中國智囊 王滬寧 支持“美國精神終結”

王滬寧支持“美國精神終結”

王滬寧為未來豪賭 但不會贏

2022-10-25 22:20:45  大紀元 

 

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。

王滬寧：勝利背後的擔憂

The Triumph and Terror of Wang Huning

https://theupheaval.substack.com/ 

Oct 11, 2021 By N.S. Lyons, 

大概是外網上一篇寫的很好的文章，翻譯了一下貼在這裏吧（其實是主要依賴有道翻譯機翻的 lol，然後人工整理了三四遍，讀起來應該沒什麽問題）。

王滬寧：勝利背後的擔憂

2021年8月，趙薇失蹤了。中國最著名的女演員，一夜之間從公眾視野中消失。但趙薇的“消失”行動要徹底得多：她就從互聯網上突然“人間蒸發”了。8600萬粉絲的微博主頁下線，她的粉絲網站也是如此。在流媒體網站上搜索她的許多電影和電視節目，都沒有任何結果。趙薇的名字，被從她出演或執導的電影的演職人員名單中抹去，取而代之的是一個空格。提到她名字的網上討論也被審查。

突然間，這位45歲的名人在網絡上的痕跡幾乎蕩然無存。

類似的事情無獨有偶。隨著中國政府監管機構宣布“加大打擊力度”，其他中國藝人也開始消失。打擊的目的是摒棄“低俗網紅”宣揚的低俗生活方式，並“解決網絡粉絲文化造成混亂的問題”。緊隨其後的是那些模仿韓國男子明星組合的、追求女性化或中性化“美麗”的明星——他們被戲稱為“小鮮肉”或“小鮮肉”。政府誓言要“堅決終結娘娘腔男人出現在中國易受影響的年輕人的屏幕上”。

趙薇和她在娛樂圈的不幸同僚們，被卷入了某些更大的事情中：政府突然出台的一係列新政策，正在顛覆中國人的生活——國媒稱這是一個“深刻的變革”。這一轉變被官方稱為中國國家主席習近平的“共同富裕”運動，它沿著兩條平行的路線進行：一是針對私營經濟的大規模監管和打擊；二是從上到下地對中國文化進行大規模重組。

但是，為什麽會發生這種“深刻的轉變”呢？或者，即使發生了，為什麽會是現在？大多數分析都集中在一個人：習近平他看似無窮無盡的政治控製欲。然而，這確實是一個非常有權勢的人幾十年來思考和計劃的頂峰——但這個人不是習近平。

更清晰一點，這個人會是王滬寧。

不為人知的出山

王滬寧更喜歡在暗處思考，而不是在聚光燈下講話。這位失眠症患者和工作狂，他的前朋友和同事形容這位戴著眼鏡、說話溫和的政治理論家“性格內向，極其謹慎”。上世紀90年代初，在中國前領導人江澤民的多次懇求下，這位才華橫溢、年輕有為的學者放棄了學術研究，轉而投身中國共產黨的政治事業。但他渴望走儒學學者的傳統政治道路，遠離舞台上粉墨登場式的交鋒政治。當他最終這麽做的時候，王幾乎切斷了與他以前的所有聯係，停止了出版和公開講話，並對自己立下了毒誓：永遠不與外國人說話。在這種有意為之的不透明麵紗背後，難怪西方很少有人知道王滬寧，更別說私下認識他了。

然而，王滬寧可以說是當今最具影響力的“公知”。

身為中共七人政治局常委的一員，他被據傳是中國最高的意識形態理論的“奠基人”——這種身影甚至出現在每一個習近平曾提出的政治概念裏。“中國夢”、反腐運動、一帶一路計劃、更加自信的外交政策、甚至“習思想”——檢查任何習近平的照片，每一個重要的出訪、每一個關鍵的會議，你永遠會發現可王滬寧在暗處，在永遠不會遠離領導者的暗處。

因此，王滬寧被比作中國曆史上的著名軍師，如諸葛亮和韓非(曆史學家稱韓非為“中國的馬基雅維利”)，他們同樣是皇位背後強有力的戰略顧問和軍師——在中國文學中，這個職位被稱為“帝師”。在西方，這樣的人物就像éminence grise(“灰色的顯赫人物”)一樣地位顯赫，例如特倫布雷、塔列朗、梅特涅、基辛格、弗拉基米爾•普京的顧問蘇爾科夫等。

但王滬寧的非凡之處在於，他不僅為一位，而是為三位中國前最高領導人擔任“帝師”的角色——這其中包括為江澤民“三個代表”思想和胡錦濤的“和諧社會與科學發展觀”起筆。

在中國共產黨派係政治的殘酷世界裏，這是一個前所未有的壯舉。王被招募進江澤民的“上海幫”。而作為敵對派係，習近平於2012年取得政權後，無情地清洗了許多知名人士，如前公安部部長周永康和前公安部副部長孫立軍，最後都被關進了監獄。與此同時，胡錦濤輻射下的“團派”也被嚴重邊緣化。習的派係已經統一控製了整個朝野，而王滬寧依然健在：這一事實，比其他任何事實都更能揭示出他無懈可擊政治手腕的深度。

中國的“灰色精英”在共同繁榮運動中留下的印記是明確無誤的。雖然現在很難確定王滬寧到底相信什麽，但至少他曾經是一位非常多產的作家，出版了近20本書和大量的文章。這些作品中的思想，與當今中國發生的事情之間的明顯連續性和預見性，說明了北京是如何通過王滬寧的眼睛來看待世界的。

文化競爭力

當其他中國青少年在文革(1966-76年)的動蕩歲月裏“下鄉”挖溝種田時，王滬寧在家鄉上海附近的一所精英外語培訓學校學習法語，他整天閱讀被禁止傳閱的外國文學名著——這些都是其老師的主意。1955年，他出生於山東一個革命家庭，年輕時體弱多病，愛讀書；這一點，再加上他的家庭關係，似乎使他免於苦役。

當中國關閉的大學們於1978年重新開放，王滬寧是為數不多的在最早恢複的全國高考中與數百萬人競爭，並最終回到高等學府的人之一。他以驚人的成績度過了中國頂尖學府之一——上海複旦大學的學習生涯。盡管他從未完成學士學位，但還是被錄取為該校久負盛名的國際政治方向的碩士。

他在複旦完成的論文工作——也是他的第一本書——追溯了西方國家主權概念從古至今的發展，包括從吉爾伽美什到蘇格拉底、亞裏士多德、奧古斯丁、馬基雅維利、霍布斯、盧梭、孟德斯鳩、黑格爾、馬克思，並將他們的觀點同中國的觀念作了對比。這項工作將成為他未來關於民族國家和國際關係的許多理論的基礎。

而王滬寧也從此開始了他生命中另一項核心工作：探索文化、傳統信念和民族價值結構對政治穩定的重要作用。

王滬寧在1988年的一篇文章《中國變化中的政治文化的結構》(The Structure of China’s Changing Political Culture)中闡述了這些觀點，而這篇文章後來也成為他被引用最多的作品之一。在這篇文章中，他認為共產黨必須迫切考慮社會的“軟實力”(文化、價值觀、態度)和“硬實力”(經濟、係統、製度)之間的辯證關係，必須理解兩者是如何深刻影響一個政黨、一個國家的政治命運。雖然看上去這是一個直截了當的想法，但這明顯是對正統馬克思主義的大膽突破。

中國在鄧小平的領導下，不斷地向世界開放。而王滬寧認為一個國家的“轉型”要從“生產的經濟、消費的經濟的轉型”過渡到“精神導向的文化、麵向物質文化的轉型”和“從集體主義文化到獨立主義文化的轉型”。

同時，他認為“中國特色社會主義”的現代化實際上使中國沒有任何真正的文化根基。他警告稱:“中國最近的結構中沒有核心價值。”，而這隻會瓦解社會和政治的凝聚力。

他認為這種狀態極其不穩定。他在文章中警告：“現如今我過的政治文化的地位……受到文化大革命的影響，脫離了產生這種文化的根源。從社會需求、社會價值觀和社會關係的角度來看，曾在戰爭中確立的政治文化思想，其地位也在一點點瓦解”。因此，他得出了一個結論：“采用古板教條的馬克思主義，其結果並不總是積極的。”

他說,“自1949年以來,我們對我國古典和現代意識形態的核心價值觀進行了批判，但對自身核心價值觀的塑造卻沒有給予足夠的重視。”因此“我們必須創造核心價值。”他總結道:“如果可以，我們必須將(中國的)傳統價值觀的靈活性與(西方和馬克思主義的)現代精神結合起來。”

但在改革開放的非常時期裏，他仍然希望在中國自由主義可以發揮積極作用。他建議可以讓“現代民主精神和人文主義紮根和成長到我國的傳統文化，紮根到需要它們的地方。”

站在這個角度看，王滬寧可謂是中國現代“開眼看世界”的第一人。但他沒有意識到，有些事情可能在不斷地發生著改變。

危機暗流的美國社會

同樣是在1988年，30 歲的王滬寧以前所未有的速度成為了複旦最年輕的正教授，獲得了令人垂涎的獎學金(由美國政治科學協會提供)，在美國做了6個月的訪問學者。由於對美國充滿好奇，王便充分利用了這次機會，像中國的托克維爾(Alexis de Tocqueville)一樣，在美國四處遊曆並訪問了30多個城市和近20所大學。

他的發現深深困擾著他，並永久地改變了他對西方世界及其思潮的看法。

他在1991年出版的America Against America一書中記錄了自己的觀察——這本回憶錄後來成為他最著名的作品。在書中，他驚訝於華盛頓街頭營地裏無家可歸的人，驚訝於紐約和舊金山貧困黑人社區失控的毒品犯罪，以及驚訝於那些似乎已經融入並接管了政府職責的資本和公司。最後他總結道，美國麵臨著一種“不可阻擋的危機暗流”。這種暗流由社會矛盾產生，包括貧富之間、白人與黑人之間、民主與寡頭權力之間、平等主義與階級特權之間、個人權利與集體責任之間、傳統文化和現代文化思潮碰撞以及種種美國社會層出不窮的矛盾。

但他認為，盡管美國人能夠意識到他們麵臨著“複雜的社會和文化問題”，但他們“傾向於把這些問題視為科學和技術問題”，需要分開解決。他認為這種策略不會起任何作用，因為他們的問題實際上都不可避免地互相關聯並且有著相同的根源。而這便來自於現代美國自由主義核心中激進的虛無主義和個人主義。

他發現:“組成美國社會的基本單元是個人”。這與亞裏士多德所說的“家庭”相違背。與此同時，在美國體係中，“一切事物都具有兩重性，高度商品化的魅力無處不在”。人的肉體、性、知識、政治、權力和法律都可能成為商品化的目標。這種商品化，在許多方麵腐蝕了社會，並導致了許多嚴重的社會問題。最後“美國經濟體係製造了人類的孤獨，同時也帶來了巨大的不平等”。因此，“虛無主義已經成為美國的方式，這對文化發展和美國精神是一個致命的衝擊。”

此外，他認為麵對新興理念的挑戰，美國精神正麵臨嚴峻的挑戰。回顧他所訪問的大學，並結合艾倫•布魯姆《美國心靈的封閉》一書中的觀點，他注意到美國“對傳統西方價值觀一無所知的年輕一代”並不想深入了解啟蒙運動時期的自由理性主義，並積極地拒絕接受其文化遺產。“如果價值體係崩潰了”他想，“社會體係該如何維持下去?”

他認為，當麵對像吸毒成癮這樣的重大社會問題時，美國這個個體化、孤立和沮喪的社會會發現自己麵臨著一個無法克服的問題，因為它不再有任何連貫的政治理念作為基礎去進行任何抵抗。

曾經對美國充滿幻想的王滬寧，在1989年初回到中國，被提拔為複旦大學國際政治係的係主任，並成為自由主義的主要反對者。

他開始主張中國必須抵製全球化語境下自由主義思潮的影響。中國需要成為一個文化上統一且自信的國家，由一個強大的、中央集權的政黨和國家進行治理。他將這些想法發展成眾所周知的中國“新威權主義”運動——盡管王從來沒有使用過這個詞，他認為自己是中國的“新保守主義”。這反映出他希望將馬克思主義與中國傳統儒家價值觀、法家政治思想、西方國家主權和權力的最高限度主義思想以及民族主義相結合，從而為長期穩定和增長奠定新的基礎，使國家免受西方自由主義的影響。

“他最關心的問題是如何治理當今社會的中國”，一位複旦大學的校友回憶道，“他認為一個文化思想上堅定且強大的中央集權係統，是維係社會團結的必要條件——他整天晚上都呆在辦公室裏思考與之相關的問題，除此之外什麽也不做。”

而王滬寧這次運氣不錯。在他回國幾個月後，中國自身的矛盾最終以學生在天安門廣場抗議的形式爆發。在中國人民解放軍的坦克摧毀了自由民主在中國的萌芽之後，中共領導層開始拚命尋找一種新的政治模式，以確保政權的安全。而這讓他們很快就轉向了王滬寧的理論。

1993年，王滬寧帶領大學辯論隊在新加坡舉行的一場國際比賽中獲勝，贏得了全國的讚譽。當時，他引起了天安門事件後成為中共領導人的江澤民的注意。王滬寧以人性本惡的觀點擊敗了國立台灣大學，他預言:“雖然西方現代文明可以帶來物質上的繁榮，但並不一定會帶來品格上的改善。”江澤民便在王滬寧40歲時，給了他一個非同凡響的任命：在中國共產黨的秘密中央政策研究室中擔任顧問。這讓他瞬間掌握了更大的權利，也走向了更不可捉摸的高度。

王滬寧的噩夢

從現在中國互聯網上的數百萬人自鳴得意的角度來看，王滬寧關於美國解體的科學推斷簡直就是一種預言。當人們把目光投向美國時，人們不再一味地把自由民主主義的燈塔視為一個令人欽佩的、更美好更有未來的象征。

相反，人們看到的更多是王滬寧視角下的美國：去工業化、農村衰敗、過度金融化、資本操控下的價格失控以及個人主義精英的出現；強大的科技壟斷企業，能夠擊垮任何在政府管轄範圍之外的新興競爭者；巨大的經濟不平等、長期失業、吸毒成癮、無家可歸和犯罪；文化混亂、曆史虛無主義、家庭破裂和生育率驟降；社會性抑鬱、精神疾病、孤獨感和精神健康問題的不斷湧現；在頹廢和幾乎不加掩飾的自我厭惡麵前，美國民眾必將會喪失對國家團結和人生目標的期望。最終剩下的，隻能是巨大的內部分裂、緊張的種族局勢、騷亂、暴力，以及一個似乎越來越接近分裂的國家。

動蕩的2020年，動蕩的美國政治。中國人開始從王滬寧的《美國對抗美國》一書中尋求答案。2021年1月6日，當一群暴徒衝進美國國會大廈時，這本書被搶購一空。當時在中國的電子商務網站上，絕版書的售價甚至高達2500美元。

但王滬寧不太可能享受這一讚譽，因為他最擔心的事情已經變成了現實：他在美國發現的“不可阻擋的危機暗流”似乎已經成功地跨越了太平洋。盡管他和習近平使用嚴厲的手段，對政治自由主義等問題進行鎮壓，但王滬寧在美國發現的許多問題，卻不可避免地出現在了中國的過去十年裏：國家正在逐步接受新自由主義思潮下的資本主義經濟模式。

“中國特色社會主義”使中國迅速成為世界上經濟最不平等的社會之一。官方數據顯示，中國現在的基尼係數約為0.47，比美國的0.41還要低。那1% 最富有的人口現在擁有美國 31% 的財富(與美國 35% 的財富相差無幾)。但中國仍然有大多數人處於相對貧困：約6億人的月收入仍不足人民幣1,000元(155美元)。

與此同時，中國的科技巨頭在國內建立了比美國同行更穩固的壟斷地位，其市場份額往往接近90%。大公司的招聘經常以令人精疲力盡的“996”(早上9點到晚上9點，一周6天)為特色。另一些人則在中國“零工經濟”這個龐大的現代契約奴役體係中，掙紮在被預先債務困住的人海中。據阿裏巴巴稱，到2036年，預計將有4億中國人享受到這種“自主創業”的解放。

中國不斷擴大的就業市場競爭如此激烈，以至於“畢業等於失業”已經成為一種社會文化基因(這兩個詞有一個共同的漢字)。隨著年輕人湧向大城市尋找工作，農村地區已經枯竭，任由其衰落，而幾個世紀以來的公共大家庭生活，在一代人的時間裏被瞬間顛覆，使得老年人的生活隻能依靠國家提供的邊緣政策獲得保障。同時，在城市裏，炙手可熱的資產泡沫也把年輕人無情地擠出了房地產市場。

與西方對中國固有的公共文化的陳腐印象相反，在中國，被孤立和社會信任度低下的感覺已經變得如此尖銳，以至於在經常性發生的一係列社會熱點事件背後，總有孤單而失敗的靈魂走向死亡的極端——這導致了整個中國社會經常性的、痛苦卻又沒有回報的社會反思。

在這個無情的消費主義社會裏，中國的年輕人感到孤獨。走投無路的他們越來越多地用“內卷”這個詞來形容自己所處的一種虛無絕望的狀態。這個詞描述了個人和社會的“內卷”，因為人們普遍覺得自己陷入了一種人人都不可避免地失敗的、讓人精疲力竭的賽跑中。這種絕望往往表現在一種被稱為“躺平”的運動中，人們試圖通過做生活所需的最基本的工作來逃離那種激烈的競爭，成為現代的苦行僧。

在這種環境下，截止到2020年，中國的生育率已降至每名婦女僅生育1.3個孩子——這個數據低於日本，僅高於世界最低水平的韓國。這已經為中國未來的經濟發展埋下隱患。取消家庭規模限製以及政府試圖說服家庭多生孩子的做法，遭到了中國年輕人的懷疑和嘲笑，他們認為這種做法“完全脫離了經濟和社會現實”。“難道他們還不知道，大多數年輕人已經為了養活自己而精疲力盡了嗎?”許多社交媒體裏的帖子都曾這樣問道。的確，考慮到中國殘酷的教育體製，撫養一個孩子也要花一大筆錢：根據地區的不同，估計在3萬美元(大約是普通公民年收入的7倍)到11.5萬美元之間。

但即使是那些有能力生孩子的中國年輕人也發現，他們正在享受著一種全新的生活方式：令人垂涎的丁克(“雙收入，不生孩子”)生活。在這種生活中，受過良好教育的年輕夫婦(無論結婚與否)把所有多餘的錢都花在自己身上。正如一位做過輸精管結紮手術、思想徹底解放的27歲男性曾向《紐約時報》解釋的那樣:“對我們這代人來說，孩子不是必需品……現在我們可以沒有任何負擔地生活……那麽為什麽不把我們的精神和經濟資源投入到我們自己的生活中呢?”

因此，當美國政客們今天放棄了讓中國自由化的舊夢時，他們或許應該再細致觀察一下：如果你把自由主義看成是關於民主選舉、新聞足有和人權尊嚴的話，那麽中國確實從未實現過西方話語體係下“遙遠的自由化”。但許多政治思想家會認為，現代自由主義的全麵定義遠不止於此。相反，他們認為自由主義的終極目標是將個人從地方、傳統、宗教、社團和關係的所有限製關係以及自然的所有物質限製中解放出來，追求現代“消費者”的徹底自治。

從這個角度來看，中國已經徹底自由化了：中國社會正在發生的事情，更像是一場王滬寧的噩夢：寄托在“中國夢”裏的新自由主義文化，最終被虛無主義的個人主義和商品化所吞噬。

The Triumph and Terror of Wang Huning

https://theupheaval.substack.com/

Oct 11, 2021 By N.S. Lyons, an analyst and writer living and working in Washington, D.C. He is the author of The Upheaval. - Exploring the shared upheavals of our era, including technological and cultural change, the ideological revolution consuming the West, the rise of China, and the crisis of liberalism.

 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.

The Grey Eminence

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.

Cultural Competence

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.

A Dark Vision

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.

Wang Huning’s Nightmare

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-mâché 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.

The Grand Experiment

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.