Few doubt that the CPC, closely monitors and intervenes in all that is said, above all in public, to the best of its ability. Our hair emitted a bit of smoke a day or so ago, at something coming from Peter Zeihan. I have respected Chinese friends, by no means uninformed, who cite Zeihan with approval, and I generally see the point. Catastrophisers can get it right, catastrophes do happen, and Zeihan is able to weave dense causal strings and loops into compelling narratives… despite being unable to pronounce ‘Xi’ as in ‘Xi Jinping’ (he says ‘Ji’).
But the real fly in the ointment is the wide gap between Zeihan and Chinese perceptions. In this interview, he describes Xi as living in an airtight information bubble. At about 8’30” of the video, he says Xi has no one who can tell him the truth. He is mistaken, however, in disparaging China’s chattering classes: people, after all, like himself.
We’ve heard from sociologists in earlier episodes, Fei Xiaotong for one. Most effective in the 30s and 40s, Fei was unquestionably brought to heel in the 50s and 60s. As reported, I met him sweeping the floor of Nationalities U. Holding the torch today is Sun Liping 孙立平, professor of sociology at Tsinghua U. We’ve showcased him on Beijing Baselines before (8 June 2022, blasting Putin’s invasion of Ukraine); he’s back in the news today, a year later.
Sun Liping
Era of dismantling: certainty in uncertainty
The 2022 Tiger Roaring Ceremony, the 16th Digital Business Communication Forum and the 13th Tiger Roaring Awards were held in Beijing on 18-19 August. As the most professional, influential and large-scale industry event in the field of brand marketing digitalisation, it attracted some 250,000 people—on- and offline partners, brands, industry executives, participants—to take part and witness. A powerful platform in the field of brand marketing digitalisation, the Ceremony’s influence has been further highlighted. Sun Liping, renowned sociologist, Professor of Sociology at Tsinghua University, delivered a major speech on the theme of ‘Society and people under the epidemic—how to find certainty in an uncertain era’. The text was as follows.
’Finding certainty in an era of uncertainty’ can be grasped from three aspects.
The most obvious feature of the era we live in is uncertainty. Personally, my grasp of it has gone through a process, from shallow to deep.
Early on, I grasped it from the changing period of policy. In recent years, everyone could feel that the primary risk we faced in the market and in the operation of enterprises came from policy changes.
My thinking has changed a bit this year (2022); many things can’t be explained by changing policies. In 2022 for example, was COVID-19 a policy change? Was the Russia-Ukraine conflict? So how to understand this growing uncertainty? Today’s strong uncertainty is not just a policy issue, but the world is changing, as is the underlying logic of the world; China is changing, and its underlying logic is also. A new perspective is needed to view the uncertainty of today’s society and world.
What exactly has changed in the underlying logic? I think it can be divided into two levels: changes in the world, and in China.
As regards the world, the primary logic is that it is going through a dismantling process, from the globalisation to the post-globalisation era. I recently proposed the concept of dismantling. We have undergone decades of globalisation In the past few decades, a process of consolidating the world. At that time, the ‘global village’ was a term, and even the concept of national borders was weakening. Some people has even became global citizens. This was one globalisation process, one in which the whole world becomes one.
PRC development took place against this background, benefitting from two basic factors: domestic reform and opening, and foreign globalisation. These two combined to give the PRC a chance to develop rapidly for decades, eventually becoming the second largest economy in the world.
The whole process is however now being reversed, in ‘post-globalisation’ and ‘reverse globalisation’; the globalisation process has turned a corner, a turning point has appeared. I would like to use the word ‘great dismantling’ to sum up this turning point. The Russia-Ukraine conflict to a large extent vividly reflects this dismantling process. Recently, several Chinese state-owned enterprises have collectively delisted from the US market, which is also part of the big dismantling.
Overall, the entire world order was basically struggling without breaking; generally it would not completely overturn. Why? Because the base layer had a foundation of interdependence, a triple dependency:
the West’s dependence on Russia’s energy
the West’s dependence on China’s market and industry chains
China’s dependency on Western high-tech high-end equipment
But changes in the entire world pattern caused by the Russia-Ukraine conflict were from an economic point of view a process of dismantling this triple dependency. Some European states prefer to pay a price for energy diversification. The US is going all out to promote diversification of industry and supply chains, ending its dependency on the Chinese market and industry chains. China and Russia also strive to develop high-tech and high-end manufacturing industries through self-reliance.
The result is that two big logics go up and two big logics go down.
There are two major logics in the era of globalisation:
of comparative advantage
of capital chasing profit
Resources as a whole are allocated according to the globalisation framework: each country seeks its own position and development path in the comparative advantages. Capital’s pursuit of profit is reflected in the fact that in the eyes of capital, national boundaries are weakening, and people can go wherever they can make money.
In future, the logic of security will rise. The Russia-Ukraine conflict forces a grasp of the importance of security, including that of industry and supply chain. So security will rise as the dominant concept. The logic of values will also rise. In the future world pattern, values are the most important deep-seated context. It can be seen from the Russia-Ukraine conflict that some big Western corporations would rather suffer losses than withdraw from Russia. Why? The values factor cannot be ignored.
The big dismantling leads us to consider two issues:
What will the tone of the world economy look like after dismantling? It may be entering a high-cost era. Globalisation allocates resources from the whole world. Cheap labour and energy, and convenient transport and logistics yielded a decades-long era of high quality and low prices. But now the situation is being reversed. In the West, food and energy prices have hence soared recently; the inflation rate has reached highest points in decades. Resources are not allocated globally, but in blocks. Such cost increase will be inevitable.
How will the Russia-Ukraine conflict go next? There have been two major misreadings: (1) Russia’s military misjudgment. It was thought at first that it would be over in a few days, but it turned into a protracted war; (2) the West’s misjudgment of economic sanctions. By launching them—not least by kicking Russia out of the international settlement system—the West thought its economy would soon collapse. Facts, however, show the resilience of the Russian economy exceeded Western views and forecasts. And the West meanwhile underestimated the impact of economic sanctions on itself.
Changing as well is the underlying logic of the PRC. The logic of wealth, of the system and of industry are changing as well.
When ‘common prosperity’ was proposed, we felt the logic of wealth was changing. Early in reform and opening era, the process was one of making the cake, but now more attention is paid to dividing it. This is the logic of wealth changing.
The logic of the system is also changing. Markets still function, but the state’s influence is increasing and new system factors have been added.
The logic of industry, too, is changing. In 2021, I proposed ‘four escapes and four orientations’: escape from the virtual to the real, from the soft to the hard, from the people to the country, and from the outside to the inside.
These changes are related to ‘situation’, in which there are three factors worth noting: (a) temptation, (b) pressure, and (c) conditioning.
Many people say that the east is rising and the West falling, this temptation is too great.
The second is pressure. The global situation is ever more severe, even including military pressure. Now concentrate financial and material resources, and play a game of chess across the country to make the country rich and its soldiers strong.
The third is the pressure and constraints on people’s livelihood in the future.
Many changes in history came not from wisdom or cognition, but from pressure.
If so, the following two things are important:
Try to do one’s own and PRC affairs well, above all as regards people’s livelihoods. Common people’s ‘trivial matters’ are major tools for a major power and we must develop via a focus on people’s livelihoods. Look back at reform and opening and developing people’s livelihoods: we became the world’s second largest economy unintentionally.
Two aspects are the most urgent right now:
There must be some flexibility, and room for it. We are too tight now, individuals, companies, and society. What was the soul of PRC reform and opening? It was flexibility and elasticity, which must be enhanced.
Positive expectations for the future must be formed. What does consumption depend on? (1) current income and wealth; (2) future expectations.
On a personal level, we must be cautious in doing things and live happily.