A discussion by Cor van Beuningen
If you want to know how state ideology thinks/works you read https://www.globaltimes.cn/ The newspaper The South China Morning Post from Hong Kong still enjoys a residual relative autonomy and has a few good columnists. See: https://www.scmp.com/ In the Netherlands you have two institutes that know something about China: Clingendael with, among others, Frans-Paul van der Putten and the Leiden Asisa Center with, among others, Ingrid D.Hooghe (also associate at Clingendael). A site with China watchers (about everything) is the China Crowd Blog https://china2025.en
But with all this, you won't find out much about the intellectual public debate in China. Because there is, despite certain limitations. We hear little about it here in Germany, the United Kingdom and especially France. There are debates with Chinese public intellectuals, their books are translated, discussed and discussed etc.
However, the best place, as far as I can see, to follow the Chinese intellectual debate is a Canadian site: https://www.readingthechinadream.com
This site is run by David Ownby (ownby.david@gmail.com), Professor of History at the Université de Montréal. He translates and annotates and contextualizes articles, interviews, publications of Chinese public intellectuals, in a sober and expert manner. Very good. Here are two examples.
The first example concerns an analysis of the political philosopher Zhao Tingyang, professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, entitled A Feasible Smart Democracy. It pertains to the world order, the shortcomings of both the existing order of warring nation states and of democracy (in declining vertical confidence very topical!); and on what a new organisation, both nationally and globally, should look like, including the concept tianxia Explains, a concept that is common among Chinese political philosophers. David Ownby's introductions are so good that sometimes you don't have to read the actual story as well. Thus he summarizes Zhao's paragraphs on the impasse of democracy as follows: "Zhao begins by noting that democracy is in serious trouble today, because the consensus required to sustain public trust in democratic institutions and practices has eroded, and without trust, democracy cannot function. One source of the problem is the rise of the Internet, social media, big data, etc., which Zhao collectively dubs "global systemic power," a force that manipulates and shapes public consciousness.[ ...] By encouraging individuals to indulge their private desires—and inserted embedding these private desires in larger narratives—global systemic power makes it different if not possible for anyone to see a larger public good, and without agreement on public good there can be no consensus. Global systemic power has turned democracy into publicity [...] in which fake publications have improved the people as the foundation of the political order."
If you then read the text of Zhao yourself, then you realize that there is a lot of thought in China. One of Zhao hindered books has also been translated into German and published by n.a. Suhrkamp: Zhao Tingyang: Alles unter dem Himmel - Vergangenheit und Zukunft der Weltordnung. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2020. Op de cover staat (in vertaling): “Zhao Tingyang wordt beschouwd als een van de belangrijkste hedendaagse Chinese filosofen. Met dit grote werk zijn zijn beschouwingen over een nieuwe politieke wereldorde nu voor het eerst beschikbaar in een Duitse vertaling. Ze zijn gebaseerd op het oude Chinese principe van tianxia - het opnemen van iedereen onder één hemel. Bij het omgaan met westerse theorieën over staat en vrede, van Hobbes tot Kant tot Habermas, evenals met zijn gebruik van historische studies, economie en speltheorie, geeft Zhao ons een kijkje in de conceptie van universaliteit.”
Het boek is in Duitsland uitgebreid gerecenseerd en besproken. Zie hier een recensie in de Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
[n.b.: In de recente publicatie van de spraakmakende Duitse socioloog Armin Nassehi – zie mijn vorige blog - wordt een hoofdtuk aan Zhao gewijd!]
Een tweede voorbeeld, ook weer van de site van Ownby, is van de hand van Xu Jilin, een zeer invloedrijke historicus/filosoof/public intellectual van de Universiteit van Shanghai. Xu stelt dat het verhaal van verheffing en verlichting dat zijn eigen generatie droeg niet meer aanslaat bij de nieuwe generatie en cultuur; dus dat er nieuwe manieren, media, methodes moeten worden ontwikkeld om de nieuwe generaties het pad van verlichting te laten hernemen. Zijn verhaal draagt de titel How to Redimension the Enlightenment When Dealing with Houlang Culture, waarbij dat redimension staat voor die andere methodes etc. en Houlang Culture voor de internetgeneratie.
Ownby merkt op: “youth angst is a major theme in China, and many young people feel that they are working very hard for comparatively little, that China’s economy is not generating enough wealth for them to enjoy the material lives that their parents’ generation did.” Het risico is dat ze geen zin, geen purpose in het leven zien. Vandaar Xu’s missie: “how to preserve and push forward the convictions and habits of Enlightenment culture in a world where people increasingly live in virtual worlds consisting largely of images, delivered to fragmented individuals, connected to the world by their cellphones.”
Dan, over die noodzaak van nieuwe methodes etc: “Xu’s basic observation is that people based in print culture think in fundamentally different ways from people based in online culture. [..] Words and arguments have to be processed mentally to be understood; images go directly to the brain and provoke immediate reactions. Online platforms are vastly more powerful than publishers of books and newspapers [...]. Online platforms have also driven the atomization of much of family and social life over the past few decades, leaving people all the more attached to cellphones and the magical world of images and pleasures they deliver.”
Daarbij signaleert Xu dat jongeren niet meer geleerd wordt zelfstandig en kritisch na te denken. Dat komt door het onderwijssysteem: “the degree to which young people have been shaped by a lifetime of testing-to-get-ahead, which has made learning purely utilitarian…”
Lezen dus!
If you want to know how state ideology thinks/works you read https://www.globaltimes.cn/ The newspaper The South China Morning Post from Hong Kong still enjoys a residual relative autonomy and has a few good columnists. See: https://www.scmp.com/ In the Netherlands you have two institutes that know something about China: Clingendael with, among others, Frans-Paul van der Putten and the Leiden Asisa Center with, among others, Ingrid D.Hooghe (also associate at Clingendael). A site with China watchers (about everything) is the China Crowd Blog https://china2025.en
But with all this, you won't find out much about the intellectual public debate in China. Because there is, despite certain limitations. We hear little about it here in Germany, the United Kingdom and especially France. There are debates with Chinese public intellectuals, their books are translated, discussed and discussed etc.
However, the best place, as far as I can see, to follow the Chinese intellectual debate is a Canadian site: https://www.readingthechinadream.com
This site is run by David Ownby (ownby.david@gmail.com), Professor of History at the Université de Montréal. He translates and annotates and contextualizes articles, interviews, publications of Chinese public intellectuals, in a sober and expert manner. Very good. Here are two examples.
The first example concerns an analysis of the political philosopher Zhao Tingyang, professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, entitled A Feasible Smart Democracy. It pertains to the world order, the shortcomings of both the existing order of warring nation states and of democracy (in declining vertical confidence very topical!); and on what a new organisation, both nationally and globally, should look like, including the concept tianxia Explains, a concept that is common among Chinese political philosophers. David Ownby's introductions are so good that sometimes you don't have to read the actual story as well. Thus he summarizes Zhao's paragraphs on the impasse of democracy as follows: "Zhao begins by noting that democracy is in serious trouble today, because the consensus required to sustain public trust in democratic institutions and practices has eroded, and without trust, democracy cannot function. One source of the problem is the rise of the Internet, social media, big data, etc., which Zhao collectively dubs "global systemic power," a force that manipulates and shapes public consciousness.[ ...] By encouraging individuals to indulge their private desires—and inserted embedding these private desires in larger narratives—global systemic power makes it different if not possible for anyone to see a larger public good, and without agreement on public good there can be no consensus. Global systemic power has turned democracy into publicity [...] in which fake publications have improved the people as the foundation of the political order."
If you then read the text of Zhao yourself, then you realize that there is a lot of thought in China. One of Zhao hindered books has also been translated into German and published by n.a. Suhrkamp: Zhao Tingyang: Alles unter dem Himmel - Vergangenheit und Zukunft der Weltordnung. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2020. Op de cover staat (in vertaling): “Zhao Tingyang wordt beschouwd als een van de belangrijkste hedendaagse Chinese filosofen. Met dit grote werk zijn zijn beschouwingen over een nieuwe politieke wereldorde nu voor het eerst beschikbaar in een Duitse vertaling. Ze zijn gebaseerd op het oude Chinese principe van tianxia - het opnemen van iedereen onder één hemel. Bij het omgaan met westerse theorieën over staat en vrede, van Hobbes tot Kant tot Habermas, evenals met zijn gebruik van historische studies, economie en speltheorie, geeft Zhao ons een kijkje in de conceptie van universaliteit.”
Het boek is in Duitsland uitgebreid gerecenseerd en besproken. Zie hier een recensie in de Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
[n.b.: In de recente publicatie van de spraakmakende Duitse socioloog Armin Nassehi – zie mijn vorige blog - wordt een hoofdtuk aan Zhao gewijd!]
Een tweede voorbeeld, ook weer van de site van Ownby, is van de hand van Xu Jilin, een zeer invloedrijke historicus/filosoof/public intellectual van de Universiteit van Shanghai. Xu stelt dat het verhaal van verheffing en verlichting dat zijn eigen generatie droeg niet meer aanslaat bij de nieuwe generatie en cultuur; dus dat er nieuwe manieren, media, methodes moeten worden ontwikkeld om de nieuwe generaties het pad van verlichting te laten hernemen. Zijn verhaal draagt de titel How to Redimension the Enlightenment When Dealing with Houlang Culture, waarbij dat redimension staat voor die andere methodes etc. en Houlang Culture voor de internetgeneratie.
Ownby merkt op: “youth angst is a major theme in China, and many young people feel that they are working very hard for comparatively little, that China’s economy is not generating enough wealth for them to enjoy the material lives that their parents’ generation did.” Het risico is dat ze geen zin, geen purpose in het leven zien. Vandaar Xu’s missie: “how to preserve and push forward the convictions and habits of Enlightenment culture in a world where people increasingly live in virtual worlds consisting largely of images, delivered to fragmented individuals, connected to the world by their cellphones.”
Dan, over die noodzaak van nieuwe methodes etc: “Xu’s basic observation is that people based in print culture think in fundamentally different ways from people based in online culture. [..] Words and arguments have to be processed mentally to be understood; images go directly to the brain and provoke immediate reactions. Online platforms are vastly more powerful than publishers of books and newspapers [...]. Online platforms have also driven the atomization of much of family and social life over the past few decades, leaving people all the more attached to cellphones and the magical world of images and pleasures they deliver.”
Daarbij signaleert Xu dat jongeren niet meer geleerd wordt zelfstandig en kritisch na te denken. Dat komt door het onderwijssysteem: “the degree to which young people have been shaped by a lifetime of testing-to-get-ahead, which has made learning purely utilitarian…”
Lezen dus!