Eric X Li
Recently a young lady from China, (lets give her the unlikely and Orwellian name of ""Mollie""), put a question to me: "Why are you so interested in China? no one else is". And as over a period of weeks she persisted in asking, eventually, we sat down to talk At first I had hesitated, not for the want of something to say, but because I was concerned about the gulf that existed between us in age and experience. And when we did talk I told her of my unease, and made sure that she understood, from the outset,.that whatever I had to say about China, it was not be interpreted as a value judgement, either about her, or her family, some of whom are committed to the Communist Party
Now Mollie who is university educated and on the threshold of her career, having had time to reflect on what was said, came back a day or so later in fighting mood, and introduced me to Eric X. Li. In particular, to an address given by him in Edinburgh in 2013, entitled, A tale of two political systems. He was new to me, and as I watched the video, it quickly became apparent that he knew how to work an audience: he had charm, wit, and what passed for wisdom. And even if I had been late in finding out about him, the transcript of the talk that I have in front of me, credits the video with 1.9m "views".
Well as I continued to listen I continued to be impressed, for he had what seemed like a challenging point of view, and he knew how to deliver it. Impressed, until it got to a point where the style and force of his argument seemed to wilt, and he sounded like an apologist for the status quo: for the Communist Party of China, and the continuation there of one party rule. Now it was this slip, (real or imagined), that prompted the question about style over substance, or put another way, as to whether or not as an economic and political commentator, he deserves to be taken seriously. But when I next met Mollie and she asked why I was smiling, I made sure that she understood that it was in admiration for her spirit, in throwing down the gauntlet.
Now for someone with such a high public profile, detailed information about Eric X. Li is hard to come by; and what details there are, (spread over various websites), seem grey in comparison to his provocative and personable public persona. Born in Shanghai, he is variously described as "a well-connected venture capitalist" political scientist and policy expert, who studied in America, and worked for Ross Perot during the 1992 American presidential election campaign. Later, we are told, he returned to Shanghai, doubting the perceived wisdom in the West, that China could only progress politically and economically, by following the principles of the free market. We also learn that he founded Changwei Capital based in Shanghai, and serves on the board of directors of China Europe International Business School, (CEIBS). And besides being vice chair of CEIBS's publishing arm, he is on the board of CEIBS in Ghana (Africa). And he is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute.
The reference to his being "well-connected", seems to refer to the fact that he is a business partner of Mao Daolin, the son-in-law of Hu Jintao (former President of China from 2003-2010). And what brought Eric X Li to public prominence, was an op-ed article published in The New York Times in February 2012. Entitled, Why China's Political Model is Superior, the article was timed to coincide with a meeting between President Obama and the then vice president of China, (now President), Xi Jinping; and suffice it for now to say that the article caused a stir, and that Eric X. Li largely unknown up to that point, was in demand. (1).
In his writings, Eric X. Li is clear, concise and to the point. And while the subject matter changes, his objective, in broad terms, is always the same: to promote the interests of the Communist Party in the People's Republic of China, and in particular, to justify the continuation there, of one party rule. And he comes armed with statistics, from credible sources, with which to prove his point. And in terms of the legitimacy of the political system as it exists, he defends it on grounds of "competency", (video), as for him, it is self-evidently the case that only the Party and the continuation of one party rule, can secure the national interest: the future economic well being of China's 1.3 billion citizens; half of whom, in a generation, they have lifted out of poverty. As for the problem of corruption, that he rightly reminds us is not unique to China, again he tells us that only the Communist Party, has the capacity and will to defeat it. They are points of view that he consistently expresses at the expense of the Western democracies, and of America in particular. And while he nods in general acknowledgement of the good things that have been achieved under the democratic process, he is at times scathing in his conclusions: that the system of democracy is corrupt, lacks moral worth, and that as a political system, it is proven to be nontransferable to non democratic states.
At the crux of his argument is the idea that there is more than one way of doing things; an argument that he develops in, From Renaissance to Renaissance. Citing Nocoolo Machiavelli's Discourse on Livy, he argues in the spirit of the Enlightenment, against the notion that there is only one right way of doing politics: the democratic. Recalling that Machiavelli grouped all political systems under three types: monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, he reminds us that he attributed to each a degraded form. "Monarchy could degrade into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, and democracy into licentiousness." And to reinforce his argument for a divergence of view on political systems, he calls on the philosopher Vico who challenged the notion of "timeless universal truths." The Renaissance he reminds us, was a time of inquisitiveness "that gave way in the end to moral and intellectual certitude;" which, in the context of the political debate meant "that democracy alone, among all other possible systems of governance, is infallible." A view that from Eric X. Li's point of view, has only endured until now, because there had never been a credible alternative to elected democracy; that is, until the emergence of modern China
For Eric X. Li, the democratic process, (that he suggest is comparatively young), is in effect, a failed experiment. Self evidently so, when one considers the level of disillusionment with politics in the established Western democracies, and of how, where democracy has been introduced into non Westerns cultures, it has been with results that he describes as "spotty at best and miserable in many instances." (7a). In fact, based on public opinion surveys, where the rate of satisfaction with politicians is 50 percent, or in some cases, a good deal less, and on the theme of consent, (the essence of the democratic process), he describes democracy as "a legal form devoid of moral authority. Legally consensual but morally bankrupt do not legitimacy make." (1a). And so as to reinforce the point, he draws our attention to Mario Mnti, unelected and a bureaucrat, who, at the height of the European debt crisis in 2011, was appointed Prime Minister of Italy and head of a bureaucratic government by president Napolitano. To which he adds another discrediting layer. Having described Mario Monti as, arguably, "the most competent statesman in Europe today"; (no mention of Angela Merkel), he links the fact that Monti was unelected, to Machiavelli's idea of degradation in politics. (7a).
__________
Here is how, in the same article, he sketched out the ideological difference between America and China:
“...America and China view their political systems in fundamentally
different ways; whereas America sees democratic government as an
end in itself, China sees its current form of government, or any political system for that matter, merely as a
means for achieving larger national ends.”
And in particular, on the participatory aspect of the political process, he writes:
“The fundamental difference between Washington's view and
Beijing's is whether political rights are considered God-given and
therefore absolute or whether they should be seen as privileges to be negotiated based on the needs and condition
of the nation.”
And as he makes clear, in China, they are definitely not "God given", or even the natural rights of the citizen. In this context, and in the passage that I quote below, the underlining is mine:
“China is on a different path [from the democratic]. Its leaders are prepared to allow greater
“China is on a different path [from the democratic]. Its leaders are prepared to allow greater
popular participation in political decisions if and when it is
conducive to economic development and favourable to the country's
national interests, as they have done in the past ten years.
And that expectation of subservience, from the people of China, explains this:
“However, China's
leaders would not hesitate to curtail these freedoms if the
conditions
and the needs of the
nation changed. The 1980's were a time of expanding popular
participation in the
country's politics that helped loosen the ideological shackles of the
destructive Cultural Revolution. But it went too far, and led to a
vast rebellion at Tiananmen Square.
"That uprising was
decisively put down on June 4, 1989. The Chinese nation paid a heavy
price for that violent
event, but the alternatives would have been far worse."__________
Having explained to Mollie how, and why, some fifty years ago, I first came to be interested in China, I though it important, at the outset, (and especially in view of the criticism that I would make), to make the point that I accepted that there were people within the Communist Party in China who were well motivated and wanted to do good things for the general population. But as we talked and I sensed that she had no understanding of the concept that she might be her brothers keeper, but instead, saw the raising of civil liberties issues in China, as interference by outsiders, I changed tack, and engaged her instead in a brief discussion on the Second World War; in particular, on Hitler's rise to power and the ambition that ultimately caused him to self-destruct.. It was a discussion made possible as Mollie has German as a third language; and in that context she had some grasp of the social issues: grievances that existed in Germany in the 1930's as a consequence of the Great Depression, weaknesses that Hitler was able to exploit, to which I added, the deep-seated resentment over the settlement that was imposed on Germany at the end of the First World War. But she was truly surprised when going further, I suggested that the Second World War was "ideological" So I had to tell her of the driving force that lay behind Hitler's ambition, and in the end, proved his undoing, when he launched his ill-fated attack on Stalin: the desire to create a Reich, or Empire, that would last a thousand years.
What I had hoped to achieve in a discussion that was not China centred, was to help Mollie to see the reasonableness of the idea, that we are our brother's keeper, and to convey something of the potential foolishness in ignoring the gross abuse of human rights in another country in the belief that it has nothing to do with us. So to that end I gave her a copy of the famous poem by Pastor Niemoller; who, as I pointed out, in the first instance, was a supporter of Hitler, believing that he was a true patriot, that is, until he came to recognize the enormity of the evil that he represented:
"First they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out -
Because I was not a Jew
.
Then they came for the communists
And I did not speak out -
Because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out -
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me -
And there was no one left
To speak out for me."
And in respect of the totalitarian state that is China, what I was hoping to convey, was the wisdom of the dictum that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." And I went further, and sought to make more personal, the plight of the victims of the abuse of power in totalitarian regimes, by turning things around. "Imagine" I asked Mollie, "what it would mean to me, if imprisoned in a Chinese style Laogai [forced labour prison camp], word somehow reached me that people in China knew of my plight and were concerned for me!"
Now returning to Eric X. Li, an important aspect of the challenge that he represents, is that he has the capacity to make us feel uncomfortable, not just by confronting us with perspectives that we are not familiar with, but also, by an assertiveness that allows him, sometimes, to represent contestable utterances as though they were facts. Why? Because more often than not, (unless we take the trouble to be informed), our view of China is coloured from being on the outside looking in. And even allowing for the fact that he is a propagandist, and an apologist, not just for a totalitarian state, but for the crushing of the student protest in Tiananmen Square, it would be foolish to conclude that he has nothing relevant, or worthwhile to say, or that we would gain nothing from confronting the issues as he represents them. He has plenty to say, on a range of subjects, to list but a few: on Mao Zedong in The Founding Father. On the Internet and its use in China, in, Globalization 2.0: China's Parallel Internet. On China's global ambitions, or lack of them, as the case might be, in, The Middle Kingdom and the Coming World Disorder, and what he sees as China's global diplomatic prowess, in, China's Ukranian Opportunity - Killing A Few Birds Without Throwing A Single Stone.
That said, for me, there is something especially objectionable about the well healed, and especially the well connected, telling the not so well healed, and not so well connected, regardless of their attainments, or aspirations, what it is permissible for them to think, or feel, or aspire to know about, because those who have the power, know what is best for them. And especially when, from the Party's point of view, it is obvious that the chips are down.
And there is something especially obnoxious about an assertion, that is unproven and unproveable, and made at the expense of the dead, that China is a better place than it otherwise would have been, for the crushing of student protests in Tiananmen Square.
As for the Communist Party having a proven capacity to reinvent itself, so as always to know and be appropriately responsive to the nations interest, it is hard to treat such a self-serving utterance, from such a quarter, as a surprise. For it fits a mindset, one that attributes the cause of corruption to a divergence of view, in previous dynasties, as to what it means to be a public servant: something that the Party can fix; (6a) when in truth, we know that greed, envy, and the lust for power, are ageless qualities that belong to the less noble side of the human condition, and have the potential to wreck, not just lives, but economies also. It was unfettered greed, in the financial markets, that brought about this most recent recession. And if, as some people think, another recessions is on the way, it might well have the capacity to wreck, not just Western economies, but the much trumpeted Chinese economy, the astonishing success of which is based on cheaply produced exports to global markets. Nothing, for any of us, is guaranteed
As for the democratic process, and its lack of moral worth; (1a) since when was moral worth measured in percentages? Whatever its shortcomings in practice, and there are plenty, the moral worth of the democratic process rests in what it stands for, and what it offers the citizen, who has the freedom, as of right, to participate in it or not, and the right to have their voice heard, even when they object. And perhaps its greatest strength, and safeguard, is that its leaders know that they are accountable, to the people who elected them, and that they can be got rid of by the people they serve, as we have seen most recently in Taiwan.
Now in a previous blog, China: Refusing to Forget - part 1: written to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the massacre in Tiananmen Square, I documented under a number of headings, a series of human rights abuses current in China, that are of international concern. They were: (1) "Harry Wu and the Laogai, China's system of slave labour". As a young man Harry Wu spent 19 years in just such a prison camp, and now living in America, has established the Laogai Research Foundation (2) Civil liberties and the Chinese constitution, with the sub heading, More repressive legislation post Tiananmen. (3) Desmund Tutu and Cheng Guancheng [a blind lawyer exiled from China] call on world leaders to help bring an end to repression in China and in particular to the laogai system of oppression. (4) Human rights, China and the 2008 Olympic Games. (5) Friends from the press, [the opening words from an address to journalist by Xi Jinping in 2012] which they interpreted, not for what on the face of it they seemed, but as a salutary warning to anyone who thought that China under Xi Jinping was about to embark on a new and more liberal era. (6) Liu Xiaobo and Charter 08. A literary critic and university teacher and veteran campaigner on civil liberties, who, in 2009 was sentenced to eleven years in prison on suspicion of "inciting subversion of state power" and two years deprivation of political rights. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, it was presented in absentia. And while he is in prison, his wife lives under what in effect is house arrest in Beijing. And (7) Gao Yu: a veteran civil liberties campaigner, age 70, whom the authorities were forced to admit had been "criminally detained" in April of this year, and who was "deeply remorseful". Then in May, and with the whereabouts of her son still unknown, (he was also unaccounted for around the time that she was detained), she appeared on CCTV in an orange jump suit confessing her crimes to a policeman. What she had done was to leak an internal Communist Party document given to her by a former school friend, in which it was proposed that the party should ignore the human rights agenda and concentrate exclusively on the economic front
Gao Yu is currently on trial on a charge of leaking state secrets, at which she has retracted her earlier confession, stating that it was made under duress. And the fact that the trial has to do with state secrets, is the justification given for excluding journalists from covering the trial. And if found guilty, she faces the prospect of life in prison. Report here. And lastly, (8) the death penalty. And elsewhere, in China: Refusing to Forget - part 2, I deal with with the one child policy and its consequences.
All of that said, what Eric X Li represents for me, is the more sophisticated face of China's propaganda war, a face that is personable, confident, brash, informed, and well prepared. And the task? to try to set the agenda, and in particular to steer the public debate on China away from the human rights agenda. And on that front, the omens at this point in time are not looking good.
So before I leave the last word to a new voice, allow me to quote that portion of the salutary warning, that was given by Reporters Without Borders:
"In a speech shortly after his appointment as communist party general secretary in November 2012, Xi Jinping addressed journalists directly. "Friends from the press, China needs to learn more about the world, and the world needs to learn more about China. I hope you will continue to make more efforts and contributions to deepening the mutual understanding between China and the countries of the world."
"Woe to any journalist", they wrote, "who thought he was saying "Describe China's stark realities" when what he really mean was "Follow the Party's propaganda to the letter!" Since the speech, the authorities have arrested more journalists and bloggers, cracked down harder on cyber-dissidents, reinforced online content control and censorship and stepped up restrictions on the foreign media."
As for a new voice, it is that of Carrie Gracie, China Editor for the BBC, whose credentials in respect of China are impeccable, and whose perception in respect of civil liberties, seems to fit with the concerns expressed in the above named blog, and by Reporters Without Borders. In a comprehensive article entitled: The Credo: Great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, (7th November 2014), she writes at length on the character and objectives of China's President, Xi Jinping. Under the section headed, Widespread Censorship, she writes;
"But on the mainland [as opposed to the views expressed by the President of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou] discussion of universal values is censored, along with civil society, citizens rights, judicial independence and freedom of the press.
"In fact, one notable feature of Xi Jinping's politics is to close down the number of people who are allowed to discuss politics.
"In the two years since he came to power, the red lines for dissent have shifted, the space for any alternative discourse has narrowed.
"Many lawyers and academics who were once tolerated, even encouraged, are now in jail.
"At a forum for writers and artists in October, Mr XI made a point of applauding the work of a blogger famous for championing the "China dream", in contrast to the "broken American dream.""
A political dream for China, that she describes as, "a rejuvenated authoritarianism". And if her assessment of Mr Xi is accurate, there is nothing to indicate that he is likely to stray from his chosen path, or buckle under pressure.
__________
© Cormac E. McCloskey
Note: 1. The profile sketch of Eric X. Li is based on the following websites:. TED, Huffington Post, New York Times: Worldremit: What It Means to Be a Rising Public Intellectual in China, by Damien Ma, The All Roads Lead to China website, Quora, and the Bergguen Institute On Governance.
2 Unless otherwise stated, the articles listed below, and taken from the Huffington Post website, were used in the preparation of this blog:
A tale of two political systems: (Video recording and text from the TED website)
Why China's Political Model Is Superior (The New York Times, February 16th 2012):
1a Globalization 2.0: Democracy the Beautifula
2a Globalization 2 0: A century for Sale, Any takers ?
3a Globalization 2.0: China's Parallel Internet
4a The Founding Father [On Mao Zedong]
5a Bo Xilai and China's Future
6a Saints or Thieves - Corruption and the Chinese Dilemma
7a From Renaissance to Renaissance
8a The Middle Kingdom and the Coming World Disorder
9a The Invasion of Hong Kong - the Law, Maids, and Locusts
10a The Umbrella Protesters Are Wrong: China Is Abidinb by Hong Kong's Basic Law
11a Toward a New Equilibrium: China Before the 18th Party Congress (by Wang Wen)
12a Authoritarian Art
13a China's Ukranian Opportunity - Killing A Few Birds Without Throwing A Single Stone
"Mollie" Animal Farm by George Orwell
Carrie Gracie profile - here
Note: The sentence that reads: "And elsewhere, in China: Refusing to Forget - part 2, I deal with with the one child policy and its consequences." was added on 1st December 2014.
