The world’s leading powers: the U.S. VS. China (part 2 / 2)

The People’s Republic of China

The leading power since 600 AD

The Chinese culture is one of my favorite topics to study. It’s unique in many ways:

• It’s over 2000 years old
• It’s cultivated in a favorable environment to develop agriculture which in turn gave birth to advanced civilization
• The country is physically separated from the rest of the world, so it’s easier for the ruler to unite the whole country
• Chinese managed to do so successfully for thousands of years while Europeans never able to since the Rome empire
• Between 600 AD to mid 19th century, China has been the most powerful country in objective terms including GDP, politics, most technology and economics
• Since 20th century, like the whole world, Chinese were forced to change their production and social organization forms including government to be like Europeans
• However, the traditional Chinese culture still determines what and how most Chinese think. In a way, Chinese today are still culturally identical to those in the Song dynasty(AD 960 to AD 1270)
• Contrary to the common belief, China in history is governed by law. The empire’s power is never as unconstrained as other Eastern empires
• While law is part of traditional Chinese culture, Democracy never gained prevalence in China

I’m constantly amazed by the difference between Chinese and Western culture, which is the root cause of conflicting values between the people. A Deep understanding of the following perspectives is the key to comprehend Chinese people’s behaviors and values.

The craving for unification

Chinese history remembers a time as prosperous if the central government has power to control the whole country for extended years. In contrast, it remembers a time as unfortunate if there is no single dominating central government(like Europe today).

Since the Qin dynasty(221 BC), China has designed a government system that efficiently managed the 890,000 sq miles country. Believe it or not, it’s based on complex databases(in ancient form) and calculation. After the Qin, countless empires rose and fell. They invariably went on to polish this system for the rest one thousand years. This governing system enabled the ruler to plan and allocate resources holistically and to mobilize the whole nation for strategic goals. This is exactly what China is doing today. This governing system is the key to the exceeding success of China in the past 2000 years.

Achieving prosperity in this way is only possible in a unified country. That’s why Chinese always crave a stable, ordered and united society. They are willing to sacrifice expensively for it. In their memory, unification has the strongest correlation with survival.

Meritocracy and Machiavellianism

American motivates its citizens by ‘the unalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’, of everyone. China instead motivates its citizens by a meritocratic system: Keju. It’s a fair examination system that selects government officers from all citizens. In this way, everyone can enter the elite class by studying hard and becoming skillful at the exam. Keju was fully developed during the Tang dynasty(AD 618). Since then, this meritocratic system deeply shaped how Chinese think about this world and about their relations with each other.

Democracy or the equality ideology is never prevalent in China. For thousands of years, any two Chinese can easily find a way to compare their superiority rank, by which they behave accordingly. Common subordination relationships include high officers to the emperor, children to parents, employees to bosses, younger brothers to order brothers, wife to husband, etc.

Such a way of thinking extends to workplaces in China today. That’s why many companies’ cultures are deemed as highly toxic by American employees. The bosses expect absolute power over their subordinates even outside of work. But employees under the influence of Western values will resist.

In foreign affairs, China naturally assumes superior status to other countries because of power. Other countries had to accept this relationship, until the 19th entry.

The Chinese narrative of 19th century: ‘落后就要挨打’

China declined from its peak in the early 19th century. It was shocked to learn that they are technologically and militarily inferior to Western Europe, which they had no idea existed. They can no longer dominate the war and everything in diplomacy. The ruling class were deeply concerned.

Contrary to the common belief, the core conflict between China’s then leaders and Western European countries, like Britain, was not about trading or other material interests. China was so fine to accept those demands. However, the Chinese leaders couldn’t accept being equal with other countries. The ruling class was afraid that such equality would undermine the legitimacy of their authority. The resistance to equality was the cause of the second opium war and many other conflicts. This will be hard to comprehend by most Americans without the context of meritocracy and superiority in Chinese culture. To the Chinese, fighting for superiority is as worthy as fighting for liberty and equality.

The Qing dynasty in the 19th century consistently lost all major wars. It was eventually overthrown by the 1911 Revolution. After 1949, Chinese history textbooks adopted a troubling narrative for the 19th century: ‘落后就要挨打’. It means if you are weak, you will be bullied. It’s another version of the meriocractic belief that the superior deserves better and implies that bullying is legitimate. Unfortunately, this narrative has been widely accepted in China. It shaped the psychology of many Chinese when they think about China’s relations with foreign countries and about the relationships between each individual. Their behaviors and motivations are easy to understand under this narrative.

The Chinese narrative of 1949 until now

Since the 70s, China had focused on developing industries, technologies and economies at all costs. It quickly rose to the top in terms of absolute power. In this process, most of the world has accepted Europe’s values. Thus conflicts between China and the rest of the world are inevitable.

In the Chinese narrative, they are becoming stronger, of course no other countries like them: no one likes being inferior in a meritocratic system. They interpret any criticism or resistance as attempts to undermine China from developing its superiority.

On the other hand, the western world believes some of China’s policies violated the unalienable rights of liberty, like in Xinjiang and Hongkong. They don’t know that such policies are already the mildest form in Chinese history.

An Empire of Machiavellianism

I don’t think highly of The Prince(see my review). But it created a term that perfectly captured the essence of the prevailing psychology and philosophy in the Chinese society: Machiavelliansim. Most of the shocking and frustrating news about China can be easily understood from the lens of a Machiavellist.

Where is China today?

The above chart is from The Changing World Order.

China has always been on top of the world for the past 500 years. In a way, today it’s just returning to its past status. I believe China is between stage 2(prosperity) and stage 3(debt crisis) in the meta empire cycle.

China refused to or is incapable of adopting the Western values. Instead, they managed to tweak the implementation of their traditional values to cope with the impact from the Western world. In a way, modern history of China is the process to absorb the shock since 1900.

In the early 19th century, when first encountered the dominant advantages from the Western, the government from the Qin Dynasty quickly reached consensus on the strategy to deal with the challenge: ‘师夷长技以制夷’, or to defeat the savages by learning their advanced technologies. They believe it’s a mistake to learn more than the technologies because China was still far more advanced in all other aspects, especially culture and social organizations. I think the essence of that strategy is preserved by later Chinese leaders until today.

The future and challenges of the two countries

People who believe everyone is equal behaves vastly differently from people who believe in meritocracy. I think this difference is the key to understanding the Americans and Chinese values, many conflicts between them and the future of these two great countries.

The U.S. is still the most favorable country to lead our time due to its advantages in natural resources, culture and the established world order. However, it’s a great disadvantage to be in stage 5) of the cycle.

China is on a strong trajectory to become more powerful. It has largely reclaimed its historical dominance after absorbing the shock from the western world since 1900. It has potential to go further and even challenge the existing world order. However, there will be stronger headwinds from ideological conflict as it becomes more and more relevant. I believe that after certain stages in the evolution of civilization, ideology and shared values shape the development of each country, not the other way. China is possibly nearing its plateau and they won’t be able to change the world order unless their culture is reinvented, which is very likely to happen in the following decades.

History is not meaninglessly repeating itself. The Age of Enlightenment was a revolution on humanity without turning back. The values spawned from it can’t be absorbed by Chinese, or any ancient cultures. It will, instead, become the shared foundation for the future civilization.