中國平安 是王滬寧在指導國策的製定
看見文章《王滬寧為未來豪賭 但不會贏》,放心了,感慨了。
國政治局常委王滬寧,在30多年前的1987年,就寫了《比較政治分析》,認為:“所有的社會科學研究都是比較的,隻是各人的分析理論不一,比較向度相異。” 並預見說:“曆史告訴我們,人類正處在政治時代,政治活動和政治關係日益決定著人類各政治共同體和人類全體的發展。” “政治研究的科學化,政治研究的充分發展,已經成為人類各政治共同體發展的一個必要前提,已經成為人類共同進步的一個共同前提。”
在30多年前的1991年,基於80年代對美國的6個月訪問,王滬寧寫了《美國反對美國》,剖析了美國社會結構中的種種致命弊端,因此,中國不能走美國的自由民主之路。
看看南洋理工大學助理教授Dylan Loh的評論,再看看美國政治圈的神秘大仙老神 N.S.Lyons 的文章 The triumph and terror of wang huning《王滬寧的勝利與恐懼》,原來是社會學家王滬寧在指導中國國策的製定,放心了。靜等美國被美國自己人和它們一起努力,玩完。美國政客脅迫歐洲政客,把歐洲玩完。為世界人民除害。
文章 The triumph and terror of Wang Huning《王滬寧的勝利與恐懼》,說,王滬寧是中共最頂尖的意識形態理論家,習近平每個標誌性的政治概念都是他提出來的,包括“中國夢”、反腐運動、“一帶一路”倡議、戰狼外交,甚至“習近平思想”。
回顧中國內政外交的理性做法,隻幫助建設社會基礎設施,發展經濟,不幹涉其內政,在世界各國歡迎。西方人的支援,夾雜販賣民主和價值,總想如何推翻人家的合法政府,人們避之如瘟疫。再看看美國政治圈的神秘大仙老神 N.S.Lyons的評論,王滬寧這個中共最頂尖的意識形態理論家,是不是很合格。
2007年2月27日,美國經濟學家,紐約大學經濟學教授,威廉·伊斯特利 (William Easterly)出版書籍The white man's burden: why the west's efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good《白人的負擔:為什麽西方幫助其他人的努力造成了如此多的壞處和如此少的好處》。
在2002年《難以捉摸的增長追求》一書中,威廉伊斯特利教授批評了西方組織在減輕全球貧困方麵完全無效,他立即被當時的雇主世界銀行解雇。《白人的負擔》是他對西方針對世界窮人的經濟政策的控訴。他認為我們西方需要麵對自己無能的曆史並得出正確的結論,尤其是在我們移植西方製度的能力問題已經成為我們麵臨的最緊迫的問題之一。
我們不能否認西方支援貧困地區人民的初衷是好的,隻是產生的結果是壞的。
在2002年 The Elusive Quest for Growth《難以捉摸的增長追求》一書中,威廉·伊斯特利指出,自二戰結束以來,經濟學家一直試圖弄清楚熱帶地區的貧困國家如何才能達到接近歐洲和北美國家的生活水平,嚐試提供外國援助作為補救措施。但是,幫助貧窮國家改善其經濟福祉的嚐試失敗了。因為,問題不在於經濟學的失敗,而在於未能將經濟學原理應用於實際援助政策與工作。
在《白人的負擔》中指出,為什麽世界銀行的數十億美元、美國國際開發署的贈款和國際貨幣基金組織的“減貧與增長基金”貸款大部分都消失了?因為,這些計劃的設計主要是為了反映捐贈者的興趣以及他們對接受者最有利的看法。由於捐助現金是援助官僚管理的,他們對結果不負責任。自上而下的目標設定和規劃心態排除了實際需要的信息以及項目失敗的反饋。大多數貧窮國家的政府都很糟糕,其中援助資金被吸走到瑞士銀行賬戶,腐敗官員破壞了初級市場的運作,增加了經商成本並阻礙了私營企業的發展。
顯然,王滬寧提出的“一帶一路”倡議,幫助它國建設發展基礎設施,提供發展經濟的基本條件,並親自組織力量實施,確保成功。這符合威廉·伊斯特利教授所說的,將經濟學原理應用於實際援助政策與工作。一帶一路是唯一有效、可持續發展的援助方法。因為,不僅僅是貧窮國家,即使是許多發達國家,也沒有能力自己完成基礎設施建設。
2022年10月28日,文章《外媒:民調顯示發展中國家民眾對華好感度上升去》說,英國劍橋大學民主未來中心最近進行的一項民調顯示,發展中國家目前有62%的人對中國有好感,61%的人對美國有好感。這些數據融合了30個全球調查項目,涵蓋97%的世界人口。生活在全球136個非西方式民主國家的63億人口中,有70%的人對中國持正麵看法,認為自由主義國家的民主製度存在缺陷。在大部分人對西方式民主製度感到不滿的國家當中,有四分之三國家的大多數民眾對中國持有正麵看法。
報道稱,中國贏得發展中國家的支持背後也有經濟原因。中國在2013年提出了“一帶一路”倡議,已經同147個國家和32個國際組織簽署200餘份合作文件,用來建設能源基礎設施和交通運輸項目。在獲得“一帶一路”倡議支持的國家的民眾當中,有近三分之二的人對中國持正麵看法。
顯然,王滬寧的一帶一路倡議,是正確的,因為,符合經濟學規律,符合大多數國家和人民的利益。
再看看新冠疫情導致得物價飛漲,是因為物資短缺嗎?不是,那是為什麽呢?又是西方人用好的初衷,製造壞的結果。
西方自由世界鼓吹的市場原教旨主義,或新自由主義(Neoliberalism)的政治與經濟哲學,強調自由市場的自我調控機製,反對國家對經濟的幹預和對商業行為和財產權的管製,這符合英國經濟學家亞當斯密提出的看不見的手 - 讓自由市場自我調控的的主張,通過人們滿足私欲的經濟活動,促進經濟發展,取的社會利益。然而,新自由主義哲學的實際社會效果,卻是在支持貪婪之徒合法掠奪。
看看2022年10月27日的報道,《歐洲部分現貨天然氣一度跌至負值!能源危機解決了》。顯然,天然氣價格飛漲,不是資源短缺,是貪婪之徒合法掠奪的結果。現在,天然氣價格跌了,可是,歐洲人還是必須用原來的高價使用已經采購的天然氣,因為,他們的民豬政客,已經用他們錢,為他們事先付款了,已經親手把錢裝入他人的口袋。
看看2022年10月25日文章,《全美雞肉行業被他們壟斷!你以為是通脹,其實是在被吸血》,美國最大的雞肉生產商泰森食品公司將向華盛頓州支付1050萬美元以解決一項訴訟,泰森食品公司與其主要競爭對手合作,長期操縱價格並操縱合同,抬高從雞塊到雞胸肉到大力水手雞肉三明治的價格。
在看看現在滿天飛的經濟學名詞兒,“抄底”“買空”,起伏不定的價格 - 貨幣,大宗商品,等等;巨額流動的國際熱錢,都是以掠奪實體經濟為代價貪婪謀私,實體經濟製造業的利潤越來越薄,隻能倒閉,人類社會失去生存的根基。
2010年3月20日, 美聯社文章 Food aid helped destroy Haiti's ability to feed itself, ex-President Clinton says《前總統克林頓說,糧食援助破壞了海地的自給能力》說,數十年的廉價進口——尤其是來自美國的大米——在各種危機中加上大量援助,破壞了當地農業,使海地等貧困國家無法養活自己。今天,海地幾乎所有的生計都依賴外部世界。根據 2005 年的數據,該國51%的食物是進口的,其中80%的大米都是進口的。專注於解決海地問題的世界領導人首次承認,放鬆貿易壁壘隻會加劇海地和其他地方的饑餓。
美國前總統比爾·克林頓(現任聯合國海地特使)本月公開道歉,因為他支持破壞海地大米生產的政策。克林頓在 1990 年代中期鼓勵這個貧困國家大幅降低進口美國大米的關稅。“這可能對我們阿肯色州的一些農民有好處,這是一個錯誤。”“不是其他人,而是我的所作所為,我每天都不得不忍受在海地生產水稻作物來養活那裏人的能力喪失的後果。”
聯合國人道主義事務負責人約翰·霍姆斯告訴美聯社:“食品援助和廉價進口產品的結合……導致海地農業缺乏投資,這種情況必須扭轉。”“這是一個全球現象,但海地是一個典型的例子。我認為這是我們應該開始的地方。”
這就是西方自由世界盲目鼓吹市場原教旨主義,或新自由主義(Neoliberalism)的政治與經濟哲學的必然惡果。看看聯合國人道主義事務負責人約翰·霍姆斯所說:食品援助和廉價進口產品的結合,導致海地農業缺乏投資,這是一個全球現象。
事實正如威廉·伊斯特利教授所說,自二戰結束以來,經濟學家一直試圖弄清楚熱帶地區的貧困國家如何才能達到接近歐洲和北美國家的生活水平,嚐試提供外國援助作為補救措施。但是,幫助貧窮國家改善其經濟福祉的嚐試失敗了。因為,問題不在於經濟學的失敗,而在於未能將經濟學原理應用於實際援助政策與工作。
2022年10月26日,文章《德媒:“西方是最好的”已過時,現在的口號是“向東看”》說,德國最著名的駐非洲記者法比安·佩爾奇在德國“中國平台”網站10月21日發表文章《中國在非洲的速度十分驚人》說,中國模式在盧旺達和埃塞俄比亞等國極受歡迎,因為西方模式沒能帶來它所承諾的繁榮。
40年來,法比安·佩爾奇見證了中國在非洲大陸存在的持續增加。他認為所謂中國“新殖民主義”的偏見是錯誤的,在“非洲爭奪戰”中,中國人比歐洲人更有遠見。
令我感到驚訝的是,一些偏僻村莊的孩子突然不再稱我為“白人”,而是用“中國,中國”來回應我。自世紀之交以來,越來越多的中國人來到非洲:企業家、商人、移民。因此,我產生了一種感覺:白人已經完結自己的使命,並且正被中國人取代。
殖民主義這個詞並不適用於中國在非洲的存在。殖民國家占領、征服殖民地並將其據為己有,將政治權力掌握在自己手中。當地人沒有話語權,他們隻是被剝削的對象。然而,中國並沒有幹涉合作國的內政。我們不能說中國采取的是殖民戰略。
中國早就超過歐洲和北美的貿易夥伴。與中國人不同,歐洲人對非洲仍有顧慮,仍然認為在非洲投資存在重大風險。中國20年來的參與比西方60年來的發展援助創造了更多的經濟價值。
中國在非洲建設大型項目,例如大壩、機場、港口、移動通信網絡、管道、醫院等,非洲人民會看到這些並心懷感恩。此外,中國模式在盧旺達和埃塞俄比亞等國極受歡迎,因為西方模式沒能帶來它所承諾的繁榮。“西方是最好的”已經成為過去時,現在許多地方的口號是:向東看!
文章最後說,一名在讚比亞的中國企業家,發明了一種從殘渣堆中提煉銅渣的技術,並通過這種方式創造了1000個就業崗位。他資助當地建起一所學校,還捐贈了電腦。在我看來,他是那種不是僅僅為了索取,而是也為了給予而來到非洲的中國人。作為來到非洲的中國企業家,他是一個很好的例子,打破了一切偏見。
我認為,這一切源自西方文明的獸性基因,致使他們認錯為對,行錯為好。
西方人杜撰的政治設計和意識形態沒都是基於殺戮和掠奪的黑暗世紀,一切都與黑暗世紀時不能享受的東西相反,自由民主,價值,自由和人權,都是如此而來。他們提出的自由世界,每個人都自由自在,無拘無束,真美好。其初衷也是好的,隻是產生的結果是壞的。
看看北美,看看歐洲,西方人自傲的自由世界,都被自由玩耍的它們自己玩完了,經濟衰退,越來越亂,人們沒有安全感,無法生存。因為,不是所有具有人類麵孔的人,都具有人類的本性,有的人素質低下,是獸性。鼓吹自由世界的實際效果,是支持壞人合法胡為,危害好人。製造經濟危機,挑起代理人戰爭,把世界玩完。
西方文明的危害在於其欺騙性,劇毒無比,隻要沾上一丁點兒,就會被脅迫獸性發作。其馴化的所謂磚枷,都是獸性思維的智障,所謂的智庫,都是發酵劇毒思想的壇子,驅動自由世界玩弄智障民主的智障政客們胡鬧,害人害己。
在中國,許多接受過西方教育的人,尤其是政、經學者,也極力推崇玩西方的智障遊戲,禍國殃民。甚至西醫,也不符合人類生命。
無論是人類社會,還是人類生命,都過於複雜,是受潛在模式和確定性規律控製的混沌係統,必須以整體論來對待。中國能夠快速控製疫情,源自中醫道家哲學的正確指導。
中國的道家哲學以整體辯證觀看世界,認為宇宙是由無數對立統一體構成的對立統一體。組成這些對立統一體的雙方,既排斥,又吸引,互為存在的基礎,處於自動平衡狀態,分別用陰和陽代表對立的雙方。
古老道家哲學的整體辯證觀完美符合自然科學揭示的現實世界,沒有虛假的幻想。
在客觀世界,無論是構成萬物的原子的原子核與核外電子,太陽係的恒星與行星,還是宇宙的不同星係,都是既排斥又吸引的對立統一體,處於自動平衡狀態。
在主觀世界,矛盾的雙方也是既互相排斥又互相吸引的對立統一狀態,互為存在的基礎,一方消失,另一方也不能存在,雙方的強弱地位互相轉換,處於動態平衡狀態。
古老道家哲學的整體辯證觀完美符合客觀現實世界,因此,能夠正確地指導人們處理人與自然、人與社會、人與人,人與心靈和人類自身的複雜問題。
中醫是以的道家哲學的原理和術語發展而來,視人體為對立統一的有機整體。千年前,中醫就發現心理因素對疾病發展的決定性的影響,認為疾病的治療是三分在治,七分在養。認為,人體是各器官緊密聯係的有機整體,疾病的產生是因為身體的某些部位失衡所致。一個平衡良好的人體能有效地應對疾病,所以,中醫以恢複身體的陰、陽平衡作為預防和治療疾病的手段。
複方用藥是中醫的獨特治病方法,就是針對綜合症的不同症狀,選用不同的藥物,合為一劑使用。現代西醫研究,複方用藥能產生協同增效作用,參與複合的藥物種類越多,治療作用越強,副作用越低。這個發現間接證明了古老中醫複方用藥的科學性。
1980 年代,德國政府組織了約 300 多項植物藥物臨床研究,發表報告Phytomedicine Research in Germany說,植物藥具有與化學藥物完全等效的治療效果,同時,具有沒有副作用的優勢。草藥及其提取物製劑的作用機製,在許多方麵與合成藥物或單一物質的作用機製不同,可以表述為多價作用,或者是增效作用。文章特別提到,在德國,臨床上,自然藥物與合成藥物同等對待使用,納入政府的醫療保險。
許多現代研究,也證明了複方藥物產生“多價作用”,和“增效作用”的存在。
2013 年 11 月 14 日,路易斯安那州、斯坦利斯科特癌症中心的學者發表文章Simultaneous Inhibition of Cell-Cycle, Proliferation, Survival, Metastatic Pathways and Induction of Apoptosis in Breast Cancer Cells by a Phytochemical Super-Cocktail: Genes That Underpin Its Mode of Action《通過植物化學超級雞尾酒同時抑製乳腺癌細胞的細胞周期、增殖、存活、轉移途徑和誘導細胞凋亡:支持其作用方式的基因》說,薑黃、大豆、茶、葡萄、西蘭花、大蒜、番茄、迷迭香、歐芹和薑,單獨應用,它們對癌症無效。但是,一旦合用,在實驗室條件下,抑製了80%以上的乳腺癌細胞的生長,並最終引發了導致細胞死亡的過程。
2019年9月30日,文章Fruit fly trial unlocks clues for 'polypill' to beat aging《三聯常用藥物組合使果蠅壽命延長48%》報道,英國倫敦大學的研究人員發現,鋰、曲美替尼和雷帕黴素,單獨使用,可分別延長果蠅平均壽命11%,將任意兩個合用,可以延長果蠅壽命30%,如果將三者聯合,果蠅壽命的延長,高達48%。
2003年11月12日,文章《美公司測試稱中國專家研製的中藥製劑可抗艾滋病病毒》說,田聖勳畢業於河南中醫學院,1990年開始作為援非中國醫療隊成員在讚比亞卡布韋工作,隨後在讚比亞首都盧薩卡開辦一家中醫診所.用中醫藥治療艾滋病。美國馬裏蘭州生物模擬公司的測試結果表明,田聖勳開發的兩種純中藥製劑具有抗艾滋病病毒活性,同時無明顯毒副作用。
2021年1月30日,文章Mechanism and material basis of Lianhua Qingwen capsule for improving clinical cure rate of COVID-19: a study based on network pharmacology and molecular docking technology報告,蓮花清瘟共有160種生物活性組分,通過57個靶蛋白,35個信號通路和Toll樣受體信號通路治愈新冠患者。
這些事實提示我們,最佳藥物來自複方用藥產生協同增效作用,參與複合的藥物種類越多,療效越強,副作用越低。
中醫複方用藥產生協同增效作用的機理,揭穿了用單一成分雙盲臨床實驗藥物好壞的致命荒謬,因而,我說西醫醫學是偽科學。
看看德國人的理性,再看看中醫的誕生地中國,感覺悲哀。被西醫馴化的精神病大仙,還有許多沒有學過任何醫學的智障們,一直在喋喋不休,極力扼殺中醫和中藥。
任何疾病都是多方位損傷和不斷發展的綜合症。雖然,新冠病毒是單一誘因致人染病,然而,其損傷卻是多方麵和持續惡化的,因而,按西醫查病因開發對症藥的方式是不可能的。必須遵循中醫複方用藥,同時提供大量的藥物成份,就像散彈槍的彈丸,盲射,能同時擊中多靶點,治愈多方麵損傷。
西醫以哲學機械還原論作為醫學指導。
有說,機械還原論發起人是法國哲學家、數學家和科學家笛卡爾,解析幾何的奠基者,他認為,如果一件事物過於複雜,難以解決,可以將它分解成一些足夠小的問題,分別加以分析,然後再將它們組合在一起,就能獲得對複雜事物的完整、準確的認識。也就是說,難以理解的複雜係統、事務、現象,可以拆解為最基本的簡單組成部分來理解和描述。
據此哲學指導,西醫視人體為無生命構件的簡單機械組合,以無限細分人體為微觀獨立單元來研究疾病的產生和發展,如,蛋白質,基因,甚至核糖核酸;以尋求殺戮致病原和基因修補作為疾病預防和治療的手段。無視人體是對立統一的有機整體,無視心理因素對疾病的產生和發展決定性影響。
由於西醫是基於嚴謹的科學實驗,有理有據。因此,令人信服。此外,2003年,人類基因組計劃完成,人們確信,從此,人類可以如同撥動時針一樣根除疾病。根據基因技術,西醫甚至能夠用試管製造生命,對農作物進行改造,提高食物的品質和產量。還有用用雙盲臨床實驗,確保藥物的安全可靠,更是令人五體投地般折服。因而,人們對西醫醫學的迷信,如同癮君子癡迷海洛因,無法自拔。迷戀西醫,確信隻有西醫才是可以信賴的醫學。
我不否認西醫醫學的巨大貢獻,然而,在藥物研發和利用方麵,西醫馴化太多的人處於精神病狀態,行為失常,邪惡不自知。
西醫治病力求用精準阻擊步槍,看似正確無比,極其科學理性。然而,由於無法製造精準彈丸。因此,其實際效果,卻是荒謬絕倫。
1955年,西醫發現沒藥物的安慰劑,能取得50 - 60%的臨床治愈,這接近中醫的三分治七分養。西醫發現,許多西藥的療效低於安慰劑,還副作用殺人。規定雙盲臨床實驗證明藥物的有效性,結果,自那時以來,西醫一直在批發西醫精神病大仙,用雙盲臨床試驗,用單一成分實驗,踢開複方應用有效的藥物。
現代西醫心理作用研究 證明了三分治七分養的正確性。
2008年1月8日,文章 Report: Stress Causes Everything《心理壓力引起一切疾病》介紹了一項跨越心理學、醫學、神經科學和遺傳學學科的研究,說,坦率地講,心理壓力對你有害,它可以殺死你。研究表明,心理壓力會導致從牙齦到心髒的各種疾病惡化,並且會使您更容易患上從普通感冒到癌症的各種疾病。
1930年代,Hans Selye 提供了心理壓力與健康之間聯係的第一條線索,他是第一位將“壓力”一詞(當時隻是一個工程術語)應用於生物體的科學家。
皮質醇被認為是心理壓力與疾病聯係的罪魁禍首之一,盡管它在幫助我們應對威脅方麵發揮著必要的作用。當動物察覺到危險時,係統就會啟動信號的連鎖反應,從腎髒上方的腎上腺釋放各種激素——最顯著的是腎上腺素、去甲腎上腺素和皮質醇。
這些激素可提高心率,增加呼吸,並增加血液中葡萄糖(細胞燃料)的可用性,從而實現著名的“戰鬥還是逃跑”反應。因為這些反應需要大量的能量,皮質醇同時通知其他昂貴的物理過程 — 包括消化、繁殖、身體生長和免疫係統的某些方麵 — 關閉或減慢。
當威脅過去,身體的壓力恒溫器會相應調整:皮質醇水平恢複到基線(需要 40-60 分鍾),腸道恢複消化食物,性器官重新啟動,並且免疫係統恢複抵抗感染。
但是,當威脅過去,壓力沒有減輕時,問題就會出現 — 或者由於各種原因,大腦會不斷地感知壓力,即使它實際上並不存在。
壓力始於大腦對危險的感知,並且似乎持續的壓力實際上可以通過改變大腦結構(例如控製對威脅的感知和反應的那些結構)來使大腦偏向於感知更多危險。長時間接觸皮質醇,會抑製新神經元的生長,並可能導致杏仁核的生長增加,杏仁核是大腦中控製恐懼和其他情緒反應的部分。
最終結果是提高了對環境威脅的期望和關注。壓力荷爾蒙還會抑製海馬體部分神經元的生長,海馬體是形成新記憶所必需的大腦區域。通過這種方式,壓力會導致記憶障礙。
一些研究人員認為,這些大腦變化是壓力和抑鬱之間聯係的核心,這是壓力對健康造成的最具破壞性的後果之一,是 創傷應激障礙 (PTSD)。
對於新冠病的治療,西方的醫生拒絕中醫藥,用雙盲臨床實驗證實的科學藥物治療,導致大量患者死亡和後遺症,中國的醫生采用中西醫結合,用不科學的複方藥物治療,減少了死亡和後遺症。
如果,沒有西醫馴化的精神病大仙的胡鬧,這個不科學,那個沒經過驗證,威嚇人們不敢用易得的自然藥物自救,全球650萬新冠逝者的90%還活著。
西方明智的學者和政治家,早已看清,西方文明的那些玩意兒,有致命問題。
自由民主這玩意兒,就是一個政治賭場,社會垃圾合法糾結為黨,在國會在國會互相為敵,競爭執政黨席位,然後,分享國家的行政職位,享受豪華的工資,豪華的福利,豪華的政治特權。
2014年5月,文章Luxury EU junkets for MEPs cost taxpayer over euro 5m a year《歐洲議會議員的豪華旅行每年花費納稅人的錢超過500萬歐元》報道,“歐洲議會成員每年花費超過500萬歐元用於所謂的“實況調查”旅行,前往世界上一些最豪華的目的地,僅在過去兩年中,就有160次旅行。”“歐洲議會議員在仆人和翻譯的陪同下,前往數十個豪華目的地,包括巴巴多斯、印度、印度尼西亞、毛裏求斯、薩摩亞、特立尼達和印度洋的塞舌爾群島共和國。”平均費用為每人13,379歐元。
理性的德國人憤而采取行動;2019年1月文章 EU on the brink: German eurosceptics threaten 'DEXIT' unless EU parliament is ABOLISHED《歐盟瀕臨崩潰:德國歐洲製度懷疑論者威脅“退歐”,除非廢除歐盟議會》說,歐洲議會有751名議員、44,000名官員和11,000名員工,每年花費超過80億歐元;其中4,000名官員的年收入超過29萬歐元,超過了德國總理安格拉·默克爾的薪水。德國的右翼替代方案(AfD)承諾提出“退出”,除非歐盟能夠在2019年至2024年之間的立法期間實施“基本改革”。
2020年4月12日,彭博社主編John Micklethwait博士和《經濟學人》的政治編輯Adrian Wooldridge博士,在彭博社網站,聯名發表文章,The virus should wake up the west《病毒應喚醒西方》,無奈失望地歎息:“政府的工作就是保護其公民。然而,新冠狀病毒大流行表明,歐洲和美國的主要政府機構已無法勝任工作。”
“自霍布斯(Hobbes)時代以來,世界已經全麵發展。當他寫《利維坦》時,是中國而不是歐洲是卓越的行政管理的中心。中國是世界上最強大的國家,擁有世界上最大的城市(北京有超過一百萬的居民),世界上最強大的海軍和世界上最先進的公務員製度,其成員都是學者文官,這些文官是從龐大的帝國中經過嚴格科舉考試選拔的 。”
“歐洲是封建家族之間爭鬥血拚的戰場”,“事實上,是歐洲人為爭奪統治權而進行的鬥爭推動了西方政府的進步:歐洲君主攫取技術創新,特別是新船和武器,以提高生存的機會。中國人發明火藥,是用來燃放煙花。歐洲人確用它把對方(然後是中國人)從水中吹了出來。”
“現在,西方政府的優勢值得懷疑:簡單地問問自己,今天,在紐約和倫敦,在新加坡和首爾,您是否會有安全感?亞洲正在趕上西方,並且一些較小的國家已經趕超了西方,這在很大程度上是因為在過去的幾十年中,尤其是儒家亞洲一直認真對待政府,而西方卻允許它僵化。”
“在意識形態爭論的背後,西方政府的主要問題其實很簡單:它已經過時了。”“許多主要的政府機構已經被扭曲變形,過時了。”
弗朗西斯·福山 Francis Fukuyama,日裔美籍學者。哈佛大學政治學博士,曾師從塞繆爾·亨廷頓。1992年,鑒於柏林牆的推倒,社會主義陣營的自我玩完,他寫了The end of history and the last man《曆史之終結與最後一人》,讓他一舉成名。該書認為自由民主製和西方自由市場資本主義及其生活方式在世界範圍內的傳播,可能標誌著人類社會文化演變的終點,並成為最後的政府形式。
然而,22年後,鑒於美國政府的驢和象兩個牲畜黨派惡性互鬥,癱瘓政府運作,無法進行有效的社會治理,2014年10月10日,還是同一個弗朗西斯·福山,在美國外交事務雜誌發表文章America in Decay, The Sources of Political Dysfunction《美國衰落,政治失調的根源》,說,美國衰落,沒有出路,隻有死路一條。
1992年,為了回應自己學生的致命錯誤言論,政治科學家塞繆爾·亨廷頓,立刻在美國企業研究所發表演講《文明的衝突》。1996年,出版書籍 The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order《文明的衝突與世界秩序的重塑》,指出:“在新興的種族衝突和文明衝突中,西方信仰的西方文化的普遍性遭受三個問題:它是虛假的,它是不道德的,它是危險的。
他認為,西方價值觀和政治製度普遍性的信仰過於天真,繼續堅持民主化作為普遍規範,將激起其他文明的反對。他認為西方不願意接受這一事實,是因為它們已經建立了國際製度,已經寫進了法律,並以聯合國憲章的形式固定。
9年後,2001年9月11日,紐約世貿中心雙塔被恐怖襲擊,就是美國推銷民主政治,激起伊斯蘭文明的激烈反擊。證明了繆爾·亨廷頓文明衝突論的先見之明。
英國人的祖先,是自由民主政治製度的發起者之一。他們的後人,對民主這玩意兒,不但,不以為然,而且,還極其蔑視。
2019年7月29日,YouTube視頻:接下來的40年會發生什麽?英國SingularityNET公司的創始人兼首席執行官,漢森機器人技術有限公司首席科學顧問,Ben Goertzel博士,極力推崇中國人務實,社會治理高效。還特意說:“中國是由工程師管理,美國是由律師管理,英國是由傻瓜管理。”China is run by engineers, whereas the US is run by lawyers, the UK is run by morons。這裏是視頻鏈接: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkZGYjXSIvc
因為,民主是人渣的遊戲,所以,民主國家的人渣政客,一旦當選,就自以為是世界領袖,立刻拎起意識形態(自由、人權)這根瞎子拐杖,在國會,在國際,尋找目標進行攻擊。
自由民主選舉社會垃圾胡鬧,神聖的國會,被智障們用來拉幫結派,互相爭鬥,謀取私利的賭場。自由民主,就是幫助低素質的人把國家機器當作拐杖來玩耍,危害人類生存。
2019年,文章 Chrystia Freeland: Liberal democracies are being "hijacked by angry populist politicians《克裏斯蒂亞·弗裏蘭德:自由民主製被憤怒的民粹政客劫持》寫到;加拿大現任金融大臣和副總理克裏斯蒂亞·弗裏蘭德說 “疑慮正在自由民主國家內部蔓延……;自由民主社會正在被極化,被分裂為敵對的–甚至交戰的–彼此無法交流的部落,社會被憤怒的民粹政客劫持。” 弗裏蘭德說,這個問題存在於“不愉快的自由民主國家”中,“其中的細節也許是獨特的,但是,基本故事情節相同。”
2019年,加拿大商業委員會首席執行官戈爾迪·海德撰文The political pendulum has swung too far to one extreme《政治的鍾擺已經被甩到一個極端》:現在,我們對批評的欲望已經超過了對創造的渴望,政客們已經不能行使其政治權威。我們程序設置的障礙,使得少數人可以製止大多數加拿大人認可的倡議。重要的項目,計劃和政策被延遲,直到支持者放棄繼續推進的努力。
錯誤的政治設計和意識形態,摧毀美國的根基
2018年,哈佛肯尼迪政府學院的美國政治學家格雷厄姆·艾利森教授在Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap一書中,介紹了華盛頓地鐵銀線項目,1968年開始籌劃,2000年啟動,2009年開工,2014年一期竣工。時隔46年,隻完成了34個站點的5個。教授歎息,不知連接杜勒斯機場的第二階段何時完成。
教授還介紹了另一個項目,即肯尼迪學院和哈佛商學院之間橫跨查爾斯河的小橋,2012 年,馬薩諸塞州政府決定翻新該橋,預計兩年完成。但是,追加預算三次,直到 2017 年才完成。與此鮮明對比,教授介紹了中國北京的一座更大的橋 - 三元橋,43小時完成翻修。教授表示,現在中國以小時計完成的項目,超過美國以年計完成的項目。
可怕的是,在北美,這種故意拖延施工,強迫追加預算的玩法,已經不限於公共項目;已經被用到個人住宅項目的施工中。我的美國朋友告訴我,當地政府規定,家庭後院必須建柵欄,他家兩邊的鄰居,在建柵欄時,都被施工隊無理玩耍,不得不三次增加補充預算,到完工時,整個花費幾乎達到了買房價格的一半。在加拿大,也有類似報道。
美國政客積極鼓勵製造業回歸美國,僅僅是白日夢。當年,特朗普讚譽富士康到美國建廠是世界第八大奇跡。但是,時至今日,承諾的100億投資,僅僅投了一部分。有報道,富士康位於威斯康星州的創新中心以及辦公樓長期處於閑置狀態,沒有任何辦公的跡象。因用工成本過高,不得不黯然流產,成了世界工廠界的一個笑話。
客機製造公司波音,已經被玩完
2019年4月22日,文章《絕不乘坐787!內部員工自曝工廠管理混亂,波音緊急出麵滅火》說,“737MAX事故調查正在進行中,但越來越多曝光出來信息顯示,737MAX出現質量問題並非偶然因素,很可能跟波音公司長期以來管理混亂有關係;現在又有新的問題被曝光,另一款主要商業機型787係列的生產車間管理混亂,這讓波音公司的聲譽再遭重創。”
“4月20日,據觀察者網,美國《紐約時報》在頭版頭條刊登了一則爆炸性新聞:波音公司在南卡羅來納州北查爾斯頓的787夢想客機的總裝工廠存在嚴重的生產和監管問題,已經威脅到飛機安全。”
“在報道中,十多名現任和前任波音員工表示,為了追求生產速度,波音公司故意忽略產品的生產質量,在生產過程中出現的質量問題,上層管理部門置若罔聞,其中一位名叫克雷頓的技術工人表示,他經常發現駕駛艙重要位置有不明的危險碎片,他甚至表示:“我絕不會考慮去乘坐這些飛機”。”
“另外還有一名為波音工作了30年的質量經理披露,所有從北查爾斯頓生產線出廠的波音客機,他從來不敢保證有一架是安全的,他還提到曾經多次發現飛機的飛控係統布線上有金屬廢屑,盡管他一再要求清除,但卻被拒絕,還被降職處理;FAA的一名專家也表示,在已經通過質檢的波音客機上發現過金屬廢屑,一旦造成短路,後果不堪設想。”
“紐約時報的報道中還提到了多處波音787客機可能存在的質量問題和設計安全問題,但對於這篇報道,波音公司一如既往的立刻予以否認,宣稱報道隻是把過去的謊言和舊聞集中了一下,而波音商業項目負責人麥卡利斯特反駁稱,北查爾斯頓工廠是波音有史以來最注重質量的工廠,而波音發現人堅稱,波音公司從來都是將安全和質量擺在生產速度之上。”
“最近一段時間以來,波音公司產品連續曝光質量問題,從737MAX墜機,到與FAA勾結在安全認證上做手腳,再到生產的衛星設計15年服役僅3年就解體,現在787夢想客機也被曝“夢碎”,這已經不能用商業競爭對手的宣傳攻勢來解釋了,根本原因就是波音自身存在問題。”
搜索這些報道,是想讓大家看清,世界上沒有理想的治理方法。源自歐洲的自由民主政治,正幫助素質低下者,把人類人性的黑暗麵,發揮到極致。
這裏,需要特別指出,我特意搜索了John Micklethwait博士 和 Adrian Wooldridge博士的教育背景,他們倆都在英國牛津大學的曆史專業學習過。是後天獲得的曆史知識,賦予他們人性化的思維,擺脫了西方智障的思維和行為。
還有,上麵提到的漢森機器人技術有限公司首席科學顧問Ben Goertzel博士的太太是中國人,因此,對中國很了解。
據此,我推斷,對於那些沒有學習過曆史知識的西方政客,很難改變他們對中國政府的敵對心態。
王滬寧留任常委意味著什麽?狗屁專家解讀
www.creaders.net | 2022-10-23
2022年10月23日,中共宣布新一屆政治局常委,王滬寧繼續留任,引發關注。圖為2018年3月5日王滬寧在北京人民大會堂兩會上。(WANG ZHAO/AFP via Getty Images)
周三(10月23日),中共新一屆政治局常委名單出爐。影響中共意識形態的王滬寧留任常委,備受外界關注。專家認為,這表明中共的意識形態傾向將會繼續,甚至會更進一步。
中共周日公布的新一屆常委名單包括習近平、李強、趙樂際、王滬寧、蔡奇、丁薛祥、李希。習近平、趙樂際和王滬寧留任常委,而其他4人則是新提拔上來的。
路透社報道,南洋理工大學助理教授Dylan Loh說,“王滬寧現身(常委)對我來說意味著,黨和習的意識形態傾向將繼續,甚至會加深。”
卡內基中國(Carnegie China)主任韓磊(Paul Haenle)在推特上談到新一屆常委對中國的治理和政策製定意味著什麽時說,這些常委將首先專注於幫助習近平完成他的政治和意識形態議程。
主管意識形態的王滬寧被視為中共的“大腦”,和極左思潮的源泉。他領導中央政策研究室(一個黨的智囊團)多年,王滬寧的背景使他成為中共最高領導人罕見的國家政策顧問、首席演講撰稿人和首席理論家的結合體。
《紐約時報》說,王滬寧留任政治局常委標誌著中共強硬政策的延續,以及意識型態將在習近平的下一個五年任期發揮持久作用。
在習近平執政期間,王滬寧在政策製定方麵扮演了核心角色。他曾在控製廣大社會部門的委員會中擔任領導職務,包括宣傳、教育、網絡安全和法律改革。
美國《鈀金雜誌》(Palladium Magazine)去年10月刊出一篇關於王滬寧的文章,介紹了“王滬寧思想”。文章說,王滬寧是中共七常委之一,也是中共最頂尖的意識形態理論家。習近平每個標誌性的政治概念都是他提出來的,包括“中國夢”、反腐運動、“一帶一路”倡議、戰狼外交,甚至“習近平思想”。
文章還說,如果仔細觀察習近平在重要行程或重要會議上的任何照片,人們很可能會在背景中發現王滬寧,他從來沒有離開領導人太遠。王滬寧同樣是習近平的前任——江澤民“三個代表”以及胡錦濤“和諧社會”的幕後推手。
針對本周日公布的中共新一屆常委,韓磊在推特上說,“展望未來,我預計我們將繼續看到中國(中共)在捍衛它所認為的核心利益方麵采取更加武斷的行動。‘安全’是習近平工作報告的一個主要主題,也是中國(中共)麵臨的巨大風險/威脅,有必要保持鬥爭精神。”
“我們可以預計習近平會繼續——也許甚至加強——我們在過去10年中看到的武斷姿態。”韓磊說。
《紐時》說,王滬寧的崛起與習近平不斷擴大的強硬議程同步,那就是對西方思想和影響力的日益懷疑以及對互聯網自由的限製等。
在上世紀80年代,王滬寧幫助推行一種被稱為“新威權主義”的理論,即像中國這樣的貧窮大國在推動市場改革的同時,需要強人統治來維持秩序。這一思想後來成為“中國模式”的基礎,習近平如今將這種國家控製的資本主義製度極力吹捧為中國的標誌性成就之一。
而在最近,王滬寧圍繞習近平乃天命所係的理念幫助塑造黨的措辭。《紐時》援引新西蘭漢學家白傑明(Geremie R. Barmé)的話說,這些構想“幫助並慫恿習近平認為,他有理由繼續掌權”,“他促成了習近平在未來二三十年對黨的統治”。
美國知名廣播節目主持人休?休伊特(Hugh Hewitt)去年12月在《華盛頓郵報》上刊登專欄文章說,王滬寧雖然鮮為人知,但他在負責製定中國未來的政策,而且他對最高領導人習近平有超常的影響力。王滬寧幾乎可以肯定是世界上最危險的人。
澳洲前總理、亞洲協會政策院院長陸克文(Kevin Rudd)二十大召開前夕在《華爾街日報》上發文說,習近平如今已經變成了一個意識形態原教旨主義者,他把共產黨推向列寧主義的左翼,把經濟推向馬克思主義的左翼,把中國的外交和安全政策推向民族主義的右翼。在整個過程中,習近平在意識形態方麵的轉變也是對後來政策變化的最好預測。陸克文說,意識形態是主要問題。習近平認為私營部門是對共產黨權力的長期挑戰。
王滬寧為未來豪賭 但不會贏
www.creaders.net | 2022-10-25
美國政治圈的神秘學者N. S. Lyons(簡稱裏昂)近日撰文說,習近平出人意料地讓王滬寧繼續連任,是因為他們在打賭未來十年世界的走向。
2022年10月23日,王滬寧與新一屆中國共產黨政治局常委和中外記者一起參加新聞活動。
裏昂表示,中國共產黨的新政治局常委名單揭曉基本上是中國的政治超級碗,每五年舉行一次,每次都伴隨著更多的黨內清洗。
很多媒體報道二十大上都集中在,習近平如何贏得全麵勝利,消除他所有的派別對手,並建立他對中國的完全控製,還有作為習近平完全統治地位的一個濃縮象征,在宣布人事之前將前任領導人胡錦濤毫不客氣地從座位上架起來,請出大會堂。
但他二十大上主要的一件事,就是王滬寧——控製中共意識形態的幕後策劃者的走勢。
裏昂說,這幾個月來,許多有經驗的中國觀察家都表示,王滬寧要卸任、退休,他已經失去了影響力,而習近平也希望王滬寧離開,以任命一個新的、更年輕的人;王滬寧標誌性的“共同富裕”理念已經失信並被排擠等等。
但到中共二十大新常委露麵後,外界才發現,許多預想會獲得升遷的官員都落榜了,但王滬寧卻還在,他的“共同富裕”理念也跟著回來了。
王滬寧是中共七常委之一,也是中共最頂尖的意識形態理論家。習近平每個標誌性的政治概念都是他提出來的,包括“中國夢”、反腐運動、“一帶一路”倡議、戰狼外交,甚至“習近平思想”。
裏昂表示,在王滬寧繼續留在中共最高領導機構之後,了解王滬寧的思想將對外界了解今天中國的方向至關重要。
“這一點不僅因王滬寧通過了政治(清洗)存活而得以加強,還有通過習近平在黨代會上發表的講話(或者可以說是王滬寧的工作報告)得到了強調,其中充滿了王滬寧的個人色彩,例如經常鼓吹將馬克思主義的所謂‘真理’與中國傳統文化相結合,為中國文明創造一個新的思想基礎。”他寫道。
裏昂表示,更廣泛地說,習近平的講話說出了一個對全世界都很重要的事實——習近平和王滬寧眼中的當今世界存在的威脅,與西方眼中的威脅完全不同。
“對他們來說,‘自由國際秩序’不是秩序或繁榮的來源,而是關係到生存。他們非常不希望中國變得像西方一樣。”裏昂說,“現在,他們願意不惜一切代價,甚至犧牲持續的經濟增長,努力將中國和他們的(中共)政權與這種影響的力量隔離開來,確保其(眼中所謂的)安全。”
“這是一個可能不會得到回報的賭注,但他們死心塌地地要打這個賭——它將決定未來十年的世界走向。”他補充說。
裏昂解釋說,為何這個賭注不會贏。“因為在今天的世界上,美國化的新自由主義的影響伴隨著每一桶進口石油、每一個流行的數據字節,以及可能每一個呼吸的空氣分子……甚至中國人珍視的血液都不可能是安全的!”(意思是不受影響)
裏昂於2021年10月在“鈀金雜誌”(Palladium Magazine)發表了一篇研究王滬寧的長篇文章,該文在美國政界流傳,因此受到關注。外界隻知道,他是人在華盛頓特區的學者,但不知道其真實姓名。他的文章發表在Substack內容平台上。
因為領導人的主要助手與領導人一樣重要,而且往往這些助手會在事件發生前,數月或數年就製定路線。
根據裏昂的觀察,如果仔細觀察習近平在重要行程或重要會議上的任何照片,人們很可能會在背景中發現王滬寧,他從來沒有離開領導人太遠。王滬寧同樣是習近平的前任——江澤民“三個代表”以及胡錦濤“和諧社會”的幕後推手。
王滬寧在1989年從美國訪問半年回國後,逐漸成為抵製全球自由主義的主要人物。
他讚同“美國精神終結”的論斷,並希望創造新的中共核心價值觀,抵抗西方自由主義。
裏昂說,王滬寧現在似乎已經說服了習近平,他們別無選擇,隻能采取嚴厲的行動來阻止西式經濟和文化自由資本主義。
於是習近平在2021年1月發動了“共同富裕”運動。
不過,自始自終,裏昂都認為,王滬寧的思想運動終會破產。他表示,曆史上所謂的“靈魂工程師”大多都失敗了,相比之下,王滬寧設計和創造的所謂新社會價值觀賭注的成功概率幾乎為零。
The Triumph and Terror of Wang Huning
GOVERNANCE FUTURISM
N. S. LYONS OCTOBER 11, 2021 ARTICLES
Official White House Photo/Wang Huning observes as Chinese President Hu Jintao speaks with U.S. President Barack Obama, Toronto
One day in August 2021, Zhao Wei disappeared. For one of China’s best-known actresses to physically vanish from public view would have been enough to cause a stir on its own. But Zhao’s disappearing act was far more thorough: overnight, she was erased from the internet. Her Weibo social media page, with its 86 million followers, went offline, as did fan sites dedicated to her. Searches for her many films and television shows returned no results on streaming sites. Zhao’s name was scrubbed from the credits of projects she had appeared in or directed, replaced with a blank space. Online discussions uttering her name were censored. Suddenly, little trace remained that the 45-year-old celebrity had ever existed.
She wasn’t alone. Other Chinese entertainers also began to vanish as Chinese government regulators announced a “heightened crackdown” intended to dispense with “vulgar internet celebrities” promoting lascivious lifestyles and to “resolve the problem of chaos” created by online fandom culture. Those imitating the effeminate or androgynous aesthetics of Korean boyband stars—colorfully referred to as “xiao xian rou,” or “little fresh meat”—were next to go, with the government vowing to “resolutely put an end to sissy men” appearing on the screens of China’s impressionable youth.
Zhao and her unfortunate compatriots in the entertainment industry were caught up in something far larger than themselves: a sudden wave of new government policies that are currently upending Chinese life in what state media has characterized as a “profound transformation” of the country. Officially referred to as Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “Common Prosperity” campaign, this transformation is proceeding along two parallel lines: a vast regulatory crackdown roiling the private sector economy and a broader moralistic effort to reengineer Chinese culture from the top down.
But why is this “profound transformation” happening? And why now? Most analysis has focused on one man: Xi and his seemingly endless personal obsession with political control. The overlooked answer, however, is that this is indeed the culmination of decades of thinking and planning by a very powerful man—but that man is not Xi Jinping.
Wang Huning much prefers the shadows to the limelight. An insomniac and workaholic, former friends and colleagues describe the bespectacled, soft-spoken political theorist as introverted and obsessively discreet. It took former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin’s repeated entreaties to convince the brilliant then-young academic—who spoke wistfully of following the traditional path of a Confucian scholar, aloof from politics—to give up academia in the early 1990s and join the Chinese Communist Party regime instead. When he finally did so, Wang cut off nearly all contact with his former connections, stopped publishing and speaking publicly, and implemented a strict policy of never speaking to foreigners at all. Behind this veil of carefully cultivated opacity, it’s unsurprising that so few people in the West know of Wang, let alone know him personally.
Yet Wang Huning is arguably the single most influential “public intellectual” alive today.
A member of the CCP’s seven-man Politburo Standing Committee, he is China’s top ideological theorist, quietly credited as being the “ideas man” behind each of Xi’s signature political concepts, including the “China Dream,” the anti-corruption campaign, the Belt and Road Initiative, a more assertive foreign policy, and even “Xi Jinping Thought.” Scrutinize any photograph of Xi on an important trip or at a key meeting and one is likely to spot Wang there in the background, never far from the leader’s side.
Wang has thus earned comparisons to famous figures of Chinese history like Zhuge Liang and Han Fei (historians dub the latter “China’s Machiavelli”) who similarly served behind the throne as powerful strategic advisers and consiglieres—a position referred to in Chinese literature as dishi: “Emperor’s Teacher.” Such a figure is just as readily recognizable in the West as an éminence grise (“grey eminence”), in the tradition of Tremblay, Talleyrand, Metternich, Kissinger, or Vladimir Putin adviser Vladislav Surkov.
But what is singularly remarkable about Wang is that he’s managed to serve in this role of court philosopher to not just one, but all three of China’s previous top leaders, including as the pen behind Jiang Zemin’s signature “Three Represents” policy and Hu Jintao’s “Harmonious Society.”
In the brutally cutthroat world of CCP factional politics, this is an unprecedented feat. Wang was recruited into the party by Jiang’s “Shanghai Gang,” a rival faction that Xi worked to ruthlessly purge after coming to power in 2012; many prominent members, like former security chief Zhou Yongkang and former vice security minister Sun Lijun, have ended up in prison. Meanwhile, Hu Jintao’s Communist Youth League Faction has also been heavily marginalized as Xi’s faction has consolidated control. Yet Wang Huning remains. More than any other, it is this fact that reveals the depth of his impeccable political cunning.
And the fingerprints of China’s Grey Eminence on the Common Prosperity campaign are unmistakable. While it’s hard to be certain what Wang really believes today inside his black box, he was once an immensely prolific author, publishing nearly 20 books along with numerous essays. And the obvious continuity between the thought in those works and what’s happening in China today says something fascinating about how Beijing has come to perceive the world through the eyes of Wang Huning.
While other Chinese teenagers spent the tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) “sent down to the countryside” to dig ditches and work on farms, Wang Huning studied French at an elite foreign-language training school near his hometown of Shanghai, spending his days reading banned foreign literary classics secured for him by his teachers. Born in 1955 to a revolutionary family from Shandong, he was a sickly, bookish youth; this, along with his family’s connections, seems to have secured him a pass from hard labor.
When China’s shuttered universities reopened in 1978, following the commencement of “reform and opening” by Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping, Wang was among the first to take the restored national university entrance exam, competing with millions for a chance to return to higher learning. He passed so spectacularly that Shanghai’s Fudan University, one of China’s top institutions, admitted him into its prestigious international politics master’s program despite having never completed a bachelor’s degree.
The thesis work he completed at Fudan, which would become his first book, traced the development of the Western concept of national sovereignty from antiquity to the present day—including from Gilgamesh through Socrates, Aristotle, Augustine, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Hegel, and Marx—and contrasted it with Chinese conceptions of the idea. The work would become the foundation for many of his future theories of the nation-state and international relations.
But Wang was also beginning to pick up the strands of what would become another core thread of his life’s work: the necessary centrality of culture, tradition, and value structures to political stability.
Wang elaborated on these ideas in a 1988 essay, “The Structure of China’s Changing Political Culture,” which would become one of his most cited works. In it, he argued that the CCP must urgently consider how society’s “software” (culture, values, attitudes) shapes political destiny as much as its “hardware” (economics, systems, institutions). While seemingly a straightforward idea, this was notably a daring break from the materialism of orthodox Marxism.
Examining China in the midst of Deng’s rapid opening to the world, Wang perceived a country “in a state of transformation” from “an economy of production to an economy of consumption,” while evolving “from a spiritually oriented culture to a materially oriented culture,” and “from a collectivist culture to an individualistic culture.”
Meanwhile, he believed that the modernization of “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” was effectively leaving China without any real cultural direction at all. “There are no core values in China’s most recent structure,” he warned. This could serve only to dissolve societal and political cohesion.
That, he said, was untenable. Warning that “the components of the political culture shaped by the Cultural Revolution came to be divorced from the source that gave birth to this culture, as well as from social demands, social values, and social relations”—and thus “the results of the adoption of Marxism were not always positive”—he argued that, “Since 1949, we have criticized the core values of the classical and modern structures, but have not paid enough attention to shaping our own core values.” Therefore: “we must create core values.” Ideally, he concluded, “We must combine the flexibility of [China’s] traditional values with the modern spirit [both Western and Marxist].”
But at this point, like many during those heady years of reform and opening, he remained hopeful that liberalism could play a positive role in China, writing that his recommendations could allow “the components of the modern structure that embody the spirit of modern democracy and humanism [to] find the support they need to take root and grow.”
That would soon change.
Also in 1988, Wang—having risen with unprecedented speed to become Fudan’s youngest full professor at age 30—won a coveted scholarship (facilitated by the American Political Science Association) to spend six months in the United States as a visiting scholar. Profoundly curious about America, Wang took full advantage, wandering about the country like a sort of latter-day Chinese Alexis de Tocqueville, visiting more than 30 cities and nearly 20 universities.
What he found deeply disturbed him, permanently shifting his view of the West and the consequences of its ideas.
Wang recorded his observations in a memoir that would become his most famous work: the 1991 book America Against America. In it, he marvels at homeless encampments in the streets of Washington DC, out-of-control drug crime in poor black neighborhoods in New York and San Francisco, and corporations that seemed to have fused themselves to and taken over responsibilities of government. Eventually, he concludes that America faces an “unstoppable undercurrent of crisis” produced by its societal contradictions, including between rich and poor, white and black, democratic and oligarchic power, egalitarianism and class privilege, individual rights and collective responsibilities, cultural traditions and the solvent of liquid modernity.
But while Americans can, he says, perceive that they are faced with “intricate social and cultural problems,” they “tend to think of them as scientific and technological problems” to be solved separately. This gets them nowhere, he argues, because their problems are in fact all inextricably interlinked and have the same root cause: a radical, nihilistic individualism at the heart of modern American liberalism.
“The real cell of society in the United States is the individual,” he finds. This is so because the cell most foundational (per Aristotle) to society, “the family, has disintegrated.” Meanwhile, in the American system, “everything has a dual nature, and the glamour of high commodification abounds. Human flesh, sex, knowledge, politics, power, and law can all become the target of commodification.” This “commodification, in many ways, corrupts society and leads to a number of serious social problems.” In the end, “the American economic system has created human loneliness” as its foremost product, along with spectacular inequality. As a result, “nihilism has become the American way, which is a fatal shock to cultural development and the American spirit.”
Moreover, he says that the “American spirit is facing serious challenges” from new ideational competitors. Reflecting on the universities he visited and quoting approvingly from Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, he notes a growing tension between Enlightenment liberal rationalism and a “younger generation [that] is ignorant of traditional Western values” and actively rejects its cultural inheritance. “If the value system collapses,” he wonders, “how can the social system be sustained?”
Ultimately, he argues, when faced with critical social issues like drug addiction, America’s atomized, deracinated, and dispirited society has found itself with “an insurmountable problem” because it no longer has any coherent conceptual grounds from which to mount any resistance.
Once idealistic about America, at the start of 1989 the young Wang returned to China and, promoted to Dean of Fudan’s International Politics Department, became a leading opponent of liberalization.
He began to argue that China had to resist global liberal influence and become a culturally unified and self-confident nation governed by a strong, centralized party-state. He would develop these ideas into what has become known as China’s “Neo-Authoritarian” movement—though Wang never used the term, identifying himself with China’s “Neo-Conservatives.” This reflected his desire to blend Marxist socialism with traditional Chinese Confucian values and Legalist political thought, maximalist Western ideas of state sovereignty and power, and nationalism in order to synthesize a new basis for long-term stability and growth immune to Western liberalism.
“He was most concerned with the question of how to manage China,” one former Fudan student recalls. “He was suggesting that a strong, centralized state is necessary to hold this society together. He spent every night in his office and didn’t do anything else.”
Wang’s timing couldn’t have been more auspicious. Only months after his return, China’s own emerging contradictions exploded into view in the form of student protests in Tiananmen Square. After PLA tanks crushed the dreams of liberal democracy sprouting in China, CCP leadership began searching desperately for a new political model on which to secure the regime. They soon turned to Wang Huning.
When Wang won national acclaim by leading a university debate team to victory in an international competition in Singapore in 1993, he caught the attention of Jiang Zemin, who had become party leader after Tiananmen. Wang, having defeated National Taiwan University by arguing that human nature is inherently evil, foreshadowed that, “While Western modern civilization can bring material prosperity, it doesn’t necessarily lead to improvement in character.” Jiang plucked him from the university and, at the age of 40, he was granted a leadership position in the CCP’s secretive Central Policy Research Office, putting him on an inside track into the highest echelons of power.
From the smug point of view of millions who now inhabit the Chinese internet, Wang’s dark vision of American dissolution was nothing less than prophetic. When they look to the U.S., they no longer see a beacon of liberal democracy standing as an admired symbol of a better future. That was the impression of those who created the famous “Goddess of Democracy,” with her paper-m?ché torch held aloft before the Gate of Heavenly Peace.
Instead, they see Wang’s America: deindustrialization, rural decay, over-financialization, out of control asset prices, and the emergence of a self-perpetuating rentier elite; powerful tech monopolies able to crush any upstart competitors operating effectively beyond the scope of government; immense economic inequality, chronic unemployment, addiction, homelessness, and crime; cultural chaos, historical nihilism, family breakdown, and plunging fertility rates; societal despair, spiritual malaise, social isolation, and skyrocketing rates of mental health issues; a loss of national unity and purpose in the face of decadence and barely concealed self-loathing; vast internal divisions, racial tensions, riots, political violence, and a country that increasingly seems close to coming apart.
As a tumultuous 2020 roiled American politics, Chinese people began turning to Wang’s America Against America for answers. And when a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021, the book flew off the shelves. Out-of-print copies began selling for as much as $2,500 on Chinese e-commerce sites.
But Wang is unlikely to be savoring the acclaim, because his worst fear has become reality: the “unstoppable undercurrent of crisis” he identified in America seems to have successfully jumped the Pacific. Despite all his and Xi’s success in draconian suppression of political liberalism, many of the same problems Wang observed in America have nonetheless emerged to ravage China over the last decade as the country progressively embraced a more neoliberal capitalist economic model.
“Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” has rapidly transformed China into one of the most economically unequal societies on earth. It now boasts a Gini Coefficient of, officially, around 0.47, worse than the U.S.’s 0.41. The wealthiest 1% of the population now holds around 31% of the country’s wealth (not far behind the 35% in the U.S.). But most people in China remain relatively poor: some 600 million still subsist on a monthly income of less than 1,000 yuan ($155) a month.
Meanwhile, Chinese tech giants have established monopoly positions even more robust than their U.S. counterparts, often with market shares nearing 90%. Corporate employment frequently features an exhausting “996” (9am to 9pm, 6 days a week) schedule. Others labor among struggling legions trapped by up-front debts in the vast system of modern-day indentured servitude that is the Chinese “gig economy.” Up to 400 million Chinese are forecast to enjoy the liberation of such “self-employment” by 2036, according to Alibaba.
The job market for China’s ever-expanding pool of university graduates is so competitive that “graduation equals unemployment” is a societal meme (the two words share a common Chinese character). And as young people have flocked to urban metropoles to search for employment, rural regions have been drained and left to decay, while centuries of communal extended family life have been upended in a generation, leaving the elderly to rely on the state for marginal care. In the cities, young people have been priced out of the property market by a red-hot asset bubble.
Meanwhile, contrary to trite Western assumptions of an inherently communal Chinese culture, the sense of atomization and low social trust in China has become so acute that it’s led to periodic bouts of anguished societal soul-searching after oddly regular instances in which injured individuals have been left to die on the street by passers-by habitually distrustful of being scammed.
Feeling alone and unable to get ahead in a ruthlessly consumerist society, Chinese youth increasingly describe existing in a state of nihilistic despair encapsulated by the online slang term neijuan (“involution”), which describes a “turning inward” by individuals and society due to a prevalent sense of being stuck in a draining rat race where everyone inevitably loses. This despair has manifested itself in a movement known as tangping, or “lying flat,” in which people attempt to escape that rat race by doing the absolute bare minimum amount of work required to live, becoming modern ascetics.
In this environment, China’s fertility rate has collapsed to 1.3 children per woman as of 2020—below Japan and above only South Korea as the lowest in the world—plunging its economic future into crisis. Ending family size limits and government attempts to persuade families to have more children have been met with incredulity and ridicule by Chinese young people as being “totally out of touch” with economic and social reality. “Do they not yet know that most young people are exhausted just supporting themselves?” asked one typically viral post on social media. It’s true that, given China’s cut-throat education system, raising even one child costs a huge sum: estimates range between $30,000 (about seven times the annual salary of the average citizen) and $115,000, depending on location.
But even those Chinese youth who could afford to have kids have found they enjoy a new lifestyle: the coveted DINK (“Double Income, No Kids”) life, in which well-educated young couples (married or not) spend all that extra cash on themselves. As one thoroughly liberated 27-year-old man with a vasectomy once explained to The New York Times: “For our generation, children aren’t a necessity…Now we can live without any burdens. So why not invest our spiritual and economic resources on our own lives?”
So while Americans have today given up the old dream of liberalizing China, they should maybe look a little closer. It’s true that China never remotely liberalized—if you consider liberalism to be all about democratic elections, a free press, and respect for human rights. But many political thinkers would argue there is more to a comprehensive definition of modern liberalism than that. Instead, they would identify liberalism’s essential telos as being the liberation of the individual from all limiting ties of place, tradition, religion, associations, and relationships, along with all the material limits of nature, in pursuit of the radical autonomy of the modern “consumer.”
From this perspective, China has been thoroughly liberalized, and the picture of what’s happening to Chinese society begins to look far more like Wang’s nightmare of a liberal culture consumed by nihilistic individualism and commodification.
It is in this context that Wang Huning appears to have won a long-running debate within the Chinese system about what’s now required for the People’s Republic of China to endure. The era of tolerance for unfettered economic and cultural liberalism in China is over.
According to a leaked account by one of his old friends, Xi has found himself, like Wang, “repulsed by the all-encompassing commercialization of Chinese society, with its attendant nouveaux riches, official corruption, loss of values, dignity, and self-respect, and such ‘moral evils’ as drugs and prostitution.” Wang has now seemingly convinced Xi that they have no choice but to take drastic action to head off existential threats to social order being generated by Western-style economic and cultural liberal-capitalism—threats nearly identical to those that scourge the U.S.
This intervention has taken the form of the Common Prosperity campaign, with Xi declaring in January that “We absolutely must not allow the gap between rich and poor to get wider,” and warning that “achieving common prosperity is not only an economic issue, but also a major political issue related to the party’s governing foundations.”
This is why anti-monopoly investigations have hit China’s top technology firms with billions of dollars in fines and forced restructurings and strict new data rules have curtailed China’s internet and social media companies. It’s why record-breaking IPOs have been put on hold and corporations ordered to improve labor conditions, with “996” overtime requirements made illegal and pay raised for gig workers. It’s why the government killed off the private tutoring sector overnight and capped property rental price increases. It’s why the government has announced “excessively high incomes” are to be “adjusted.”
And it’s why celebrities like Zhao Wei have been disappearing, why Chinese minors have been banned from playing the “spiritual opium” of video games for more than three hours per week, why LGBT groups have been scrubbed from the internet, and why abortion restrictions have been significantly tightened. As one nationalist article promoted across state media explained, if the liberal West’s “tittytainment strategy” is allowed to succeed in causing China’s “young generation lose their toughness and virility then we will fall…just like the Soviet Union did.” The purpose of Xi’s “profound transformation” is to ensure that “the cultural market will no longer be a paradise for sissy stars, and news and public opinion will no longer be in a position of worshipping Western culture.”
In the end, the campaign represents Wang Huning’s triumph and his terror. It’s thirty years of his thought on culture made manifest in policy.
On one hand, it is worth viewing honestly the level of economic, technological, cultural, and political upheaval the West is currently experiencing and considering whether he may have accurately diagnosed a common undercurrent spreading through our globalized world. On the other, the odds that his gambit to engineer new societal values can succeed seems doubtful, considering the many failures of history’s other would-be “engineers of the soul.”
The best simple proxy to measure this effort in coming years is likely to be demographics. For reasons not entirely clear, many countries around the world now face the same challenge: fertility rates that have fallen below the replacement rate as they’ve developed into advanced economies. This has occurred across a diverse array of political systems, and shows little sign of moderating. Besides immigration, a wide range of policies have now been tried in attempts to raise birth rates, from increased public funding of childcare services to “pro-natal” tax credits for families with children. None have been consistently successful, sparking anguished debate in some quarters on whether losing the will to survive and reproduce is simply a fundamental factor of modernity. But if any country can succeed in reversing this trend, no matter the brute-force effort required, it is likely to be China.
Either way, our world is witnessing a grand experiment that’s now underway: China and the West, facing very similar societal problems, have now, thanks to Wang Huning, embarked on radically different approaches to addressing them. And with China increasingly challenging the United States for a position of global geopolitical and ideological leadership, the conclusion of this experiment could very well shape the global future of governance for the century ahead.
N.S. Lyons is an analyst and writer living and working in Washington, D.C. He is the author of The Upheaval.