The season arriveth when many of us switch off, settle down with a rack of good books and a hot toddy (northern), or head for beach or campsite (southern hemisphere).
The PRC doesn’t take a special break now, however; nor can Beijing Baselines. We’re chuffed to find there were some just short of 1,000 views of our last episode. You evidently want to be in touch with current thinking in the PRC, and not all from the pages of People’s Daily, Xinhua or the Global Times.
But you are keen as well to fit this buzzing, booming reality into a coherent image of a deep intellectual and spiritual history. Coming right up!
This time we will look into some closely related current trends.
Firstly, Beijing is officially devoting itself and its popular base to ‘stability’. Commentary on last week’s Central Economic Work Conference merges with further cogitation on the 6th Plenum and its Historical Resolution, and the ‘baseline thinking’ subtext discussed last time.
Some readers doubt there was much food for thought in this messaging; it was all run-of-the-mill, predictable and low yield.
But we find strong hints that some in the apparatus thought the messaging about risk had over-egged the omelette, enough to call for a dose of reassurance. China, it now insisted, ‘had sufficient policy space to cope with potential risks and challenges.’ See our translation here.
Party theory platform Qiushi [‘seeking Truth’] seemed engaged in much the same set of issues: it’s fine for Xi Jinping to recite the baseline thinking mantra, but it runs the risk (the meta risk?) of scaring people off, not least investors. In ‘Scientific thought guides the economy’s steady movement,’ translated here, we find an elementary case of the tension between rationality and sincerity: wearing your heart on your sleeve is all too likely to scare the horses.
Teng Tai 滕泰
Meanwhile, a class of entrepreneurs is emerging, only too willing to face risk and hit edge balls to baselines, indeed over them. Not only does 5G-based telecoms have a glowing future, declares Teng Tai, innovation pundit and Dean of the Wanbo 万博 Institute for Research into the New Economy; the metaverse is the wave of the future. The nanny state so important in Xi’s prescriptions will, it seems, soon find itself trailing far behind the algorithmics of the day. In one interesting passage in Teng’s ‘Metaverse: speculation or the future of mankind?’ (translation here) we learn
…on the military aspect, if normal simple sand table wargaming can be transformed into a lifelike metaverse game before the real battle begins, and the simulation of digital virtual space is used to practice repeatedly, it will inevitably reduce the real battle sacrifices and losses;
in sports competition, if the information of the opponent in the real world can be copied to the digital virtual world, after repeated exercises, the winning rate will inevitably increase;
in managing transport, exercises and experiments will be ever more carried out in the digital virtual world... Since time there can be adjusted, all social experiments can be presented immediately for cause and effect without any engineering and physical costs. It is hence the lowest cost and most efficient social experiment method.
So a wonderful future of virtual social science (social virtual science?) is in the offing, just when we need it…
Meanwhile, joy of the season to all our readers and subscribers…
Baseline thinking seems to have some similarity to the financial concept of optionality, and the legal concept of discretion. Optionality means a given choice is available to make, but the obligation to make it is null. Discretion is defined similarly in terms of jurisdictional authority. Both idealize eliminating or minimizing as close to 0 as possible the risk of not choosing an option. My question would be whether the Party wants positive discretion/optionality (or alternatively a society full of sincere people) or is willing to settle for negative optionality/discretion (which would mean a society that interests must be managed via social credit incentive structures, and can be modeled in a very complex simulation). This comment is also in reference to your translation of the piece on chengxin culture. There are larger differences to be found between the two, but more wracking is needed.
Separately, I recently discovered this substack while journeying down a rabbit hole, and I have quickly found several new rabbit holes just from looking up the references you make. I must thank you for not just your insight and the sense of coherence you have provided, but also all the new tabs you've opened up on my computer and new reading you've given me!
Yes, the Party Central Committee with Xi Jinping at its core will one day be able to run thousands of simulated PRCs each with a different set of policies to determine the scientifically correct way forward without the messy twists and turns that praxis involved during the accumulation of revolutionary experience as the Party feels for the rocks as it leads the state across the river.
The rock and the river will be virtual thanks to the Party AI. Perhaps as in Philip K. Dick's 'The Minority Report' future thought criminals will be picked out before they offend for special treatmen. That would be the scientific way for the Ministry of Public Security to move ahead using virtual/social social/virtual science.