Chapter 3 Chapter 1 State and Society

When some foreign scholars study China issues, they are always full of doubts. They are either worried about China or worried about China. The "collapse theory" fears that China's economy will plummet, which will lead to the "yellow peril" due to "implosion";Although the Chinese government has repeatedly emphasized that the country's rise is a "peaceful rise", some scholars are worried after all. They think that since you want to "rise", "peaceful" cannot be achieved.In addition to macro-political and economic analysis, there is even a subtle reason—some sinologists are worried about the word "jue".

A diplomat friend once talked to me about how some American sinologists understand "China's rise" through word formation.However, the statements of these sinologists are somewhat sensational.They said, have you noticed that in the Chinese dictionary, "jue" means "protruding mountain peaks", and those who are familiar with geology know that a major premise of "protruding mountain peaks" may be an earthquake! People's imagination is really bizarre.Sinologists discovered that there are "out" and "mountain" in the word "jue", and thought that the rise of China means China's "out of the mountain", and the word "out" is two "mountains" stacked together, which becomes "three mountains". A great mountain” oppresses the world.What made them even more frightened was that beside one mountain and on top of two mountains, there were even "corpses" about to "get out".

Some people may say that this kind of deconstruction is inevitably far-fetched.However, culture is a reflection of ideas. The reason why American sinologists think this way is because they compare the history of other major countries and worry that a rising China will resort to military force and prolong the disaster of war. Sinologists have the limitations of Sinologists.If you want to master Sinology, it is not enough to just know several solutions of the word "jue".Chinese who are familiar with "Foolish Old Man Moves Mountains" know that mountains can actually be piled up.Therefore, if you want to calm the worries of sinologists, the best way is to print more pamphlets of "Yugong Yishan" for them, or take them to the "Duishan Park" in the northern cities of China to tell them "Peaceful rise" can be piled up.

Of course, there is another problem here.If "peaceful rise" is the result, then the legitimacy of "Yugong Moves Mountains" and "Yugong Heaps Mountains" as a process also deserves attention.For example, where does the mountain of soil come from?When the country is a "foolish old man", how can the people avoid being "foolish people"?If the mountain is owned by the citizens themselves, then the "social mountain" would be forcibly demolished and relocated to the state treasury to accumulate the "national mountain", which is naturally worrisome.The "foolish old man moving mountains" who disregard civil rights in this way is often seen in peaceful times, but in terms of rights, it may also be understood as a "war of the state against citizens" just as Beccaria described the death penalty hundreds of years ago.

If a country does not respect the rights of its own citizens, how can it respect other countries?In fact, this is why some Westerners worry that the rise of developing countries will follow the old path of Germany.What's more, in Friedman's words, "power that has been concentrated is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who created it." 1840 was a meaningful year, which was regarded as the beginning of China's modernization transformation.In the same year, the 35-year-old French youth Tocqueville published the second volume of "On American Democracy" after traveling across the ocean and fully examining the political system of the United States.Previously, in the first volume of "On Democracy in America", Tocqueville summarized two models of the rise of great powers in a few hundred words:

"There are two great peoples in the world today, starting from different starting points, but seeming to be heading towards the same goal. These are the Russians and the Anglo-Americans... Americans are fighting against the obstacles that nature has set for them, and the Russians are fighting against the To wrestle. "The one is at war with wilderness and savagery, the other with civilization in full arms. Thus the American conquers with the laborer's plow, and the Russian with the soldier's sword. "In order to achieve their ends, Americans are motivated by self-interest, allowing individuals to exert their strength and wisdom without limitation.

"And to this end, the Russians have concentrated in one hand almost all the power of society. The former has liberty as his chief means of action, the latter has slavery as his chief means of action." Tocqueville pointed out like a prophet: "They have different starting points and different paths. However, each nation seems to be assigned by the secret order of God, and one day they will control the fate of half of the world." Tocqueville did not have the opportunity to witness how these two models evolved into two superpowers like people living in the twentieth century, and he did not have the opportunity to see the fall of Nazi Germany, militaristic Japan and totalitarian Soviet Union, which dominated half of the world.History has played a cruel joke on these countries—the so-called "rise of great powers", for them, is nothing more than concentrating the power of the whole country under the authority of nationalism to set off a few big fireworks that will be destroyed in vain.

Furthermore, according to the value goals achieved by each, "rise" can actually be subdivided into two types: one is the rise of the country, and the other is the rise of the nation.The former is the rise of state power (government), while the latter is the rise of national rights; the former believes in external strength and unity, while the latter focuses on inner freedom and happiness; the former believes in national moral unity, while the latter focuses on individual ideological creation; The former makes the society closed and single, while the latter makes the society open and pluralistic; the former is a reverse movement, the process of the country’s rise is also a process of the decline of civil rights, while the latter is a positive movement, the rise of the people enriches the country, So that the country will not be empty and empty, and the political tool of the country will be repaired or improved at the appropriate time.

As Jürgen Koka, president of the International Historical Society, said, Germany’s modernization was largely initiated and realized by the state from top to bottom, while the United States and the United Kingdom were mainly driven by society, and its power came from society.Some scholars use this language to describe Germany: This is a wonderful country that either questions the world or tortures the world.When it uses thought to question the world, it is great; when it uses war to torture the world, there were two world wars in the last century. (See the commentary on "The Rise of Great Powers")

To question the world with thought is to use thought as a plow and to establish a republic of thought as a value guide; while to torture the world with war is to slide towards a republic of swords.In this sense, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the continued prosperity of the United States in the post-Cold War era are the victory of the Republic of Ideas over the Republic of Swords.Nowadays, people are worried about the United States seeking global hegemony with guns and guns, precisely because they have seen the foreshadowing of all the republics of swords and swords in history. Speaking of the meaning of the country, I pointed out in a related comment a few years ago that "the country is a jewel box".Citizens are jewels and the country is a jewel box, which means that the country is worthless unless the national value is the first value.In the same way, if the rise of the country is not based on the premise and guarantee of the rise of the people, it will be a joke of paying back the pearl.

It should be noted that China's transition from being closed to opening up over the past few decades not only coincides with the gradual liberation of "society" from the "state" system, but also witnesses the process of "society" being discovered from "socialism".Anyone who tries to negate reform and opening up or demand the re-centralization of the country cannot fundamentally overturn the obvious fact that the world-renowned achievements China has achieved in the past three decades are the result of emancipating the mind and liberating the society. give.The so-called pursuit of a "new new China" today is to seek China's "social liberation" after China's "national liberation." If China wants to "peacefully rise", it must invite society to "peacefully come out of the mountains." The author believes that the so-called "national liberation" and the subsequent "social liberation" are just two stages of aircraft taking off and landing.This situation is like a flight that started from war.When people crowded into a rented rescue plane with their own luggage and rushed to their escape places, in the previous stage, in order to better escape, the crew let everyone into the plane to escape The disaster outside is called "national liberation"; the latter stage, when the plane lands and reaches a safe zone, people step off the plane, and everyone has the right to claim their own luggage, which is called "social liberation".From closing the hatch door to opening the hatch door, in fact, it is also the process of the country and society from closed to open.In this sense, the so-called transition is from "national liberation" to "social liberation", and the key to its success or failure lies in how to minimize this process in an orderly manner. Some of the following episodes may also occur in the enclosed environment of the aircraft cabin: For example, the crew refused to land in the name that the outside world was still dangerous, or out of sympathy for the wounded and sick, or out of other good intentions, asked all passengers to hand over all their belongings, and based on this equally distributed.Of course, the idea is somewhat utopian.People noticed that in the process of turning from discussion to quarrel, the equal distribution not only failed to be implemented fairly, but also violated objective laws, because some things cannot be equally divided.For example, if you use egalitarianism to cut a violin into pieces of Chinese herbal medicine and distribute it to each passenger, people will not only lose a violin, a musician, but may also lose their music. What is also important is that the equal distribution in the closed environment of the cabin will inevitably give people the impression that "happiness ends here"-this kind of distribution focuses on the past, and seems to ignore the fact that passengers will one day walk outside the cabin. all created. Of course, there is another possibility that although the plane has landed, the crew keeps the plane under the illusion of continuing to fly.On this point, the former Yugoslav director Kusturica has already made an excellent summary in his movie "Underground". Human civilization originates from two human instincts.The first is sexual desire, and there are human beings only when there is sexual desire; the second is thought, and only when there is thought, can there be civilization.However, when the state and doctrine are supreme, the body and mind can only be confiscated.Because of this, sexual freedom and ideological emancipation have always been the vanguards leading an open society when history has entered a period of time. In 2006, when Wen Jiabao had a heart-to-heart talk with literary artists, he talked about the "Qian Xuesen problem" - "Why can't current schools cultivate outstanding talents?" In my opinion, there are at least two reasons.First, many people do not have independent personalities; second, although they have ideas, they lack public space.That is the so-called "diffusion of the truth is difficult to discover the truth." The former, those who cannot think independently, although they use thinking as a profession, mostly lose their creativity because they cannot exercise their brain sovereignty.The result can only be that plagiarism is rampant, and people say what others say.As revealed in the French film "Lovers on the New Bridge", how can a person who doesn't even own himself deserve to have love?This kind of self-abandonment inevitably turns into a kind of pathology—the self-abandoned male protagonist longs for the permanent blindness of the woman suffering from eye disease around him, hoping to be "equally matched" and stay with her forever in the name of common sinking or suffering the same misfortune.As for the latter, it should be attributed to the current semi-closed and semi-monopoly culture and information dissemination system. The rise of developing countries often gives people the impression of "coming out of nowhere".It is undeniable that an important reason for China's rapid economic growth in recent years is the overexploitation of natural and labor resources.However, although the existence of the "plasma economy" shows that overexploitation also involves the exploitation of the national body, the mind as a "wonderful energy source" has been wasted to a certain extent. The development of any country cannot do without intellectual resources and natural resources.The difference is that the overexploitation and use of natural resources has a process of overdraft and scarcity—in today's world, from crude oil, copper to gold, and even grain, the prices of everything that can be dug out of the ground are rising.The human brain is an inexhaustible resource.More importantly, the more brain power is developed, the more it will be accumulated in this life and future generations. If it is not developed, it will be wasted. Free thought is the primary productive force.Two hundred years ago, the thinker Saint-Simon vividly conceived: "If France suddenly lost its 50 outstanding physicists, 50 outstanding chemists, 50 excellent poets, 50 excellent writers, 50 excellent military strategists and civil servants, Engineers... France will soon become a soulless zombie.” Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill also said that he would rather lose an India than lose a Shakespeare. Since independent thinkers are a country's most valuable asset, the first step in rebuilding society is to make every citizen qualified and capable of owning the sovereignty of his own mind.The rise of the country must be determined by the rise of the people.Any government that is committed to rejuvenating the creativity of its own nation should spare no effort to promote the rise of outstanding minds in various fields, continuously discover society, cultivate society, and stimulate social creation.Social liberation not only means that the society strives to get rid of the state system as much as possible, but also means that it strives to move forward on the road of self-improvement, so as to complete the ascension of people and society.Looking back at the historical gains and losses of the 20th century, it is undeniable that the formation of an open society is the only way to avoid a country's "blind rise" and "rising to failure".