Chapter 29 Conclusion on the logic of a "civilized country"

From "China Touched" to "China Shock" to "China Beyond", this is my mental journey of visiting hundreds of countries and thinking about China's rise, Chinese model and Chinese discourse.I want to think about various related issues as comprehensively and thoroughly as possible, so that what I present to readers can truly be worthy of readers, this country, this nation, this era, and myself.China has risen to the point where it is today, and it must no longer be fooled by superficial Western discourse. That would be a big mistake of "one misstep will cause eternal hatred".There are still many problems in our country, but the achievements we have made are far greater than our problems. The achievements we have made are shining in the annals of history and are unheard of in human history. Therefore, we must first affirm ourselves, and then solve them with confidence All problems, and finally achieve a comprehensive transcendence of the West and the Western model.

As the last part of the "trilogy" of my trip to a hundred countries, I would like to summarize the main points I put forward in these three books here. On the one hand, it is to enable readers to have a more comprehensive understanding of China On the other hand, I also hope that my views can play a role in inspiring more people to think about related issues, and provide more and better opportunities for China to surpass the West and the Western model in an all-round way. ideas and suggestions. Regarding the rise of China, my main point of view is: the rise of China is the rise of a "civilized country". China is the only country in the world where the ancient civilization with thousands of years of age almost completely overlaps with the modern state.This "civilized country" has eight characteristics, which can also be referred to as "four supers" and "four specials" for short, that is, a super-large population size, a super-broad territory, a super-long history and tradition, and a super-profound cultural heritage. Unique language, unique politics, unique society, unique economy, each of which contains the fusion of traditional "civilization" and modern "country". A "civilized country" has a strong historical and cultural background, and will not follow others, will not copy the West or any other model, it will only continue to evolve and develop along its own unique trajectory and logic. The momentum and scale of the rise of "civilized countries" are unprecedented in human history. It will profoundly affect the future of mankind and the world, and may bring "great changes unseen in a thousand years" to the entire world.

In order to understand the rise of China, I suggest re-examining China from three perspectives: First, adopt the concept of "plate" and "plate interaction".China has formed a "semi-developed country" plate with a population comparable to that of the United States and a larger "emerging economy" plate.The highly benign interaction between these two plates is the secret of China's rapid rise.The second is to use the purchasing power parity method to calculate the size of the Chinese economy, because it is closer to the real China than the official exchange rate calculation method.Calculated by purchasing power parity, China's economic aggregate should surpass that of the United States within one to five years.But even at official exchange rates, China's economic aggregate will surpass that of the United States in a decade or so.The third is to use "household net worth" including real estate to measure the wealth of Chinese people.In the past 20 years or so, most Chinese people have actually experienced a wealth revolution.In this sense, the "Chinese Dream" in the material sense is already more exciting than the "American Dream", because during this period, the wealth of most Chinese people has risen to a great level, while the wealth of most Americans has not increased. anti-decrease.If we adopt the above three methods, or take the above three methods into account, and recalculate the relevant data, then many rankings about China in the world will undergo tremendous changes.

China's rise needs to be seen more clearly through international comparisons.My own estimate: China's achievements over the past 30 years have surpassed the sum of the achievements of other developing countries, and also exceeded the sum of the achievements of other countries with economies in transition.In many respects, our achievements have surpassed those of developed countries in the West.Although we still have many deficiencies, including corruption, environmental pollution, the gap between rich and poor, etc., we can make horizontal and vertical international comparisons of these problems, and draw some prudent and comprehensive conclusions. It can be explained clearly, and there is a solution in the end.

Regarding the China model, I mentioned that Deng Xiaoping himself used the concept many times.In a narrow sense, the China model refers to the summary of China's own set of practices and experiences.In a broad sense, it is connected with the concept of the Chinese way, referring to a set of practices, experiences, ideas and institutional arrangements in China.The Chinese model has eight main characteristics, namely, practical rationality, strong government, priority to stability, priority to people's livelihood, gradual reform, sequence difference, mixed economy, and opening up to the outside world.In the field of reform, the Chinese model is also the Chinese reform model. Compared with the reforms of other countries with economies in transition, the Chinese model is "steady"; the model of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is "radical"; the Cuban model is "conservative". , in contrast, China's steady reform model, although there are not small costs, but the overall effect is the best.

Behind these characteristics of the Chinese model are the characteristics of China's "civilized country": the four "super factors" of population, geography, tradition, and culture are combined to form China's basic national conditions, which roughly regulate the path of China's road rely.In the past 30 years, some people in China tried to jump out of the framework of the Chinese model, but in the end they were always pulled back in practice. It can be said that "everything has changed."The reason for this may be that the super genes of a "civilized country" have brought a norm: Once we do not grow and develop according to this genetic map, China's development will be prone to setbacks and failures.The Chinese model is not perfect, but its overall success is beyond the reach of non-Western countries that have adopted the Western model, and the Western countries themselves have been shocked.The Chinese model was formed in the turbulence and competition around the world, and what comes out of competition is powerful, so this model will not collapse, but will only be further improved and lead to greater glory.

The Chinese model makes all the characteristics of China's "civilized country"—especially the four "superfactors" of population, geography, tradition, and culture—constitute the biggest advantage of China's rise: we have the world's most abundant human resources and the world's largest potential market, we have geographical advantages that other countries cannot match, we have our own long historical heritage and independent ideological system, and we have inexhaustible and inexhaustible cultural resources.But if we abandon the Chinese model for the Western one, as some hope, our greatest strength as a "civilized state" may quickly become our greatest weakness: "sum of a hundred nations" becomes " The difference of a hundred countries".The population of our "Hundred Kingdoms" will become a hotbed of chaos and turmoil in China, our "Hundred Kingdoms" territory will become a fertile land torn apart, and our "Hundred Kingdoms" tradition will become an excuse for countless traditional disputes and confrontations. Our "Hundred Kingdoms" The culture of "the sum of a hundred countries" will become the source of large-scale conflicts between different cultural groups.The dream of the rise of the Chinese nation will be completely ruined.

The relative success of the China model is inseparable from China's institutional arrangements.This kind of institutional arrangement can be summarized as "one country with four parties", that is, China is a "civilized country", and this country has four institutional arrangements: In terms of political party system, China is a "national party", which represents The overall interests of the entire country and nation. The ruling party of a "civilized country" cannot be a political party in the Western sense.China's ruling party is essentially a continuation of the tradition of a unified ruling group in Chinese history, rather than competing Western parties representing different interest groups.

The biggest feature of a "civilized country" is the "summation of a hundred countries." If the ruling group only represents the interests of some people instead of the overall interests of the people, the country will immediately fall into chaos and division.In terms of democratic system, the biggest feature of China's institutional arrangements is "deliberative democracy", including the implementation of "new democratic centralism" in the field of decision-making; , China is a "socialist market economy", which is also a "mixed economy".These institutional arrangements all contain the genes of Chinese civilization, the genes of socialism, and elements of Western culture. The system formed by the organic combination of the three has promoted China's rapid rise.These institutional arrangements will also be the most important institutional guarantee for China to surpass the West and Western models.

The general direction of China's political future development is to establish and improve a modern national governance system, especially to establish a first-class talent selection mechanism, a first-class democratic supervision mechanism, and a first-class social consultation mechanism.Generally speaking, although our political system is still being improved, it can still compete with Western political systems at its current level. We welcome the mutual reference and mutual competition of political systems around the world.The key to the institutional arrangement of a modern country is to ensure that the three forces of politics, society and capital achieve a balance that is beneficial to the interests of the vast majority of people. We must prevent the emergence of a pattern in which capital forces overwhelm political and social forces like in the United States. This is the main reason why the "American Dream" has faded away.Under the Chinese model, political power, social power, and capital power have achieved a dynamic balance. In particular, the relative strength and neutrality of China’s political power has roughly maintained its own norms and led capital power while being restricted by social power and capital power. and social power capabilities.This should be an important reason why China has risen relatively smoothly in the past 30 years, and it is also an important reason why the dreams of most Chinese people have come true relatively smoothly.If the political system arrangements of China and the United States continue to develop according to the current logic, the prospect of realizing the "Chinese Dream" should be brighter and more exciting than the prospect of the "American Dream".

Regarding Chinese discourse, many pages in my three books are devoted to the construction of Chinese discourse.The real rise of a country must be accompanied by the rise of its own discourse.Lose words, and you may lose everything, including what you have achieved.Road confidence and system confidence should ultimately be reflected in discourse confidence.I advocate the construction of a comprehensive, powerful, and thorough Chinese discourse, as well as the promotion of a non-governmental, academic, and international Chinese discourse.I have summed up the eight concepts behind China's rise, namely, seeking truth from facts, putting people's livelihood first, holistic thinking, government is necessary goodness, good governance and good governance, those who win the hearts of the people win the world and appoint talents, inclusiveness and innovation, harmony and the middle way and harmony rather different.I also summed up four ideas and experiences for China to surpass the West, namely, people-oriented principle, organization, comprehensive innovation, and combination of top and bottom strategies. I also put forward some specific viewpoints and concepts of political discourse, such as "good governance or bad governance" paradigm should replace the "democracy or autocracy" paradigm advocated by the West, because the former can better explain today's complex world; "The hearts of the people are greater than the sky", and "the hearts of the people" are equal to the overall and long-term interests of a nation and a country. To govern the country, we must combine the "people's hearts" with "the people's will", but we must ensure that the "people's hearts" dominate the country; China's " Selection + (some form of) election" model is higher than the Western model of mass democracy; the West calls its own political system "the least bad system", and I call the Chinese model "the least bad model"; There are generally only two endings for Western countries adopting the Western model: from hope to disappointment, from hope to despair; and so on.Viewed from a larger perspective, the contents of my three books are, in a sense, attempts to construct Chinese discourse. In the process of explaining the rise of China, the Chinese model and Chinese discourse, I have also raised many questions about the status quo of the West, the Western model and Western discourse.We no longer look up to the West, and of course we don’t look down on the West. There are still many things in the West that we can learn from, but there are many problems in the West that we need to learn from.We can look at the west at the same level. Looking at the west is not arrogance. Only when we look at the head can we see clearly and accurately.Regarding the status quo in the West, I emphasize that there is a huge third world within the West, and the people of the West have continued to be disappointed with the Western democratic model.The American democratic system has long been hijacked by various well-organized and mobilized interest groups.The "separation of powers" in the United States is only limited to the political field, and outside this field, the powerful capital force seems to have influenced various institutional arrangements in the United States. The imbalance of the relationship between these three forces and the dominance of capital power have led to today's American democracy is becoming more and more like a "money owner".I think the three basic assumptions in the operation of the Western democratic model ("people are rational", "rights are absolute", "procedures are omnipotent") seem to have become the three genetic defects of the Western democratic model. I suggest that Chinese standards and Chinese discourse can be used to comment on the Western political model, including its main drawbacks.These disadvantages can be summarized as "five deficiencies", that is, the lack of the spirit of "seeking truth from facts", the lack of a mechanism for "selecting the best and appointing talents", the lack of the ability to "good governance and good governance", the lack of a "comprehensive balance" system, and the lack of "foresight". planning.If these problems cannot be resolved, the decline of the West as a whole will accelerate.I also think that we can use Chinese standards, such as Deng Xiaoping's three criteria for the quality of political systems, to judge the quality of political systems in various countries to determine why the "color revolutions" failed and why the "Arab Spring" turned into an "Arab Winter". ", why the Western system has also declined all the way. As for the Western concept of human rights, there are three main problems: first, there is a lack of balance between civil and political rights and economic, social, and cultural rights, and the West pays too much attention to the former and ignores the latter; second, the West generally believes that only Human rights are considered human rights only if they are admissible by the courts, and promoting and defending human rights politically should be equally important; third, the Western concept of human rights has always been unable to resolve the contradiction between individual rights and collective rights. The West has misjudged China for a long time, the root cause of which is deep-rooted ideological prejudice (especially "Eurocentrism", "the superiority of Western civilization" and "the conclusion of the end of history").In order to deconstruct Western discourse from the bottom up, I have summarized the research results and conclusions of many scholars at home and abroad: First, in the long history of more than two thousand years, China has been ahead of the West for most of the time; second, Europe 16 One of the main driving forces of the Renaissance in the 19th century came from the East, especially China; third, the important starting point of the Enlightenment Movement in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries was China in a sense; fourth, some core concepts and systems of Western modern economics and political science Arrangements such as "laissez-faire" and "civilian system" all originated in China, so "Eurocentrism", "the superiority of Western civilization" and "the conclusion of the end of history" are untenable. The Chinese transcendence discussed in this book mainly refers to China's transcendence of the United States and the American model. In a certain sense, it also represents China's transcendence of the West and the Western model.This book discusses China's surpassing of the United States in six areas, namely, the surpassing of the total economic volume, the surpassing of people's assets, the surpassing of social security, the surpassing of the field of scientific and technological innovation, the surpassing of the political system and Transcendental thinking.In these fields, we have surpassed the United States in many aspects, and will soon surpass the United States in many aspects, and in other aspects, through continuous efforts, we will eventually surpass the United States. Frankly speaking, a society dominated by "election" will not be able to compete with a society that combines "selection" and "election".A country governed by "public opinion" will not be able to compete with a country that combines "public opinion" and "people's will".A society that walks on one leg of the market economy will not be able to compete with a society that walks on two legs of "market" and "planning".The institutional model oriented by "regime" will not be able to compete with the institutional model that combines "political way" and "regime".A society centered on individual interests will not be able to compete with a society that can combine individual and collective interests.So I am more optimistic about the Chinese model, which can compete with the American model at this level, and of course we can do better. As a "civilized country", we have a great historical heritage and a brilliant rise. We are extremely honored and proud of this. We have gained self-confidence from the two dimensions of history and reality.We have family and country feelings, great country feelings, and world feelings. We have the responsibility of "heavenly responsibility". We advocate "kingdom" and oppose "hegemony".We are willing to let our dreams fly: as China surpasses the United States in more and more fields, socialism with Chinese characteristics may become the mainstream version of socialism in the world, and China's socialist market economic model may become the most competitive in the world. With the development model, Chinese society is likely to become a "vigorous society", a "warm society" and a "beautiful homeland" that truly belong to the vast majority of people. China is undergoing the most extensive and profound changes in human history. China is exploring new political, economic and social systems and has achieved decisive success.In this process, China will continue to learn from the beneficial experience of other countries in the world, but will not lose itself, and will not lose many of China's own fine traditions.The explorations carried out by the Chinese today will surely make valuable contributions to the future development of world politics, economy, and social order. "Where did China come from, what path will China take, and where will China go?" As the world's second largest economy, China needs to answer these big questions more than ever before.If the answer is right, our country will move towards the first place, and the future will be extremely bright;Some of us can only spin around in Western discourse, discussing China under the logic of the "end of history", so they interpret China's development will always be from the so-called "totalitarian model" to the "authoritarian model", from the "authoritarian model" "Towards the Western "democratization" model, but practice has proved that this logic is unreliable, and it will only lead to misjudgments of China's future one after another. A "civilized country" has its own logic.This logic is: China has been ahead of the West for a long time in history. In the past two thousand years, China has been ahead of the West for at least 3/4 of the time. This lead has its profound reasons, which I call reason one. Since the 18th century, China has fallen behind and missed the industrial revolution, which has its profound lessons, but now China has caught up through its own unique development model, and is surpassing the West and the Western model in more and more aspects. "Super" also has its profound reasons, which I call reason two.There is an inheritance relationship between the second reason and the first reason, which is the logic of a "civilized country".This kind of logic means: Our current institutional arrangement is a fusion of China's own historical genes, red genes and beneficial elements of the West. This institutional arrangement is beyond the Western model. The philosophy behind the logic of the "civilized country" and the logic of the "end of history" is completely different. The philosophical view of "the end of history" is a philosophical view of the single-line evolution of society. It regards the world as a simple one-dimensional evolution process from backward to advanced, and the Western model is considered to represent the most advanced human beings. achievements; while the philosophical view of a "civilized country" believes that social development has always been pluralistic and compound, and that various development models have always been blooming in a hundred flowers. They can compete with each other, and they can also learn from each other. Beyond each other, the entire human history has evolved and developed in this way. As long as human beings exist, this ever-changing dynamic historical process will not end. As mentioned in the introduction of this book, we rose with the profound thoughts of great sages such as Confucius, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Mozi, Xunzi, and Sunzi. The nation has risen independently. We have risen after fully interacting with the world and drawing on the countless strengths of other civilizations. The rise of this kind of country must surpass the West not only in material wealth, but also in institutional arrangements and cultural concepts. And the Western model, and will definitely have a profound impact on the future pattern and order of the world.We have come from our own civilization, we have found our own path to success, and we will continue on this path. China touches, China shocks, China surpasses, in the final analysis, isn’t this also the logic of the rise of a “civilized country”?We represent the right direction of history, and we must have a great future!