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. The cover says (in translation): "Zhao Tingyang is considered one of the most important contemporary Chinese philosophers. With this great work, his reflections on a new political world order are now available for the first time in a German translation. They are based on the ancient Chinese principle of tianxia - recording everyone under one sky. When dealing with Western theories about state and peace, from Hobbes to Kant to Habermas, as well as with his use of historical studies, economics and game theory, Zhao gives us a glimpse into the conception of universality."
The book has been extensively reviewed and discussed in Germany. See here a review at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
[n.a.: In the recent publication of the German sociologist Armin Nassehi, see my previous blog - a chapter is dedicated to Zhao!]
A second example, also from the site of Ownby, is by the hand of Xu Jilin, a very influential historian/philosophic/public intellectual of the University of Shanghai. Xu argues that the story of upliftment and enlightenment that bore its own generation no longer pertains to the new generation and culture; So new ways, media, have to be developed to allow the new generations to take the path of enlightenment. His story bears the title How to Redimension the Enlightenment When Dealing with Houlang Culturewhere edimension stands for those other methods etc. and Hullang Culture for the Internet generation.
Ownby notes: "youth fear 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 parent's generation did." The risk is they don't see sense, no purpose in life. "How to spare and push forward the consequences and habits of Enlightenment culture in a world where people increasely live in virtual worlds consenting largely of images, delivered to fragmented individuals, connected to the world by their cellphones."
Then, about that need of new methods etc: "Xu hindered 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 probably 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."
In doing so, signals Xu that young people are no longer taught to think independently and critically. This is because of the education system: "the degree to which young people have been shaped by a lifetime of testing-to-get-ahead, which has made learning purely utilitarian..."
Read!
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. The cover says (in translation): "Zhao Tingyang is considered one of the most important contemporary Chinese philosophers. With this great work, his reflections on a new political world order are now available for the first time in a German translation. They are based on the ancient Chinese principle of tianxia - recording everyone under one sky. When dealing with Western theories about state and peace, from Hobbes to Kant to Habermas, as well as with his use of historical studies, economics and game theory, Zhao gives us a glimpse into the conception of universality."
The book has been extensively reviewed and discussed in Germany. See here a review at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
[n.a.: In the recent publication of the German sociologist Armin Nassehi, see my previous blog - a chapter is dedicated to Zhao!]
A second example, also from the site of Ownby, is by the hand of Xu Jilin, a very influential historian/philosophic/public intellectual of the University of Shanghai. Xu argues that the story of upliftment and enlightenment that bore its own generation no longer pertains to the new generation and culture; So new ways, media, have to be developed to allow the new generations to take the path of enlightenment. His story bears the title How to Redimension the Enlightenment When Dealing with Houlang Culturewhere edimension stands for those other methods etc. and Hullang Culture for the Internet generation.
Ownby notes: "youth fear 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 parent's generation did." The risk is they don't see sense, no purpose in life. "How to spare and push forward the consequences and habits of Enlightenment culture in a world where people increasely live in virtual worlds consenting largely of images, delivered to fragmented individuals, connected to the world by their cellphones."
Then, about that need of new methods etc: "Xu hindered 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 probably 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."
In doing so, signals Xu that young people are no longer taught to think independently and critically. This is because of the education system: "the degree to which young people have been shaped by a lifetime of testing-to-get-ahead, which has made learning purely utilitarian..."
Read!