"Paradoxically, China might have had more soft power when it followed self-destructive policies of Maoist Cultural Revolution."
This is a great observation, it tells a lot about China, and even more about the World's left. And it raises another question related to the discussion about the modest global interest of Chinese writers: does China know about its soft power of 60 years ago?
I still have a copy of the Thoughts of Chairman Mao purloined from my older brother who, in the 1960’s, was very keen on al things revolutionary but as we all know those ideas faded through failure to offer anything other than pain. And then along came rock and roll and capitalism was saved! Phew that was a close one. Thank God for music power , you can have it as hard or soft as you like. More seriously I don’t think I could cope if China flipped into C-Pop territory because I do read K-Pop is very popular in China and therefore is certainly open to soft daft power coming in but thankfully is able to restrain itself. Meanwhile on the hard power front it’s charging ahead literally and figuratively as the renewable transition accelerates past the Straits of Hormuz. OK I have to declare a conflict of interest at this point as I have a Chinese made solar panels on my roof, a Chinese made battery and EV charger in my garage but my saving grace is a South Korean EV! Oh I do have a bit of Apple kit as well so I am glad I never read Chairman Mao but I now realise China got inside me in the end after all.
I am sure you are right … no doubt they have talent but as far as I can see , having visited that lovely country with its incredible achievements since the Korean War the whole K pop thing is just one hyper capitalistic consumeristic self absorbed juggernaut. Maybe there is some youth social movement behind it but I am sceptical.
The C-Pop point is good. A potentially neglected obstacle for China's soft power is that the Mao era meant a half-century-long violent interruption to national traditions of popular culture, of the kind which even K-Pop (for all its postmodernity) builds upon to a significant extent. After all, there is no DPRK-Pop, and the whole idea of there being is immediately ludicrous.
You should YouTube North Korean opera. The musical talent is there. KPop's ascendancy is down to a specifically talented generation of artistes, IMO. I imagine kids today will look back on that brief period as we do 90s-10s rap.
Very good points, both on the lack of Chinese scholarship on the rest of the world and on the greater soft power of Maoism (I was myself a Maoist for most of the seventies). This shows the CPC is not looking for world hegemony (Mao was) , but wants to stay in power in China. On the lack of Chinese scholarship on the outside world, this might be changing slowly. Two of my former students, Weijia Li and Yang Xie do interesting comparative work, but that was not the case for people of my generation. Lack of interest and knowledge all play a role, obviously. There are deeper issues, such as the huge gap in cognitive skills. Chinese scholars fluent in English read much faster translations of Western books in Chinese. Elite Chinese scholars read Chinese extremely fast. Moreover, in China, they were hardly exposed to non Chinese history. There are many factors at play here. Many Chinese Americans or Singaporeans have a very superficial understanding of China. The US is doing nothing to help understand China better. This will not change as long as Americans elect presidents who are on the level of Banana republic leaders.
Thanks a lot for your comments, Gerard. I was (uncharacteristically) hesitant to post this Substack that a wrote a couple of weeks ago in China. But today, I decided to go ahead. Obviously, my knowledge of what is published in China is v limited, but every time when I am there I go to the bookstores. Almost all titles (incl. those published in China for Chinese audience) have on the inside cover the title in English. So one can get (esp. re. history or economics) a pretty good feeling about the topics of the books.
Ha Jin is a writer in English who has crossed cultural boundaries, though he writes on Chinese subjects and only sometimes their connection to the West (e.g. A Map of Betrayal). His latest, Looking for Tank Man, explores what it means to be a Chinese student in the US, very interesting.
Emigré writers often default to writing about crossing the boundaries—and end up writing for the host culture. In a sense, Ha Jin is an example of an otherwise pretty shallow American literary engagement with the world. Do we know of Chinese writers who write about leaving China for a Chinese audience? Is that politically even imaginable? Is it in Taiwan?
interesting piece. no doubt there are a lot less books by Chinese authors on other countries than books by westerners on China. indeed, generally there aren’t many books on foreign countries published by Chinese writers, though there are plenty translated works and the general public is probably a lot better informed on the outside world than the average American.
there are several reasons in my view -
1. the Chinese generally are humble and don’t like to pondificate on other countries without thorough knowledge and expertise. Hence any books on foreign countries are limited to the academic expert circle in universities and research organizations written for other academics and researchers, not general-interest best sellers sold in street corner book stores.
2. on the demand side, the public would read books on foreign countries written by authors from these countries. their default thinking is those people know better about the subject. Frankly, 99.9% books on China written by non-Chinese contain factual inaccuracies and cultural misinterpretations. They misinform to various degrees for the most part, even those in favor of China. I can testify to this since I have such books by the shelf from Kissinger and Vogel(whom you quoted) to Fairbanks, Elizabeth Economy, and Kevin Rudd. too many are politically motivated and belong to the trash bin.
3. talking about why Jiang Zemin doesn’t write a book about the US while Kissinger wrote On China, which sits on my bookself, shows how little you know about Chinese political culture. No Chinese leader has ever written anything on a foreign country. If they have strong views, they are likely kept in classified archives and discussed in Central Party School, rather than shared publicly. The famous “America Against America” by Wang Huning, the No. 4 party official in the country, was written in 1990 when he was still an academic in Fudan. The book was taken off the shelf and never reprinted once Wang joined the government. To get an original copy on Chinese ecommerce websites, the price is over $2000, making it virtually a collector’s piece.
4. getting one’s writing printed in book form in China is a much higher hurdle than in the West. There is no such thing as self-funded print and the publishers generally have higher standard. There is also censorship that polices the print media, for better or worse.
as for whether this affects Chinese soft power, I don’t know for sure. I do know most Chinese, and I assume foreigners too, have no need for half-baked writings that don’t inform and are not directly relevant to their jobs and lives. My hypothesis is one is better off to be uninformed rather than misinformed.
Firstly, I am very very sorry I didn't know you were in Guangxi. I live in Nanning. I can't express how much I'd love to come and listen to you. Secondly - my five cents about Chinese not publishing about the West in the West. The lack of knowledge and cultural background is one reason; I'd dare to say, although a bit hesitantly, that xenophobia, also politically pushed, is a factor. Another reasons is that they need to conform to ideology and therefore self censor. It's basically either you are realistic not only towards the West but also China... or you have to think about leaving China. (Yes, it would be possible to write a book only about the West, but...) -- As an extra comment - Is there a lot of similar literature from Japan, Korea, etc.? There must be some, but I figure not as much as Western literature about those countries. And another extra comment... The West is so good in writing about and criticising itself that it's very hard for someone from the outside to top that.
I, on account of having seen --- though not read --- many books --- vaguely recall some Chinese lady who was some sort of travel writer and visited the Sahara. That's the only book by a Chinese, albeit a Taiwanese, that I can think of that sought to examine the world. And, of course, the 'Chinese Kissinger' was SM Lee Kuan Yew. So, the issue clearly isn't some ethnic or cultural barrier, per se. It may even end up being like the shortsighted crowing about the corporate success (at the CEO level) of Indians over Chinese in the USA. For now, though, I think the primary culprit is the USA, henceforth Yanquistan.
My primary rubric for assessing China-related questions is to ask if a phenomenon being hyped by the Anglophone commentariat is truly unique and anomalous. Often, it is not. Applied to this particular question, where are the Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nigerian, Indonesian, Japanese, Russian, or Brazilian writers interested in the world? Possibly none. At least, none that I've seen or heard of. Other than possibly France and Britain, I bet Poles, Ukrainians, Germans (Prof. Osterhammel as the lone exception?), Spanish, etc., don't have much interest in the outside world. Neither do the heartlands of Dar al Islam, I imagine.
And yet, Anglophone literature is choking on repetitive books, often by overseas nationals or diaspora of those countries, writing on the conditions of their plans and offering up validations of Anglo prejudices or plans for them to fix their countries. The authors you mentioned are writing in that tradition when they aren't outright calling for the destruction of the PRC. So what gives?
I imagine the answer is that US interest in the outside world is the rest of its global imperium. Second, that imperium has had a totalising effect on global literature. On the one hand, their publishing platforms are sufficiently lucrative, especially for works that pander to their vanity or validate their prejudices, to attract many talented foreign writers. On the other hand, their dominance of internet platforms --- ownership aside, I'm yet to see a popular site whose primary demographics weren't Yanq and Brits --- means that the ideas that gain popularity are equally amenable to them. Again, this applies even to the Europeans. That's why, increasingly, their understanding of the USA oscillates between adoration and scorn sans any analytical rigour.
So, this is a case where China is more normal than she seems at first blush.
“This may be a remnant of a couple of millennia of history when China’s interaction with the rest of the world was limited to the reception of formal tributes and some trade.”
Another reflection on this very interesting article. A question for the economists. Is China’s success a living example of applying Modern Monetary Theory towards its goal of rapid development? How did China finance its growth when it has had a very low and as I understand only recently growing taxation base?. It certainly does not appear to have a debt problem having successfully navigated its property collapse. Wasn’t their economy going to collapse according to naysayers? It didn’t happen. How did it manage that whilst growing its export economy? Must be magic Chinese sauce. Pretty amazing achievement one would think. Of course the nature of its political capitalism has allowed it to implement such strategies without having to worry about pesky democracy but there is more to it than that. Meanwhile we in the West are brainwashed into thinking our governments run on the basis of a household budget. That has to be the biggest and greatest con job and self limiting belief towards having a fairer and more equal economic system. There are some lessons we simply don’t want to learn and if we did at any time , like the last 2008 financial crisis or Covid we choose to forget it as quickly as possible. One wonders why?
I think the topic of China is already a very hefty one for Chinese intellectuals. 1.4 billion people, huge landmass, changing times and many challenges, they have to build something solid while the plane is flying and the storm clouds are gathering...
There is no soft PR because there is no proselitism and the desire to convert, lure, subdue others in the Chinese tradition. There is a self-sufficiency that is admirable. And no, the Chinese are not necessarily incurrious. They travel, they experience the world outside China (they started even travelling and experiencing their own country).
I think the Chinese are thinking that the rest of the world has to catch up. And you can take the horse to the water but cannot force it to drink.
Yes indeed. Historically, China’s self-absorption is the norm, not the exception. Most civilizations naturally acted as self-contained centers, limiting power to their immediate peripheries. The real anomaly is Western universalism: this unprecedented drive to expand a single model globally is a uniquely Western trait.
2. The drive to empire was neither unprecedented nor uniquely 'Western'. I think that people easily forget that the Roman empire in the west lasted for two more centuries longer than the West European and US global ascendancy has.
"But all of that is very modest for a country that produces almost one-quarter of world output".
It takes time... USA has produced almost the same percent of world output in 1918-1920... not to mention "Roaring Twenties" or 75% of industrial goods by 1945. In 1918 USA economy was as UK and Germany combined.. Where there intellectuals or ideas or influence in that amount against rest of the world back then...?
In a conference in Shanghai last Nov, an African senior asked a Chinese authority if he could suggest a Beijing-Consensus similar to the 1990 Washington-one. He answered that China believes that each country should find its own path to economics and social development.
One additional possibility: academia in the PRC is far less developed when it comes to studying the rest of the world. Chinese universities only began teaching area studies as a distinct discipline in *2022*, as a latent response to a perceived lack of personnel equipped to capably represent the state’s interests across One Belt One Road partner countries. So while the cultural and political factors you observe are no doubt part of the story, there are perhaps also institutional factors at play too. (See: https://jamestown.substack.com/p/beijings-regional-studies-push-risks)
In terms of the English-language publishing question, I think part of the problem is a) a lack of demand for what PRC-based scholars/writers have to say about the West, and b) a lack of translators to translate those works into English.
"Paradoxically, China might have had more soft power when it followed self-destructive policies of Maoist Cultural Revolution."
This is a great observation, it tells a lot about China, and even more about the World's left. And it raises another question related to the discussion about the modest global interest of Chinese writers: does China know about its soft power of 60 years ago?
I still have a copy of the Thoughts of Chairman Mao purloined from my older brother who, in the 1960’s, was very keen on al things revolutionary but as we all know those ideas faded through failure to offer anything other than pain. And then along came rock and roll and capitalism was saved! Phew that was a close one. Thank God for music power , you can have it as hard or soft as you like. More seriously I don’t think I could cope if China flipped into C-Pop territory because I do read K-Pop is very popular in China and therefore is certainly open to soft daft power coming in but thankfully is able to restrain itself. Meanwhile on the hard power front it’s charging ahead literally and figuratively as the renewable transition accelerates past the Straits of Hormuz. OK I have to declare a conflict of interest at this point as I have a Chinese made solar panels on my roof, a Chinese made battery and EV charger in my garage but my saving grace is a South Korean EV! Oh I do have a bit of Apple kit as well so I am glad I never read Chairman Mao but I now realise China got inside me in the end after all.
I am sure you are right … no doubt they have talent but as far as I can see , having visited that lovely country with its incredible achievements since the Korean War the whole K pop thing is just one hyper capitalistic consumeristic self absorbed juggernaut. Maybe there is some youth social movement behind it but I am sceptical.
The C-Pop point is good. A potentially neglected obstacle for China's soft power is that the Mao era meant a half-century-long violent interruption to national traditions of popular culture, of the kind which even K-Pop (for all its postmodernity) builds upon to a significant extent. After all, there is no DPRK-Pop, and the whole idea of there being is immediately ludicrous.
You should YouTube North Korean opera. The musical talent is there. KPop's ascendancy is down to a specifically talented generation of artistes, IMO. I imagine kids today will look back on that brief period as we do 90s-10s rap.
Very good points, both on the lack of Chinese scholarship on the rest of the world and on the greater soft power of Maoism (I was myself a Maoist for most of the seventies). This shows the CPC is not looking for world hegemony (Mao was) , but wants to stay in power in China. On the lack of Chinese scholarship on the outside world, this might be changing slowly. Two of my former students, Weijia Li and Yang Xie do interesting comparative work, but that was not the case for people of my generation. Lack of interest and knowledge all play a role, obviously. There are deeper issues, such as the huge gap in cognitive skills. Chinese scholars fluent in English read much faster translations of Western books in Chinese. Elite Chinese scholars read Chinese extremely fast. Moreover, in China, they were hardly exposed to non Chinese history. There are many factors at play here. Many Chinese Americans or Singaporeans have a very superficial understanding of China. The US is doing nothing to help understand China better. This will not change as long as Americans elect presidents who are on the level of Banana republic leaders.
Thanks a lot for your comments, Gerard. I was (uncharacteristically) hesitant to post this Substack that a wrote a couple of weeks ago in China. But today, I decided to go ahead. Obviously, my knowledge of what is published in China is v limited, but every time when I am there I go to the bookstores. Almost all titles (incl. those published in China for Chinese audience) have on the inside cover the title in English. So one can get (esp. re. history or economics) a pretty good feeling about the topics of the books.
Ha Jin is a writer in English who has crossed cultural boundaries, though he writes on Chinese subjects and only sometimes their connection to the West (e.g. A Map of Betrayal). His latest, Looking for Tank Man, explores what it means to be a Chinese student in the US, very interesting.
Emigré writers often default to writing about crossing the boundaries—and end up writing for the host culture. In a sense, Ha Jin is an example of an otherwise pretty shallow American literary engagement with the world. Do we know of Chinese writers who write about leaving China for a Chinese audience? Is that politically even imaginable? Is it in Taiwan?
interesting piece. no doubt there are a lot less books by Chinese authors on other countries than books by westerners on China. indeed, generally there aren’t many books on foreign countries published by Chinese writers, though there are plenty translated works and the general public is probably a lot better informed on the outside world than the average American.
there are several reasons in my view -
1. the Chinese generally are humble and don’t like to pondificate on other countries without thorough knowledge and expertise. Hence any books on foreign countries are limited to the academic expert circle in universities and research organizations written for other academics and researchers, not general-interest best sellers sold in street corner book stores.
2. on the demand side, the public would read books on foreign countries written by authors from these countries. their default thinking is those people know better about the subject. Frankly, 99.9% books on China written by non-Chinese contain factual inaccuracies and cultural misinterpretations. They misinform to various degrees for the most part, even those in favor of China. I can testify to this since I have such books by the shelf from Kissinger and Vogel(whom you quoted) to Fairbanks, Elizabeth Economy, and Kevin Rudd. too many are politically motivated and belong to the trash bin.
3. talking about why Jiang Zemin doesn’t write a book about the US while Kissinger wrote On China, which sits on my bookself, shows how little you know about Chinese political culture. No Chinese leader has ever written anything on a foreign country. If they have strong views, they are likely kept in classified archives and discussed in Central Party School, rather than shared publicly. The famous “America Against America” by Wang Huning, the No. 4 party official in the country, was written in 1990 when he was still an academic in Fudan. The book was taken off the shelf and never reprinted once Wang joined the government. To get an original copy on Chinese ecommerce websites, the price is over $2000, making it virtually a collector’s piece.
4. getting one’s writing printed in book form in China is a much higher hurdle than in the West. There is no such thing as self-funded print and the publishers generally have higher standard. There is also censorship that polices the print media, for better or worse.
as for whether this affects Chinese soft power, I don’t know for sure. I do know most Chinese, and I assume foreigners too, have no need for half-baked writings that don’t inform and are not directly relevant to their jobs and lives. My hypothesis is one is better off to be uninformed rather than misinformed.
Firstly, I am very very sorry I didn't know you were in Guangxi. I live in Nanning. I can't express how much I'd love to come and listen to you. Secondly - my five cents about Chinese not publishing about the West in the West. The lack of knowledge and cultural background is one reason; I'd dare to say, although a bit hesitantly, that xenophobia, also politically pushed, is a factor. Another reasons is that they need to conform to ideology and therefore self censor. It's basically either you are realistic not only towards the West but also China... or you have to think about leaving China. (Yes, it would be possible to write a book only about the West, but...) -- As an extra comment - Is there a lot of similar literature from Japan, Korea, etc.? There must be some, but I figure not as much as Western literature about those countries. And another extra comment... The West is so good in writing about and criticising itself that it's very hard for someone from the outside to top that.
Is it related simply to the Chinese concept of respect for 'face' and a reluctance to criticise? I consider that some of the most impressive commentary on Geopolitical affairs is coming from Chinese scholars who hold professorships in both China and Western institutions. I wonder if these scholars are better equipped to see the 'big picture'. Look at this: https://www.fredgao.com/p/the-rain-line-that-made-china?publication_id=2465411&post_id=206035886&isFreemail=true&r=11eqm&triedRedirect=true
I, on account of having seen --- though not read --- many books --- vaguely recall some Chinese lady who was some sort of travel writer and visited the Sahara. That's the only book by a Chinese, albeit a Taiwanese, that I can think of that sought to examine the world. And, of course, the 'Chinese Kissinger' was SM Lee Kuan Yew. So, the issue clearly isn't some ethnic or cultural barrier, per se. It may even end up being like the shortsighted crowing about the corporate success (at the CEO level) of Indians over Chinese in the USA. For now, though, I think the primary culprit is the USA, henceforth Yanquistan.
My primary rubric for assessing China-related questions is to ask if a phenomenon being hyped by the Anglophone commentariat is truly unique and anomalous. Often, it is not. Applied to this particular question, where are the Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nigerian, Indonesian, Japanese, Russian, or Brazilian writers interested in the world? Possibly none. At least, none that I've seen or heard of. Other than possibly France and Britain, I bet Poles, Ukrainians, Germans (Prof. Osterhammel as the lone exception?), Spanish, etc., don't have much interest in the outside world. Neither do the heartlands of Dar al Islam, I imagine.
And yet, Anglophone literature is choking on repetitive books, often by overseas nationals or diaspora of those countries, writing on the conditions of their plans and offering up validations of Anglo prejudices or plans for them to fix their countries. The authors you mentioned are writing in that tradition when they aren't outright calling for the destruction of the PRC. So what gives?
I imagine the answer is that US interest in the outside world is the rest of its global imperium. Second, that imperium has had a totalising effect on global literature. On the one hand, their publishing platforms are sufficiently lucrative, especially for works that pander to their vanity or validate their prejudices, to attract many talented foreign writers. On the other hand, their dominance of internet platforms --- ownership aside, I'm yet to see a popular site whose primary demographics weren't Yanq and Brits --- means that the ideas that gain popularity are equally amenable to them. Again, this applies even to the Europeans. That's why, increasingly, their understanding of the USA oscillates between adoration and scorn sans any analytical rigour.
So, this is a case where China is more normal than she seems at first blush.
“This may be a remnant of a couple of millennia of history when China’s interaction with the rest of the world was limited to the reception of formal tributes and some trade.”
I assume this is tongue-in-cheek, yes?
Another reflection on this very interesting article. A question for the economists. Is China’s success a living example of applying Modern Monetary Theory towards its goal of rapid development? How did China finance its growth when it has had a very low and as I understand only recently growing taxation base?. It certainly does not appear to have a debt problem having successfully navigated its property collapse. Wasn’t their economy going to collapse according to naysayers? It didn’t happen. How did it manage that whilst growing its export economy? Must be magic Chinese sauce. Pretty amazing achievement one would think. Of course the nature of its political capitalism has allowed it to implement such strategies without having to worry about pesky democracy but there is more to it than that. Meanwhile we in the West are brainwashed into thinking our governments run on the basis of a household budget. That has to be the biggest and greatest con job and self limiting belief towards having a fairer and more equal economic system. There are some lessons we simply don’t want to learn and if we did at any time , like the last 2008 financial crisis or Covid we choose to forget it as quickly as possible. One wonders why?
I think the topic of China is already a very hefty one for Chinese intellectuals. 1.4 billion people, huge landmass, changing times and many challenges, they have to build something solid while the plane is flying and the storm clouds are gathering...
There is no soft PR because there is no proselitism and the desire to convert, lure, subdue others in the Chinese tradition. There is a self-sufficiency that is admirable. And no, the Chinese are not necessarily incurrious. They travel, they experience the world outside China (they started even travelling and experiencing their own country).
I think the Chinese are thinking that the rest of the world has to catch up. And you can take the horse to the water but cannot force it to drink.
Full River Red (满江红, Mǎn Jiāng Hóng)
https://squirrelbrain77.substack.com/p/peoples-republic-of-china
https://squirrelbrain77.substack.com/p/playing-devils-advocate-6b6
Yes indeed. Historically, China’s self-absorption is the norm, not the exception. Most civilizations naturally acted as self-contained centers, limiting power to their immediate peripheries. The real anomaly is Western universalism: this unprecedented drive to expand a single model globally is a uniquely Western trait.
1. What universalism --- in theory or practice?
2. The drive to empire was neither unprecedented nor uniquely 'Western'. I think that people easily forget that the Roman empire in the west lasted for two more centuries longer than the West European and US global ascendancy has.
"But all of that is very modest for a country that produces almost one-quarter of world output".
It takes time... USA has produced almost the same percent of world output in 1918-1920... not to mention "Roaring Twenties" or 75% of industrial goods by 1945. In 1918 USA economy was as UK and Germany combined.. Where there intellectuals or ideas or influence in that amount against rest of the world back then...?
Yes, it is a good point. Perhaps it will come...
In a conference in Shanghai last Nov, an African senior asked a Chinese authority if he could suggest a Beijing-Consensus similar to the 1990 Washington-one. He answered that China believes that each country should find its own path to economics and social development.
One additional possibility: academia in the PRC is far less developed when it comes to studying the rest of the world. Chinese universities only began teaching area studies as a distinct discipline in *2022*, as a latent response to a perceived lack of personnel equipped to capably represent the state’s interests across One Belt One Road partner countries. So while the cultural and political factors you observe are no doubt part of the story, there are perhaps also institutional factors at play too. (See: https://jamestown.substack.com/p/beijings-regional-studies-push-risks)
In terms of the English-language publishing question, I think part of the problem is a) a lack of demand for what PRC-based scholars/writers have to say about the West, and b) a lack of translators to translate those works into English.
An interesting article - https://eastisread.substack.com/p/feng-kaidong-the-myth-of-chinas-easy?r=6ba8w&utm_medium=ios