling behind not so much from ignorance of our history, but ignorance of history in general. The mistake of allowing a knowledge elite to delegitimize amateurs and independents—the private researcher, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, to which President Eisenhower referred in his farewell address—would be grievous beyond measure. That of permitting the playfulness of the genuinely curious to be replaced by the ineptitude of the cadre, the upright misery of the ideological purist, or the sadism of the fascist would be no less so. Either stand to gift China a significant advantage in every meaningful realm of development.

None of this is to argue that the United States government should not fund science, basic research most of all (although award-winning basic research can and has been done by private industry). Rather, there should be no attempt to monopolize innovation, funding of innovation, or fair credit for ideas, regardless of the credentials (or lack of credentials) of those who have them. Nor should we allow the technocratic apparatus to become too adept at vacuuming up our best and brightest, as did the mandarinate of China: Every society needs a few discontented geniuses and outsiders. Little can change for the better without them.

Equally important is that science be supported to fuel discovery, not to produce predetermined experimental outcomes, and not with regard for the rightness, wrongness, or outright absurdity of the personal and political stance of the scientist. The apparent moral or ideological goodness (or acceptability) of the scientist is little indication of his professional aptitude, aptitude for creative discovery, or trustworthiness. Likewise, no one, regardless of prestige, prodigiousness, or frequency of publication, can be above skeptical review and attack. If we—the United States—cannot keep this lesson in mind, we will suffer mightily for it, as the Chinese and the Soviets did for long and awful decades.

Now that we have considered Chinese history and culture at length, both independently and in relation to other nations, we turn our attention to problems presently faced by China, both shared and distinct from those of the United States.

Problems, Problems Everywhere: China, the United States, and Continuity Concerns

Both China and the United States face challenges to their civilizational continuity—major existential threats. Some are unique to one nation, some are common to both but distinct from those shared by the rest of the world, and some are problems so integral to modernity that finding a nation without them would be nearly impossible. First, we consider the problems faced by both nations.

Stages of Grief, Stages of Decay: Social Relationships, Stability, and Economics in China and the United States

We will take it as established fact that Americans are isolated. There is research to support this, including that in the aforementioned Bowling Alone. America Against America makes similar observations.

Yet China is not immune to the disconnecting effects of modernity. The Chinese people have the benefit of learning from the mistakes of the United States. If they will is another matter.

The two most obvious issues faced in this domain are:

1. The decline of family
2. The (related) increase in the number of disaffected citizenry/young men

Despite the import of Confucian thinking, the Chinese family has been on the decline for decades. Even as far back as when Wang Huning was conducting his research for America Against America, divorce rates in China were on the rise. This was at least in part due to a 1981 law that made getting a divorce easier than it was years prior.

And the divorce process was simplified again in 2001 when work unit leaders were removed from the divorce approval process. (The work unit is a distinctly Communist entity that functioned within the planned economy of China as a critical organizational tool. Its importance has diminished in recent decades.)  

Despite some efforts on the part of the government to stem the tide of divorce, including the introduction of a waiting period before a divorce can be finalized, Chinese divorce rates continue to increase, and they likely will for years. And just as is the case in the United States, the majority of divorces are filed by women.

Perceptions of divorce and divorced women are changing, with China’s first divorce reality television show, Goodbye Lover, streaming on Mango TV, which is under the control of the government-owned Hunan Broadcasting Company, in 2021. That a state-controlled streaming service chose to address the topic of divorce directly is not a trivial matter.

Those unfamiliar with Chinese television may not fully understand its role in the country and national psyche. To describe Chinese television as being uniquely propagandistic is inaccurate. It is propagandistic, but American television is as well, if not always for warmongers, at least for marketers.

In China and America, the medium of television is fundamentally the same in its propagandistic power, but the message differs. Granted, the medium may well be a message itself. But such does not prevent the message within the message from being carefully controlled and engineered. In China, the messages promoted are often patriotic, with romantic ones not far behind. The rationale for government-sponsored content promoting patriotism is self-evident. The utility of promoting romance is less so. And the United States produces its fair share of romantic films as well, so what is the difference?

Unlike American television shows and films promoting the abandonment of marriage and family to find the ever-elusive oneself, Chinese television programs consistently frame happiness within the context of a stable family. Family problems are not ignored, but they are generally presented as manageable and worth solving. There are deviations from this—The Piano in a Factory took an honest and critical view of the breakdown of relationships, but it was the exception more than the rule.

For a government-backed program to directly tackle the matter of divorce, presenting it as sometimes inevitable, constitutes a radical shift. It suggests that the Chinese government is well-aware that it simply cannot turn back the clock. It is now trying to make the best of what it likely sees as a bad situation. Marriage is dying in China, just as it is throughout the developed world. For those who subscribe to Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief, we can suggest that the Chinese government is now at stage three—bargaining—with the idea being that the demise of marriage can be, if not avoided indefinitely, delayed.

Both the government and the citizens of the United States have an advantage here. We are further along the grieving process, with some in a state of depression but a fair number having accepted reality for what it is (the fifth stage). And then there is the recently added sixth stage of grief—finding meaning—with more Americans turning away from long-term relationships and discovering and creating purpose outside the framework of traditional relationships.

There is no easy way to cross the bridge (or the river, if you will). The death of marriage will lead to complex social and economic issues, and mild traditionalism (the sort found in the developed world) will do nothing to stop it. Both Japan and South Korea have seen declining marriage rates, and this is despite them having cultures that are both traditional and closely related to that of China. And childbearing rates have dropped in Japan and South Korea alike. The counterargument that these cultures are too traditional and that more socially progressive policy and culture, with better support for families, can reverse this trend, does not hold water. In Norway—probably as socially progressive a country as one could find—birth rates have been dropping for years, and one out of five men in Norway will likely never have children. Sweden, as socially progressive a country as one could hope to find, has seen declining birth rates for 70 years. And spending more time around one’s partner exacerbated declining birthrates and family disintegration: The COVID lockdowns of 2020 correlated with a baby bust (definitely in the United States and presumably elsewhere) and an increase in the number of divorces filed.

Countries with high birth rates are consistently poor, largely African, and score low on measures of gender equality. Stated another way: Social and economic progress appear to be inherently incompatible with family stability and growth. No one, regardless of political leanings or nationality, has found a way around this.

In the long term, this may be a positive trend. Depending upon whom one asks, the world may be better served by population growth or by population reduction. Either way, decreases in population growth require radical adaptation to new circumstances, most of all in the social welfare system.

Another potential problem arising from the collapse of the family is the increase in socially disengaged men. Men in societies in which there is an uneven sex ratio have historically proven to be more likely to commit crime, violent crime in particular (although recent changes in technology and culture—considered below—may mitigate or eliminate this effect).

China’s (recently ended) one-child policy had something to do with that nation’s gender imbalance, although this was an unintended consequence the government attempted to correct. China’s gender imbalance did not always favor men. Before the one-child policy, China had such an overabundance of women that Mao Zedong (jokingly, one assumes) offered to send 10 million of them to the United States to offset the trade imbalance. (Henry Kissinger, to whom Mao made the joke, assured Mao that the United States would consider the proposal.)

The problem of men in the United States and China is the same, but different. China has considerably more men of marriageable age than women. The United States and the rest of the West have no such imbalance, but they do have a considerable number of unattached men. This may lead to an increase in crime, but may is not must—a point made at least once before in this essay. Despite the growing number of unattached men, crime has dropped steadily for decades. We should not assume that this pattern will hold perfectly and without exception, but the general trend remains. The reasons for this are unclear, with everything from improvements in policing to improvements in standards of living to just about any other possible idea, being suggested as possibilities.

Two theories seem self-evidently relevant to China. The first is that aging populations are inherently less violent. The average age of people in the developed world has increased in recent decades. China’s population has aged faster. This is partially the result of China’s one-child policy. It also reflects significant increases in average lifespan in China. Another possibility for decreasing crime rates is increased access to video games has changed the behavior of young men. Intuitively, this makes sense. Video games are (or should be) entertaining. Being entertained takes time, and boredom leads to bad behavior. The more time one spends being entertained, the less time and inclination one has to rob liquor stores and brutally violate maidens. Marriage and stable relationships may or may not give men purpose, but they are time-consuming, with married men working more and spending less time with friends. Video games can do more or less the same—keeping young men busy—even more easily.

If such is the case, China’s recent restrictions on youth video game time may have exactly the opposite of the intended effect. The war on fun may cause the young men whose hobbies are its casualties to be more present in reality. But such presence is as likely to lead to them realizing the bleakness of the human condition, the futility of ambition, and the richness of their heritage of leisure as it is to make them more patriotic or engaged citizens.

At worst, the push to make every man achieve his full potential (which is almost always defined in economic terms) will lead to rebellion. If one has to work, he might as well fight. Japan, much like the United States and China, has a large number of minimally engaged men, yet its crime rates are some of the lowest of any country. The reasons for this are complex, and any attempts to reduce social stability to a single factor are bound to fail. However, one can note that Japan has relatively few crimes associated with disgruntled and disconnected men and consider the reasons for this.

A majority of men in Japan from 20 to 30 years of age identify as herbivores. These men lack enthusiasm for the pursuit of women and sex and are more inclined to engage in hobbies, not traditionally associated with masculinity. This is not par for the historical course. As late as the 1980s, Japanese men were often highly competitive and engaged in the hard-working, hard-drinking salaryman culture. This cultural transition has been observed with some interest from sociologists and outsiders, but with little fanfare or fury in Japan.

A far more unusual and distinct group of men are the hikikomori, a group of profoundly isolated men who are often unemployed or underemployed. These men, who leave their rooms or apartments infrequently, are not entirely non-violent. They are known to occasionally attack family members, but they rarely kill anyone. The elephant in the room is limited access to firearms, which does something to explain Japan’s lower firearms homicide rate. In a nation where even criminal gangs operate mostly without the use of firearms and private pistol ownership is forbidden, there are few shooting deaths.

Lack of access to guns is not the same as lack of access to weapons. Yet aside from the occasional subway stabbing by a Joker impersonator and the infrequent truck and knife attack, mass killings are rare. Potential reasons for this include (amongst many other things) the culture of entertainment and the way that failures are perceived.

Japan has a massive animation industry, a large comic book industry, and a considerable film industry. These effectively engage young men. The United States has a substantial entertainment industry as well, but those who indulge in heavy media consumption may regard themselves somewhat differently and be treated somewhat differently.

In any nation, a man who does nothing more than he must to survive is likely to be seen as a failure, but describing someone as a failure is not the same as placing blame. In an individualistic culture, such as that of the United States, a failure is at personal fault. Said failure should have made himself into a better person. This culture of self-improvement has a downside. Total control of one’s life outcomes is impossible. Luck matters. The person who holds himself fully accountable for everything that happens in his life is likely to overestimate the contributions he has made to his successes (assuming he has any) and underestimate the role of poor fortune in his failures. This leads to both arrogance amongst the successful and furious despair amongst the unsuccessful.

The counter to this is not to always find someone to blame as such leads to no less resentment and frustration. The counter (or a counter) is fatalism. This observation should not be taken to suggest that the Chinese should fully and blindly embrace fatalism: There is nothing wrong with anyone making reasonable efforts to improve his lot. But nor should other peoples strive to imitate the American culture of self-improvement too closely. As was already mentioned in this essay, Asians are more fatalistic on average than Westerners. And a bit of fatalism—perhaps within the framework of stoicism or a philosophy promoting a similar perspective—would do much to mitigate the self-hate that failed men are likely to experience. That, combined with easy access to entertainment, stands to allow for the maintenance of a more peaceful society, regardless of gender ratios, marriage rates, or levels of economic engagement. The United States could learn something from this approach as well.

None of this is meant to imply that China (or Japan or the United States for that matter) should accept the complete resignation of men from society. There are ways to more effectively engage men that could also contribute to social stability. These methods could be applied equally well in the United States and China. And they do not rely on the restoration of either the extended family or the (comparatively modern) nuclear family. This is just as well, as such an endeavor would have little chance of success and is likely to be met with less enthusiasm with each passing generation—a trend that is established in the West and emerging in Asia.

One suggestion: Instead of trying to force every young man into the most conventional model of success, both nations could mitigate the effects of fate and work to channel men’s creative interests and hobbies to productive ends. This could be arranged by providing small grants and stipends to unprosperous and unrecognized amateur writers, researchers, artists, inventors, and musicians. Funding these people—the same type who are inclined to lose themselves in hobbies, entertainment, and non-remunerative endeavors and to have minimal interest in women—has three benefits. First, it increases the odds that truly original and economically viable ideas from socially disconnected men—those without an existing relationship with the academic and research funding machine—will come to fruition. Second, it would give many of the members of our target social group—men lost in the world of entertainment—hope for a better life. Hope is a stabilizing force. Third, a grant for one’s creative endeavors is a form of recognition and a sign of respect from those in power. Men desire respect, both of the respect-as-consideration and respect-as-esteem variety. And a lack of perceived respect—being treated with disrespect or being insulted—is a trigger of violent behavior, which is to say that respect is something for which men are willing to fight. At the cost of a few hundred (or thousand) dollars, a man who is deeply aggrieved and inclined towards revolution or despair—who is feeling disrespected—can be brought into the fold by offering him respect-as-esteem for his abilities.

Thus, we have meandered to another critical point—differences in the way people of no particular status in each nation are treated. There are real dangers to relying on humiliation (an extreme form of disrespect that robs or threatens to rob the person of the ability to respect himself) of those we deem failures as a means to encourage success. If the United States and China are to avoid great political disruptions, they will need to guard against the repeated humiliation of lowborn, low-achieving, and disconnected men, of which there are many and will likely be more.

Common courtesy (or what should be common courtesy) does not require that one deeply respect another; however, a complete lack of courtesy could well be perceived as disrespect. And extreme disrespect can veer into the provocative and belittling. This is where many peoples could stand to learn from the Japanese. The famously good manners of the Japanese cost them little (if any) money, yet such polite conduct can do much to diffuse tense and potentially violent situations. Cultivating a culture in which a foundational level of courtesy is both given to and expected from those of every social station would do much to diminish the small humiliations that grind down those at the lowest rungs of society. And such a culture could invest them more (in a small way) in an environment of mutual tolerance. Inequality of outcomes is inevitable in highly competitive societies—and a winning society should be competitive. Hierarchy and the sometimes-dehumanizing effects of bureaucracy likely are as well. But displays of persistent and incandescent contempt for losers need not be.

Other methods of engaging men in society can entail shared training and work experiences in adolescence to build a sense of common identity with their male peers. None of these require the prohibition of entertainment, coercion into traditional family models, or undue reliance on the culture of self-help. And while many will rely on strict discipline, none will rely on humiliation or extreme disrespect. As for the specifics of the programs mentioned (and several others), we will examine them in Part III.

On a final note about humiliation: Americans will need to be highly cognizant of the import of avoiding slights on a national level. The Chinese have not forgotten their century of humiliation and learning how to address the aftereffects of that era will prove critical to building a functional Chinese-American relationship. This ties directly to the concept of face, which we will soon address.

Safetyism, the Small Family, and the Elderly

The last two years—from 2020 to 2022—have been the largest global demonstration of safetyism in human history. First defined in The Coddling of the American Mind, safetyism is “a culture or belief system in which safety has become a sacred value, which means that people become unwilling to make trade-offs demanded by other practical and moral concerns.” Published in 2018, Coddling refers to safetyism in the academic and psychological context more than the physical one. But the application is larger, and the unwanted consequences can be far more severe than producing students who have their feelings easily hurt. The authors of Coddling give peanut allergies as an example, pointing to research that suggests that children protected from peanut exposure are more likely to develop peanut allergies than those regularly given foods containing the offensive legume in question. Likewise, there is some evidence that the lack of exposure to microorganisms is causing children to have more allergies than they otherwise would. A summary: Risk aversion has risks of its own.

And although safetyism was first recognized in the United States, China has taken the lead in the race to completely and unconditionally eliminate risk. There are doubtless political elements to China’s grossly disproportionate and superficially irrational shutdowns. First and foremost is that the shutdowns gave the Chinese government an extremely effective means to control the 2019/2020 Hong Kong protests. Those protests, now somewhat faded from the global consciousness, were a multi-month extravaganza of disorder that combined elements of both the Black Lives Matter protests and events of January 6th in Washington, D.C. into a raging against the Communist machine. Second, it quelled potential political instability throughout the country by creating a common enemy. Third, it allowed the government to flex—to demonstrate its complete control of the Mainland population in a manner Western governments could only dream of doing.

As fortuitous as the emergence of COVID was for the Chinese government, there is little evidence that the virus was the product of intentional action on the government’s part. If anything, the events of 2020 to 2022 suggest that the national tendency towards safetyism is not entirely feigned. China’s initial failure to control the virus’s spread and the denial of a problem until aggressive actions were taken—these suggest bureaucratic sloth and ineptitude followed by forceful overcorrection more than they do the development of a master plan. They also suggest that the Chinese government and the governments of every other major nation have vastly lower tolerances for risk than they did in generations past. The 1969 Hong Kong (H3N2) influenza outbreak killed somewhere between 1 million and 4 million people globally, yet there were no national shutdowns. This was not due to the risk of disease spread being less. Air travel greatly facilitated the transmission of the virus throughout the United States, much as was the case for COVID. Yet most of life (including the Woodstock Festival) continued as normal. Given that the world population in 1969 was less than half of what it was in 2020, the per capita death rates of these illnesses may be roughly equal.

The reasons for this tremendous rise in cautiousness are difficult to ascertain. Increased exposure to social media has been found to positively correlate with higher levels of fear regarding COVID. And social media did not exist in 1969. More broadly, media of any kind is likely to overstate negative events as a matter of course. This cultivated panic may explain some of the international disproportionality of response, but within China, where broadcast media is tightly controlled, such is not likely to be the case. Yet despite many restrictions and much oversight, social media played a role in the propagation of disease dread throughout China, despite its tight regulation and the efforts to quiet medical experts.

But the growth of communications and entertainment technology cannot explain this shift towards extreme risk aversion. One factor is that we—the people of any developed or developing nation—have become more sensitive to death, regardless of how it presents itself. In 1969, the United States was at war in Vietnam, the Cultural Revolution was ongoing, commercial air travel was 20 times more deadly than it is today, and cars were little better than death traps for adults and children alike.

Additional factors that are relevant to China are the one-child policy and diminishing Chinese family size. In 1969, the average Chinese woman had six children. In 2020, she had 1.7. The latter is roughly the same birthrate as that of most developed countries, suggesting that the one-child policy did not so much force the Chinese into an artificial reproductive dynamic as greatly accelerate the nation’s move towards modernity. The difference between China and the developed is not one of birthrate, but the ongoing Confucian duty of children to care for their elderly parents. This obligation is incorporated into both the Chinese constitution and the relevant statutes. China has a pension system, but this is neither as comprehensive nor as sophisticated as those of the Western power, which saw their birthrates drop slowly. And China experienced this trend in fast forward and had comparatively little time to adapt. An aging population with comparatively few young people to support them and a small, still-developing social safety net to make up for the deficiencies—this is as much a recipe for caution as one could formulate.

The problems of safetyism, risk aversion, and a growing elderly population are not unique to Chinese people; however, they do affect China in ways that are. Solutions to these problems (for both the United States and China) will be considered in Part III.

We now turn to problems that are exclusive to China (and a few of the Confucian countries) or likely to be far more damaging to China than they would be to the United States.

Face, Mistakes, and a History of Grievances: China and Emerging National Identity

There is no Western concept precisely equivalent to face. Reputation is a synonym, but it is not the same. There is not any single Western concept that is equally expansive. Broadly stated, it encompasses, respect, dignity, reputation, self-respect, competence, and honor. One can lose face, save face, or give face. Probably the most confusing distinction between the Chinese concept of face and face used in the Western context (save face, lose face) is the lack of clear distinction between the public and private identity (and self-concept) in the Chinese variety.

Westerners make a reasonably clear distinction between the notion of the public and private self. What the community thinks of you (your external reputation) and what you think of yourself (your self-perception) are at least somewhat distinct. This is as one would expect in an individualistic society. In China, there is less of a distinction. One can overstate this difference. Most Westerners are not completely immune to the opinions of others or how others treat them, and if those around us treat us as though we are of little value, we are likely to internalize this to varying degrees. Nor do the Chinese lack a distinct sense of self apart from the opinions of the community. Westerners can be humiliated, just as can the Chinese—a point mentioned in a previous section—and the consequences for humiliating a person (American or Chinese) can be severe.

Where Westerners often do draw a brighter line is between being embarrassed, being ashamed, and being humiliated. One is embarrassed by a peccadillo or oversight, ashamed of something he has done or for which he is at fault, and humiliated by others. There may be some exceptions to the last sentence, but it generally holds. The loss of face can encompass any of these.

Americans no doubt lie to protect their reputations (or profits in the case of American companies), but the Chinese desire to save face has far greater ramifications. This is most obvious in China’s persistence in its zero-COVID strategy. Many governments tend to continue to invest in programs that are grossly impractical and tragicomically wasteful long after all doubts about their uselessness have been eliminated. But to categorize China’s repeated lockdowns as a bureaucratic mechanism gone out of control, a simple power play, a way of avoiding embarrassment, an example of safetyism, or a demonstration of China entering a cycle of closure would be simplistic. All of these are factors in the ongoing COVID shutdowns (as has already been established), but one cannot fully understand the tenacity with which the government has persisted in holding to this unsustainable strategy without taking face into account.

There is more than one layer to this. The first is the face-saving efforts of China’s leadership. Admitting error is difficult. And the sunk-cost fallacy affects government programs around the world. To acknowledge that zero-COVID was a poor strategy or even to argue that it was a good strategy based on the evidence initially available but that changes in circumstances have warranted a reevaluation would be difficult. It would be more difficult in a culture in which the difference between embarrassment and shame is fluid.

The other factor—the one that is more likely to be misunderstood than reputational preservation or the maintenance of political power—is that of national face (as distinct from the face of politicians). Since at least the 19th century, stereotypes of the Chinese being “uncivilized, unclean, [and] filthy beyond all conception,” and willing to eat anything have been in circulation. And such stereotypes are still believed by some, with fears surrounding COVID amplifying such stereotypes throughout the pandemic. It should surprise no one with any understanding of face that the Chinese did not relish the thought of being permanently associated with a virus that (allegedly) emerged from a market where exotic/unclean animals were sold as food. National face-saving also does something to explain the willingness of Chinese (in China, anyway) to associate COVID with foreigners, openly discriminating against Africans in their country in the name of public health.

In times of crisis, racism and the blaming of outsiders are to be expected, if not desired. Such happened in America during the Second World War, when those of Japanese and (to a somewhat lesser extent) German descent were interned in camps throughout the United States. We should not make too much of discrimination by or against the Chinese. Still, face has likely played a critical role in China taking a Pyrrhic approach to virus control. Hyper-fastidiousness, with government officials going so far as to soak entire cities with disinfectant, may do little to control the spread of a virus, but it serves as both a literal and psychological cleansing of the Chinese identity.

The most critical issue with being so closely bound to face is that it can make correction of significant problems perilously slow. It also makes the Chinese easily manipulated. All cultures have a strength/weakness (most have many). That of the United States is for its people to see themselves as an exceptional people in an exceptional land—the shining city on the hill—which makes them vulnerable to calls for adventurism and planetary-scale social reforms. That of China is for its people and leadership alike to see their nation and Han culture as having been wronged over the past centuries.

This predates Western influence by decades. Anti-Qing sentiment has been a consistent unifying force in Han Chinese politics since at least the 18th century. Chinese secret societies (some of which were criminal, some of which were closer to fraternal organizations) claimed “oppose the Qing and restore the Ming” as a common motto. And anti-Qing sentiment was common throughout the Chinese diaspora. Were the more than 200 such organizations spread throughout late-Qing China opposed to Qing rule not testament enough of Qing unpopularity, Sun Yat-sen having founded an anti-Qing fraternity in Hawaii should be.

The problem with the above—this victim’s mindset—is not that the narrative of China (and the Han people) being oppressed by foreigners is necessarily wrong. The century of humiliation was real, and the damage to the Chinese people and economy was lasting. One can see parallels between the American use of Victimhood as Justification/Victimhood as Shield as discussed in the previous essay and that of the Chinese narrative of persecution and abuse. There are differences, too. The American mindset drives people apart—isolates and atomizes—more often than not. Its Chinese counterpart brings people together. But the problem at the heart of each of them is the same. A mindset of victimhood, be it in the United States or China, often encourages excuse-making over improvement. Such a mindset impairs the ability of a person, a people, or a nation to move forward. And those who cannot advance past their history of grievances, however well-documented, are bound to be defensive and reactive when there is no reason for them to be so—when they should be offensive and proactive. To get even may be fine and well. A nation need not be magnanimous with her those who wronged her as she marches towards her glory, but never can she allow herself to be so blinded by resentment that she cannot see the way.

Next, we will consider the Chinese culture of grievances and defensiveness as it relates to the Chinese economy.

Banks and Developers: Too Big to Fail/Too Proud to Learn

Given the horrific economic damage that befell the United States during and after the 2007-2008 banking crisis, we—the American people—should be careful when judging the financial policies and regulatory schemes of other nations. Our decades of deregulation and dangerously badly regulations eventually cost the American people 1.488 trillion dollars. Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, exemptions of credit-default swaps from regulation, and revisions to the Community Reinvestment Act that compelled banks to lend to the poor—these all pushed the American economy to the brink of collapse. The 2007-2008 financial crisis was the result of greed and mismanagement. And concealment of fraud happens in every nation.

We built thick vaults; we have cameras; we have time clocks on the vaults; we have dual control—all these controls were to protect against somebody stealing the cash. Well, you can steal far more money, and take it out the back door. The best way to rob a bank is to own one.

William Crawford, California Savings and Loan Commissioner

Just as was the case in the United States, much of China’s current financial instability comes from its real estate market. The Chinese, far more so than Americans, aspire to own homes. This is the result of homes being a favorite investment for the Chinese and of 1990s-era reforms that made owning a home an expectation for most families. And in a nation where many elderly people live with their adult children, parents—people who have saved for decades—often contribute to their children’s home purchases. (In certain circumstances, family friends and more distant relatives may pitch in as well, meaning the collapse of one home’s value could potentially harm several families.) Owning a home is also a matter of face, as are many things in China that Americans might more closely associate with status.

This overinvestment in the housing market, combined with the Chinese custom of paying a developer for a home several years before it is completed and relatively poor regulation of investments, resulted in the Evergrande crisis of 2021. Evergrande Group is China’s second-largest real estate investment company, it is massively indebted, and its role in the Chinese economy would be difficult to overestimate. Ironically, changes to China’s investment laws are what triggered the near-collapse of Evergrande Group, with restrictions on the debt-to-income ratio forcing Evergrande to attempt to liquidate assets to pay down its obligations. Problems at Evergrande and its peers were known before the crisis, and in the post-Evergrande landscape, property-developer defaults are spreading.

In addition to spotting its resemblance to the 2008 housing crisis, those familiar with American financial history should see parallels between the Evergrande disaster and the savings and loan (S&L) crisis of the 1980s. Both the Evergrande and S&L crises occurred due to a mismatch between holdings and debt. And both resulted in profoundly unsustainable rates of construction. The biggest difference is that of scale. The S&L crisis was large, with losses in the hundreds of billions, if not trillions (in 2020 dollars). A domino-effect collapse of the Chinese housing market, starting with Evergrande and spreading throughout its many competitors—something that has already happened to some extent—could be much larger.

One would hope that the Chinese banking system is on a sounder foundation than the decidedly speculative real estate market.

And one might well be wrong.

The health and sustainability of the Chinese banking system would be difficult for anyone not intimately connected to it to ascertain. However, one can assume that all is not well in the house when the bricks are cracking, shingles are falling off the roof, and the broken windows remain unrepaired for weeks on end. Some smaller banks in China have refused to allow their customers to withdraw money from April of 2022 to the time of this writing (July of 2022) for reasons that were unknown to the public for several months. And those who dared to protest having their life savings withheld from them faced serious obstacles, from having their COVID passports revoked to beatings by police.

To some degree, corruption is a fact of life in every country. Real estate bubbles (and the resulting ghost towns) happen in countries large and small. But China is in a unique situation. It has developed at a rate almost unparalleled in human history. The extraordinary migration of the children of hundreds of millions of farmers to the cities has shifted the economy radically and introduced problems the United States had decades more to solve. The Chinese simply cannot afford to make as many financial mistakes as the United States could. Too big to fail investment firms, an inflated property market, and unstable banks stand to massively damage the Chinese economy unless addressed aggressively.

How aggressively the Chinese can address corruption and financial instability will be (somewhat) dependent upon face. If the Chinese people and government see acknowledgment of corruption within the ranks of corporate and government officials to be a loss of face, critical institutions will gradually buckle under the weight of compounded deception. This—seeing admission of failure, mismanagement, or corruption as a loss of face—was one problem at the root of the Japanese accounting fraud crisis.

Yet this interpretation of face is not inevitable. Anticorruption measures can be presented as a sign of strength and redoubled dedication to the greater good. And to a certain extent, this is how Xi Jinping’s ongoing anti-corruption campaign has been presented. The extent to which the campaign is cynical or sincere is subject to debate; however, its value as a marketing tool appears less so. To present the rooting out of corruption as being a positive (a sign of an organization’s good character) rather than a negative (a sign of deeply rooted problems) is easy. All one need do is make the case that the corrupt are operating in a manner contrary to the values of the organization and that the corrupt are (in effect) victimizing the organization as much as the citizenry. And on average, the Chinese have far less aversion to uncertainty than the Japanese. They may be less likely to demand perfection and perfect stability from their banks and government than improvement. And if that improvement is disruptive and introduces some uncertainty, so be it.

Whether the Chinese government will address corruption and mismanagement remains to be seen. China has a long history of public and well-publicized trials and executions of drug dealers, poisoners, and corrupt officials. In the already mentioned case of smaller banks withholding deposits from customers, the government claims to have found the culprits—a criminal gang that had taken control of the banks through fictitious loans and manipulation of bank officials. This may be true. It may be partially true (with the banks’ failings being a mixture of corruption and mismanagement). It may be entirely false, and the accused may be guilty of nothing more than being at the wrong place at a time when local banks are facing insolvency (possibly related to real estate loans).

The truth is of vital relevance to the accused: Their lives hang in the balance. The truth is of no less importance to the Chinese economy and to regulators, who need to determine how a bank collapse can happen in the era of electronic recordkeeping and the ever-present oversight of citizens. And in the long term, regulators and policymakers will need to improve and expand the investment options for the Chinese citizenry so that they do not supersaturate the real estate market with the entirety of their savings. Such improved investment opportunities also stand to put the citizenry’s money to better use, promoting innovation and growth, not the endless expansion of ghost cities.

The truth matters, but the story sold to the public may be of less importance. Someone will need to hang (in either the literal or figurative sense). This much is essential for the maintenance of public faith. But that is hardly sufficient. How well the Chinese can address problems in their financial markets—if they can prove they are not too proud to learn—will do much to determine the survival of the state and the prosperity of the people.

Brand Wars: Choice, Cultural Triads, and Surviving Omnipredatorial Marketing

Let us begin with the first of two of this section’s theses before we jump down (yet another) rabbit hole: China lacks a national brand. It must develop one if it is to remain globally competitive. And this—the development of a Chinese brand—is essential, not just to China, but to the world.

Propaganda—of which branding plays a part—is a powerful tool. And this essay series has been quick to acknowledge the dangers of propaganda. Yet in this section, propaganda development—albeit it of a mild sort—is contemplated, if not outright advocated.

Why?

The answer to this question is the second thesis of this section: Propaganda constitutes a lesser form of warfare, be it against another state, against a people, or against a culture. The West has already declared a propaganda war on its people and the world. If adversaries cannot respond in kind—if they are unable to engage and defend themselves on this battlefield—they will be more inclined to engage the West on another.

Said another way: A battle of the brands is far preferable to a battle of a bloodier sort, for in the former, the most likely casualties will be our wallets and our pride. (And with proper rehabilitation and counseling, even they may recover.)

Okay, rabbit hunters, let’s jump . . .

Americans did not invent advertisements. The Chinese did. But as was the case with firearms and the game of go (baduk in Korean), they neglected to refine and propagate their invention, leaving such actions for the mentioned two up to the Europeans and the Japanese, respectively.

Much later, Americans invented something far more disruptive than firearms, more engaging than go, and more powerful than mere advertising—the brand.

The difference between advertisement and branding is one of identity. Advertisements build an identity for a product. Branding builds an identity for the buyer. And marketing as a profession—the establishment of the first professional propagandists and propaganda agencies for hire, without which the cohesive notion of brand would have never come into being—is a distinctly American creation.

When seen in action, this difference between advertising and branding is profoundly obvious, and the advertisement is almost shockingly gauche or naïve by modern standards.

Now, consider branding.

Much American innovation in marketing can be attributed to economics and national political structure—a reasonably affluent people in a reasonably free market economy are better potential consumers than the desperately poor or hopelessly oppressed. The lack of permanent and inherited social caste/class in the United States makes marketing more effective as well. In a society of weak social bonds, where family means little, and there is no recognized aristocracy, the fastest way to improve one’s rank and to assure oneself of his worth is to buy into an identity.

Branding is synergistic—We buy brands and associate with them to construct and reinforce our personal brand, which is carefully studied by the marketing powers that be so that they may better understand and control us. But let us not play the victim. We are not powerless. Our dollars matter. Both marketer and consumer are intensely attentive and responsive to the media and messages of each other.

This is where the West (the United States and the New World first and foremost) has an advantage over the East and the Old World. The omnipredatorial society is intensely growth and conversion oriented—winning over people whenever, wherever, and however it can. It must be. The omnipredator is nothing if not adaptive. And the imagined communities of the New World nations have great experience intentionally designing and building an identity in a way the Chinese, who grew their nation more organically, do not. Thinking back to Anderson, we defer to his observation of the importance of language in the imagined communities of the modern nation and consider it in the context of branding.

Branding is language-building—The language may be more visual than verbal, but such is irrelevant. As the Chinese language moved from drawings to pictograms to ideograms, so does the language constructed by marketers follow a similar evolutionary path at a greatly accelerated rate. And the ultimate goal of branding is to turn everything into a symbol and to turn every transaction, use, or presentation of a good (wearing a garment, et cetera) into a form of communication. What makes art? The Frame. The Frame allows us to distinguish between what we should recognize as art versus what simply is. The designation is as (if not more) important as the things being designated. Branding serves a similar purpose. It is the difference between that which merely is and that which is a symbol. The marketer-constructed language of consumption and display should be robust and nuanced. As in art and language, a brand should be both meaningful and flexible—open to interpretation and projection. Such gives the marketer more room to maneuver, engage, manipulate, and communicate with the consumer.

Branding is nation-building—Marketers build both synthetic nations around brands—ones with their own language, norms, values, and demands—and they build nations proper as well. Yes, the nations of the New World predate Madison Avenue but the modern, export-driven, nation-state that is deeply connected to the global economy and communications infrastructure does not. It is not a matter of coincidence that Edward Bernays—the father of research-driven marketing (and nephew of Sigmund Freud)—was a war propagandist before he convinced women that smoking was a way to stick it to the patriarchy.

Branding is nation-transforming—The present-day economies and national constructs (those of China included) are ones of consumer choice. And consumer societies are both inherently individualistic and (to varying degrees, in the extreme if not controlled) feministic. Branding generally builds upon and encourages these trends.

Why the last? Why does branding naturally tend to promote individualism and feminism?

For a consumer to fulfill his or her (more her than his, in fact) function, she must be able to choose what to buy and from whom. This—the right of the individual to make a choice—is somewhat individualistic. But there is more to the matter than that. Branding only has much effect when the preassigned identities of family, tribe, and region have been stripped away from the consumer. This leaves her wanting—wanting a sense of self, wanting a sense of group. And it is this want that the brand helps to fill. In effect, the consumer buys her way into a nation/tribe. The consumer chooses to become a conditional member of said nation/tribe. And this membership is reinforced or reasserted by way of ongoing purchases.

There is tension in this—the desire to both break free from the tribe and the desire to join one—a fact recognized by Nietzsche. And this tension is actively promoted by the developers of a brand. Where there is natural tension between individual and group, the marketer exploits it. Where there is no tension between individual and group, the marketer creates it. The consumer/branded must be forever anxious about her status and connection to the common identity. This leads to the next statement—that every consumer society will eventually become feministic, which is not to say it will prove optimally beneficial to women.

Men work more hours than women. Women make most consumer purchasing decisions. This reflects the different ways the sexes spend their time. And women are more suggestible than men. A marketer who did not dedicate most of his attention to women (except for those marketing a select range of products) would be professionally negligent. Thus, female choice becomes the center of economic attention. And the discontentedness of women becomes something to cultivate. Contented people do not try to fill the void within themselves by way of endless emotional purchases. Look back at the Virginia Slims advertisement of a few paragraphs ago. Notice the Winchester advertisement below it. Both appeal to women’s desire to best men while suggesting (with varying degrees of subtlety) that women must prove themselves against men in what is (or has historically been recognized) as men’s domains.

Advertisements for men rarely suggest that a man prove himself to be better than a woman. Instead, they often suggest that a given product will make said man more appealing to women.

One can debate the reasons for the current marketing dynamics (as many have), but how we got here is often less important than where we are. If anything, advertisements aimed at men reinforce traditional values—toughness, honor, and strength—whereas advertisements aimed at women often belittle virtues traditionally associated with women.

And advertisements that attack that which is traditionally associated with men rarely win men’s favor. Much of modern advertising directed at women, however liberationist it purports to be, denigrates traditionally feminine traits, elevates traditionally masculine ones (while, oddly enough, disparaging men themselves), and actively cultivates poor health and identity anxiety amongst the fairer sex. Marketing does not encourage women to be better women. It sets them up to become frustrated, inferior versions of men.

With allies like these, who needs adversaries?

More importantly: How does all this marketing and branding relate to China’s future?

First, there is the matter of global commerce. The Chinese government’s resistance to cultural colonization may not have endeared it to the West (not that it finds the West all that endearing), but it likely still desires to do business with the Western economies. And until the Chinese build a national brand, they will remain a country with a few shining stars of perceived quality and a great many original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). This stands to cost Chinese brands and the nation’s economy at large a considerable fortune and relegate China to the bottom of the value chain.

Second, there is the matter of the global battle of the brands, in which the Chinese must persuade both their own people and other peoples that China is a brand worth preserving. The Chinese must develop a brand of their own that will allow them to (to borrow from Marshall McLuhan) manage the message within the medium and the message that is the medium. With this, they will be able to slow and counteract some of the social corrosion brought about by consumerism without relying on some of the more heavy-handed social engineering techniques previously mentioned in this essay. Such reactive techniques will lead to backlash and may well make banned content more attractive by way of the forbidden-fruit effect. China is not North Korea. It cannot and will not become a hermit kingdom. China may be entering an era of closure, but that is not to say it can completely disconnect from the larger world of media. The Great Firewall of China, much like its stone and mud namesake, is an impressive but imperfect defense. Foreign media and concepts will (slowly) get through.

Without building up and out the Chinese brand, the nation and government stand to lose the confidence of the people. If this loss of confidence grows severe enough, the government will likely become more repressive (as a result of its anxiety) as it perceives itself as being increasingly besieged by cultural imperialists. A resentful, fearful, and unstable nuclear power—one that considers its culture and identity as being imperiled—is something no sensible person should desire to see come into being.

A resentful, fearful, and unstable nuclear power—one that considers its culture and identity as being imperiled—is something no sensible person should desire to see come into being.          

The Chinese have implemented some policies to improve the reputation and capacity for innovation of their nation’s industrial base. And the Chinese media, film, and propaganda industries have become increasingly urbane, expanding well beyond their saber-rattlingly patriotic war films and the much admired and emulated Hong Kong action cinema. Some of the more recent works have risen to the level of high art, praised by critics and retired foreign heads of state alike.

Yet much is still missing. The nation has an identity, but this is not ready for export. It has not undergone the process of consolidation and simplification demanded by the modern language of brand. This is a problem of direction more than technical competence: The Chinese have yet to determine what parts of the culture are brand suitable.

The capacity of New World nations (the United States most of all) to build their brands has been stressed throughout this section; however, several of China’s peer nations have done quite well and brand-building of their own.

South Korea has sunshine-and-fun K-pop girls, blood-soaked vengeance films, and handsome-in-a-supremely-sensitive-way K-pop boys. Japan has wide-eyed anime girls, cruel samurai, and eccentric indie films. The Japanese brand is one of technical excellence and creative unconventionality that riffs on Western themes without plagiarizing them. The Korean, one of accessible pop culture, instinctively appealing toughness, and cutting-edge consumer products that hide their extreme sophistication under a veil of idiot-proof simplicity.

The Chinese will have a harder go of brand-building than did the Japanese or Koreans. First, the Japanese and Koreans have already laid claim to much good territory. China’s brand must be distinct from either of these, and there is only a certain amount of real estate remaining. Second, the Chinese are censored. Building a domestic brand is hard. Building one under the unblinking eyes of censors is harder. Building a brand suitable for a global audience in such circumstances is a downright herculean undertaking.

Still, difficult is not impossible, and there is much to be learned from analyzing existing national brands.

Brand China (Part I): Comparisons and Construction

Every national brand can be thought to consist of three elements (a cultural triad): Masculine (M), Feminine (F), and Neuter (N). This distinction is more one of convenience than of incontrovertible logic, but it works well enough for our purposes. Rather than overanalyze this taxonomy, let us consider three national brands of relevance to China in her pursuit of a strong brand of her own. The tables below are mine (as are whatever errors and omissions they contain), and the observations upon which they are based are subjective. That much said, imperfect information (if recognized as such) can be better than none at all.

Those who find these characterizations/brand summaries simplistic or stereotyped should kindly avoid getting their metaphorical knickers in a twist (around their symbolic knockers most of all, as such would require quite a bit of figurative contortion). These are simplifications. These are willfully assumed/constructed stereotypes. Not every Japanese is the son or daughter of a samurai: Given that more than 90% of the population of feudal Japan were commoners, the odds of more than a minority of Japanese being of noble stock are low. (Although depending upon how persuasive the samurai men were when interacting with peasant women, the rate of accidental paternity was likely somewhat above zero.)

Kawasaki sells Ninjas for a reason. It could just as easily market its motorcycles by product number (as it did throughout the 1970s and 1980s), but such would be a waste of national brand capital. Tanto blade knives sell well for similar reasons. And anime/samurai/cyberpunk clothing has its fans and brands. The Japanese global brand may but loosely connect to the reality of life in Japan today, and its fidelity to the past is more to the past of myth than to that of history. But this does not necessarily matter. National myths are no less consequential than national facts.

Next, we turn to the American brand.

The hawk-eyed reader should have noticed that many of the traits of the American omnipredatorial mindset have been omitted from the brand list, despite them spreading globally and being associated with the United States. Such is not an oversight. We are considering the brand we built, not every possible association. Branding is propagandistic. The good is accentuated. The bad is minimized. And just as is the case of the Japanese brand, its American counterpart harkens back to a mythical era—in this case, an idealized 1950s and early 1960s that never was. We will consider the necessity of this selective storytelling in a few paragraphs.

Finally, we turn to the Korean national brand.

The Korean brand is interesting in that it is the newest of the three. Its developers had to carve out a niche in the global brand market after the Japanese had established their relationship to the more obvious elements of East Asian identity. Yet the Koreans succeeded, and quickly: South Korea did not emerge from its military dictatorship until 1979, when President Park Chung-hee was assassinated at Blue House, the then-official residence of South Korea’s head of state. Within a few decades of that, Korea rose to the level of global brand leader.

What of the Chinese brand? Does it need to be true to the culture? Yes, but only in the same way (and to the same extent) the other national brands are. The American omnipredator is conspicuously absent from the American brand, and the slaughter of the American Indians is rarely addressed. The Japanese brand is without a trace of Unit 731—the decidedly un-kawaii section of the Japanese Army that conducted brutal medical (and occasionally sexual) experiments on Chinese civilians and Allied POWs in the Second World War. And Korea, the most nearly innocent of the bunch (chiefly because it was colonized, not colonizer) makes no mention of President Park’s reign or the kidnapping (sometimes with police help), enslavement, and exportation of children by social welfare centers.

We all have our peccadillos.

Condensing Chinese culture to a brand is tricky, even more so if we try to avoid great overlap with the brands of Japan and China. Still, ideas are our stock and trade. Let us consider a possible Chinese brand.

How the above chart was developed needs only a bit of explanation. As for masculine traits/positive masculine brand component, the underdog/fighter archetype/notion (CM1) comes from classic Hong Kong cinema and our understanding of how it was received in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s by the Black community. This is similar (but not identical) to the Japanese warrior and Korean vengeance-seeker archetypes. But there is a major difference: The Chinese underdog is less bound to fight for either honor or love and more likely to fight for a general sense of justice/opposition to oppression. Not only does this fit perfectly into the Chinese self-conception of a great people fighting against invaders, it aligns nicely with a Socialist/anti-imperialist message.

Next, there is the Scholar/strategist archetype/notion (CM2). This plays to both ideas of the Chinese being scholarly and intellectually capable and the fact that The Art of War is one of only two Chinese books widely read in the West. (We will address the other in a few paragraphs.)

Let us turn to the women.

We reiterate a point—brand-building entails (amongst other things) the creation of willfully assumed/constructed stereotypes. The difference between willfully assumed/constructed stereotypes and ordinary stereotypes is that the former is under the control of the stereotyped, whereas the latter is not. These things—stereotypes—can be sticky. And that is all the more reason to choose them wisely and integrate them into a national brand with care.

The first archetype/notion—Grace over delicacy (CF1)—is derived from China’s considerable body of costume dramas, particularly those by China’s fifth generation of filmmakers. These characters are distinctly different from those of Korean film, namely in that they live within more highly constrained environments (palaces, et cetera), but demonstrate considerable persistence and free will despite as much. And unlike their Japanese counterparts, they are more likely to play an active role in court intrigues. While we are basing this archetype on fiction, this model may not prove too far removed from history: The Japanese feudal tradition almost certainly produced a different kind of politics than did the Chinese scholarly/bureaucratic one. Either way, CF1 builds on an existing body of entertainment, making this element of national brand development easier than fabrication from whole cloth.

The second archetype/notion—that of the Imp (CF2)—is familiar to any fan of kung fu films. This archetype is characterized by intelligence, expressiveness, and mischievousness.

Both Chinese female archetypes are—far more so than their Japanese, Korean, or American counterparts—subversive. The American female archetypes (AF1 and AF2) are essential self-destructive, either embracing a great deal of frat-boy hedonism (if still maintaining the aesthetics of womanhood) or declaring war on womanhood itself. AF1 and AF2 are less about women than they are about imitating men. The Korean and Japanese stereotypes either embrace the patently feminine or present a ferocious female-warrior alternative (one need only see Lady Snowblood or the more recent Joran: The Princess of Snow and Blood to get some sense of the latter). But the Chinese archetypes are different. They rarely go so far as to attack the female construct in favor of the masculine, but nor do they present the woman as a passive being. Coincidental or not, these Chinese female archetypes are infused with wu wei.

The Chinese could benefit greatly from developing CF1 and CF2 archetypes to their fullest. Such would afford the psyches of many women both in and outside China a cultural space to grow and develop, without them coming to direct their energies against men and anything and everything men have built (including civilization itself). Women (for the most part) do not desire to feel inferior to men or otherwise perceive themselves as being without strength and ability. This is understandable. Archly conservative models of womanhood provide women with little outlet for their wills. Anglo-American vitriol/victimhood feminism provides them with no positive outlets. The Chinese national brand—of which CF1 and CF2 are components—has the potential to provide a third way that is neither disempowering nor destructive.

We now address the neuter archetypes.

The first archetype—that of the Scholar/poet (CN1)—lack the aggression of the Scholar/strategist and is more circumspect in mindset. We previously mentioned that The Art of War is one of the two Chinese books widely read in the West. The other is the Dao De Jing, which we have referenced more than once in this essay. Although Daoist scholars and writers were primarily men, such does not limit the archetype to the strictly masculine. And the archetype’s broad, philosophical appeal transcends boundaries of liberal versus conservative politics, modernist versus traditionalist, and man versus woman. The CN1 archetype has the advantage of being both universal in its appeal and distinctly Chinese. Translating the abstractness of Daoism into something brand simple is bound to be challenging, but the global popularity of the Dao De Jing suggests that a great many people are willing and eager to learn of the Way.

Finally, we consider the most modern of Chinese archetypes—the Worker/maker (CN2)—a product of the modern era if ever there was one. China’s reputation as the world’s workshop (or sweatshop, depending upon perspective) is not undeserved, nor is it entirely positive. Pollution and environmental destruction (along with a great many jobs) were exported to China during the era of the West’s transition to post-industrialism. And although the Chinese government has spent years trying to reinvent its nation as a technology hub, this process is ongoing and is likely to be for quite some time. Thus, the popular conception of China as megafactory is unlikely to fade soon.

Since the Chinese cannot free themselves of this attachment, they might as well make the best of it. This requires more than improving the quality and reputation of Chinese products. It requires that the Chinese cultivate a sense of awe—awe for their initiative, their workers, and their work ethic, both inside and outside the country.

Thus, we have concluded our consideration of a range of Chinese archetypes suitable for a Chinese national brand.

Brand China (Part II): Who Cares (and Why)?

Now, let us consider the obvious questions: Why should anyone, other than the Chinese, care about the above hypothetical brand model?

If one random báirén (White person) with a middling internet connection and a gin-swilling toddler’s grasp of Standard Chinese can see the brand relationships and opportunities thus listed, a team of Chinese cultural engineers should have no trouble doing so. (And they probably have already.) Firm believers in constructal law, we have proposed a Chinese national brand that provides the optimal flow of cultural currents through it, imposing neither peculiar direction nor energy requirements on the nation or her people. Good sculptors force their will on the stone. Great ones let the sculpture reveal itself.

Regardless of what one thinks of the Chinese or the Chinese government, he should be prepared for just such a brand—the one developed herein—to come into being: The ingredients are already there. And anyone closely connected to the world economy (businessmen, marketers, manufacturers, et cetera) should be prepared to face Brand China in the coming years. Preparation is easier if one knows what to expect.

And then there is the internal effect of brand development. Tell a people that they are something. Tell them that this something is good. Watch them emphasize those traits—Watch them become the propaganda. The best brand is not only reasonably true to life, it is self-reinforcing.

Thus, we—the non-Chinese—must prepare for the Chinese to both develop a brand and become it. Going forward, we must be able to anticipate the direction of the Chinese cultural shift (just as they must be able to anticipate the direction of ours). This is essential economically. It is equally vital if we wish to avoid stepping on each other’s (nuclear-armed) toes one time too many. The battlefield of the brands is a unique space. We will need to learn the rules of engagement and the laws of war. And remember a point we made in the previous section (borrowed from Creveld)—War is one of the most imitative activities known to man. This is true but incomplete. Only the mentally impoverished copy their enemies. The better fighters learn from the designs and strategies of their opponents and improve upon them. And the best, improve upon their enemies’ improvements. As it is with the cycle of conventional war, so it is with the war of brands.

How we can use this understanding to the benefit of ourselves and the world is something we will address in greater detail in Part III of this trilogy.

We will now (briefly) address China’s population issues, good and bad.

Existential Dredd: Megacities, Population, the Elderly, and Automation

So much has been written and said about population shrinkage, the pension crisis, and automation—with everyone from major conservative publications to Elon Musk banging on about the end of humanity—that not much more can be said. We will consider them but most briefly, simply to demonstrate that this essay is not one riddled with (too many) serious oversights. Population shrinkage and its effects are global issues, but how they stand to impact China is interesting. The thesis of this section is that China may have well to worry about them less than many other countries.

First, let us acknowledge that China is polluted. Some of this is the result of its massive export economy (as already considered) but much is simply a result of the extraordinary number of people living in the country. Many Indian cities are polluted, and that nation’s government did not embrace the manufacturing-intensive development model favored by China, opting instead to focus on white-collar jobs. The fact of the matter is this: Many people living, breathing, excreting, driving, riding, and working in a city will make for considerable and concentrated pollution. The developed nations do a somewhat better job of keeping pollution away from their people, which is not a testament to their responsibility so much as it is their ability to dump waste (the radioactive sort included) into the ocean.

A maxim to remember: Many people, much pollution.

Exactly how much pollution (and of what sort) is required to seriously harm human and animal life is subject to debate. Depending upon whom one asks, hormones and hormone-like compounds in the water supply may be reducing male fertility. Microplastics may be doing the same. And the aforementioned radioactive waste dumped into the ocean may increase the risk of cancer in some parts of the world (primarily those close to the dumping grounds).

There are an annoying number of mays in the above paragraph. And a poll of the mays to be found in writing on the matter of pollution would reveal that may, might, and possibly are endemic. This is not (generally) a matter of weasel wording. Rather, it is evidence of the one thing that we do know about pollution—that there is more that we do not know than that which we do.

I attempt (for a second time in this essay) to formulate these thoughts as would a particular mind greater than my own:

In regards to the effects of pollution, there are probably more unknown unknowns than there are known unknowns. So long as the variety and quantity of pollutants increase apace, the number of unknown unknowns is likely to grow faster than our ability to come to know that which we did not know we did not know.

Me—the author—making my best attempt at Rumsfeldian eloquence

Thus, we risk being forever behind the curve of unknowing.

And let us make no mistake about it, more than 1,000 new chemicals are developed in the United States each year, many of which are quite distinct from any found in nature. Given that the relative complexity of testing new chemicals is high, regulators may well need centuries to test all currently produced chemicals for safety. As for the many new chemicals produced between now and whenever the regulators catch up with the present, they will be waitlisted as well, hence the curve.

To be a chicken little is unrewarding. When you are wrong, you are wrong. When the sky does fall, you are vaporized by a meteor strike, with barely time enough to mouth told you so!

At least some of the new chemicals introduced every year will prove harmless. Many others are likely to cause small, tolerable amounts of harm to human and animal life. But if even 5% of these minimally tested compounds prove dangerous, we will still face a significant problem. And let us not forget that pollution is but one of many possible hazards of a large population.

Scrolling back to the beginning of the first page of this essay, one finds a population density map of China. A cursory review of that map reveals two things. First is that the entire eastern half of China is settled reasonably densely. Second is that some cities and their surrounding regions are settled more densely still.

Given sufficient technology, pollution generation per capita might be significantly reduced; however, dense settlements, even if they achieved a platonic ideal of total pollution control (meaning they cause no harm to the environment), would still pose certain hazards. In light of the events of the last few years, one of the most obvious of these is the potential for the rapid transmission of disease. And there is likely no way to completely eliminate this risk. Microorganisms and viruses have proven impressively adept at adaptation over the last century, defeating everything from antibiotics to vaccines.

And there is no reason to believe that humanity will develop universal treatments for infectious diseases anytime soon. The world’s largest, most extensive, and most expensive efforts at pandemic control did nothing (or nearly so) to save lives. Finally, there is the matter of feeding a great many people, which stands to become more challenging as populations grow and supply chains become more complex.

Given all of the known and potential problems of a large population, there would seem to be little reason to not celebrate a decline in the number of people (to a point); however, we should not be too dismissive of the concerns of Elon Musk and certain economists. Their worries fall largely into two categories. The first category relates to the structure of the modern pension system. A video included in an earlier section of this essay addressed this problem. The second category of concern is that innovation will either stop or slow considerably if there are few people to conduct research.

These problems do not appear insurmountable. The first—that of pensions—is the easiest to address. No natural and organic law dictates that one must be allowed to retire. Pension cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) can be frozen or reduced, thereby incrementally reducing the pension burden. Retirement ages can be raised. Healthcare can be rationed. While these options may not be palatable to all, they are workable. And they require no innovation, aside from some small efforts on the part of actuarial scientists and accountants.

The second concern is only legitimate if one assumes that our system of educating scientists and engineers is efficient. This is almost certainly wrong. Africa’s higher education attendance rate (for eligible students) is 12%, far below the global norm of 32%. One can take issue (as does this author) with the effectiveness of higher education in producing capable researchers and innovators and still recognize this number as evidence that the African talent pool has yet to be fully drained. In China, the higher education rate is above the global average, but Chinese colleges and universities have considerable room for improvement. They tend to produce students with lower levels of critical thinking than students in some other countries (despite Chinese primary and secondary schools doing well in this regard). And much of the research published by Chinese academics is of low quality and impact.

A review of these facts suggests that the higher education system both globally and in China could be improved in terms of access and quality. If these improvements are made promptly—if global talent is used more effectively—the rate of knowledge discovery may not suffer at all in a world with fewer people.

Towards Something Better: Mutual Tolerance and Prosperity

The first essay in this series examined issues that are destabilizing the United States and the world order she has built. This essay has compared the culture of the United States and China, evaluated potential problems in the Chinese model of growth and development (with occasional references to the American model), and offered a few imperfectly developed solutions. In the next section, we will make use of all of the relevant ideas thus far addressed and develop an actionable plan for citizens and officials to construct a functional, sustainable world of two great powers.

(Continue to Part III)

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Brant von Goble is a writer, editor, publisher, researcher, teacher, musician, juggler, and amateur radio operator.

He is the author of several books and articles of both the academic and non-academic variety. He owns and operates the book publishing company Loosey Goosey Press.