I interviewed Bai Tongdong in 2011 and he argued the same things, perhaps less systematically. At the time, even if I didn't agree with it, I found quite brilliant (and very Chinese) the idea that it would be useless to pursue an impossible equality, so let's try to make inequality useful for everyone. However, it also seemed quite obvious to me that he intended above all to give an "international" status to neo-Confucianism, inserting it into the debate on justice "à la Rawls" and making it completely compatible with capitalism. From my point of view, these conceptions are the snapshot of the "ideal" Chinese system, they try to marry Confucius with the Leninist avant-garde and at the same time with the market. In this sense, they are also a warning to the CPC in order to be always efficient and paternalistic, not corrupt. Moreover, it is also explicit in the latest resolution on history by the CCP (2021) that Marxism remains as a scientific theory of development whose culmination is the realization of "Chinese values"
‘…the “ideal” state, according to Bai’s own rules, could be regarded by a liberal democratic state as a yi state because it does not accept democracy and the rule by the people’
Time and time again it is unbelievable how hardcore liberals keep promoting the democratic swindle about western bourgeois parliamentarism by parroting those empty stereoptypes about freedom and democracy, like there were the slightest idea about a ‘rule of the people’ and a ‘state of law’ in western liberal political affairs if you give that claptrap a reality check. It is following the tried and tested pattern of constant repetition just so it gets some kind of semblance of reality and truth if you repeat it often enough. Marx devestating dictum of the ‘democratic swindle’ holds true…
And the statement that ….’this unequal order had some chances to be accepted, tacitly or not, thousands of years ago, but it has (close to) zero chance to be accepted today’… just leaves one speechless, given the US drive to world hegemony, fascist tendencies among liberal political elites in the west and the blatant inequalities in economic and social class relations in developed nations. The statement disqualifies itself. Only some privileged upperclass liberal can argue like that…
Thank you, Prof. Milanovic, for your review. I appreciate the fact that you gave a good overview of my starting points: how the historical transition Confucius and Mencius faced (the Zhou-Qin transition) is a form of early modernity, and how to read the early Chinese classics, which were written quite differently from typical Western philosophical works. It is also important that you notice the symmetry between my domestic and international proposals.
Now, about how to identify the meritocrats, first, I argue that on the very local level, only one person one vote is needed. Only in larger communities, is the bicameral structure needed. Of the meritocratic chamber, exam is only one way to select the meritocrats. Members of the upper chamber can be voted in by legislators one level lower. This "levelled" model was practiced by the Americans during the founding of the U.S. Another mechanism is to identify "proxies" for merits (capacities of compassion and intellect). A quota system can be offered to the military, environmental and other NGOs, scientific associations, and etc. A two-term governor can be given a one 10-year term in the upper chamber (with no possibility of reappointment). Exam is used only as one of the three mechanisms, and even here, I suggested that exams should only be used as qualifications for people who wish to run for the upper chamber. Yes, those who do well in exams are not necessarily wise and compassionate politicians, but exams do test people's capacity to learn and to persevere. Besides, wouldn't it be good if every American senator can pass the foreign service exam (so as to know where Iraq is) before they can vote on the Iraq war?
Of the de-facto class stratification and solidification, it happens in any and every society, and I don't see how the three mechanisms fare worse than a democratic system. The "Confucian" state offers at least the education (which will be tested) that the higher status of someone can only be justified by the service to the "lowly" people.
On the international scale, military interventions are only the last resort. More often, for example, in my proposed order (the Confucian Tian Xia Order), a country cannot hide behind sovereignty while emitting a lot of CO2. Other countries are justified to criticize or even sanction that country. Only in extreme circumstances, for example, when people of a state are starving to death, and this state still threatens other countries with military invasions or is busy with producing nuclear weapons, can a military intervention be justified. No military intervention (not even an economic sanction) can be justified on values alone. Indeed, your counterexample is more like what I am worried about liberal interventionism: a country can be attacked for violating human rights (or whatever values the liberal democracies hold sacred).
“ “[Barbaric state] is one that either tyrannizes its people out of incompetence or indifference, fails to offer basic services to its people, leaving them in great suffering; moreover, it threatens the well-being of other people or completely disregards its duty to other people such as the duty to protect a shared environment” (p. 185).” Isn’t that an apt definition of the US?
Since the May Fourth Movement, the prevailing mindset in China is to perceive the West as having more civilised values than the Chinese traditional ones.
The May Fourth Movement emerged in 1919.
Its spirit is still very much alive, especially among the ruling class of PRC.
A sidetrack: the traditional "western" political system has two elements – in politics (which is theoretically egalitarian nowadays) and in bureaucracy (which is ideally based in meritocracy and hierarchy). The bureaucratic element was, as far as I know, heavily influenced by Chinese confucianism when it was introduced by the socalled civil service reform movement in the mid 19th century. The idea is that the political element decide about the Whats, and the bureaucratic about the Hows. Of ccourse it is not that clearcut, in reality there is much haggling.
But it seems that it is not the bureaucratic element that is breeding inequality but the politic. Political families and political cliental networks seem more common than bureaucratic dito. How can one explain that?
When I encountered these ideas, the first article that came to mind was 'The Self-Awareness Problem of 20th Century Chinese Intellectuals—A Foreign Scholar's Perspective' (the title was translated by me, and the article is in Chinese) by Thomas A. Metzger. For those who read Chinese, you can find it here: https://www.aisixiang.com/data/13841.html
Professor Tongdong Bai’s argument comes across as a thinly-disguised apologia for the continued rule of the Chinese Communist Party and as a contribution to the CCP’s attempts to instrumentalise Confucian philosophy in its ideological war against fake, bourgeois, ‘Western’ concepts of democracy.
Why the latter is fake, and why the CCP is communist in name only, is revealed in the following two luminous quotes, the first from Lenin, the second from Marx:
“An abstract or formal conception of the question of equality in general and of national equality in particular is in the very nature of bourgeois democracy. Under the guise of the equality of individuals in general, bourgeois democracy proclaims the formal, legal equality of the property owner and the proletarian, the exploiter and exploited, thereby grossly deceiving the oppressed classes. Claiming to uphold the supposedly absolute equality of individuals, the bourgeoisie transforms the idea of equality, which itself reflects the relations of commodity production, into a tool in the struggle against the abolition of classes. The real meaning of the demand for equality consists in its being a demand for the abolition of classes.” (The first of twelve ‘Theses on the National and Colonial Questions’ presented by VI Lenin to the second congress of the Communist International in 1920).
Why the ‘idea of equality… reflects the relations of commodity production’ is explained in this from Karl Marx:
“the concept of human equality…acquired the permanence of a fixed popular opinion… only in a society where the commodity-form is the universal form of the product of labour, hence the dominant social relation is the relation between men as possessors of commodities.” (Capital Vol 1, p152 Penguin edition).
Readers unfamiliar with China's bureaucracy may be interested to know that, to reach the interview stage of their civil service examinations, an IQ of 140 is required, more than enough for a PhD in theoretical physics.
China is governed by geniuses, guided by the volunteers in the Communist Party of China.
A moral elite overseeing an intellectual elite, you could say.
As you mentioned according to his own definition the ideal Confusion state is liberal Republic. People don't have the capacity to come with good policy but have the capacity to figure if the ruling class is doing a good job. Outside of perhaps Switzerland that's how all the modern Republics are governed.
Also I never understood the argument behind a meritocratic government. Like why would I assume just because you're smarter than me, that means that you will act in my interest. I doubt there much evidence of higher IQ people being that much more benevolent than the average person.
I interviewed Bai Tongdong in 2011 and he argued the same things, perhaps less systematically. At the time, even if I didn't agree with it, I found quite brilliant (and very Chinese) the idea that it would be useless to pursue an impossible equality, so let's try to make inequality useful for everyone. However, it also seemed quite obvious to me that he intended above all to give an "international" status to neo-Confucianism, inserting it into the debate on justice "à la Rawls" and making it completely compatible with capitalism. From my point of view, these conceptions are the snapshot of the "ideal" Chinese system, they try to marry Confucius with the Leninist avant-garde and at the same time with the market. In this sense, they are also a warning to the CPC in order to be always efficient and paternalistic, not corrupt. Moreover, it is also explicit in the latest resolution on history by the CCP (2021) that Marxism remains as a scientific theory of development whose culmination is the realization of "Chinese values"
‘…the “ideal” state, according to Bai’s own rules, could be regarded by a liberal democratic state as a yi state because it does not accept democracy and the rule by the people’
Time and time again it is unbelievable how hardcore liberals keep promoting the democratic swindle about western bourgeois parliamentarism by parroting those empty stereoptypes about freedom and democracy, like there were the slightest idea about a ‘rule of the people’ and a ‘state of law’ in western liberal political affairs if you give that claptrap a reality check. It is following the tried and tested pattern of constant repetition just so it gets some kind of semblance of reality and truth if you repeat it often enough. Marx devestating dictum of the ‘democratic swindle’ holds true…
And the statement that ….’this unequal order had some chances to be accepted, tacitly or not, thousands of years ago, but it has (close to) zero chance to be accepted today’… just leaves one speechless, given the US drive to world hegemony, fascist tendencies among liberal political elites in the west and the blatant inequalities in economic and social class relations in developed nations. The statement disqualifies itself. Only some privileged upperclass liberal can argue like that…
Thank you, Prof. Milanovic, for your review. I appreciate the fact that you gave a good overview of my starting points: how the historical transition Confucius and Mencius faced (the Zhou-Qin transition) is a form of early modernity, and how to read the early Chinese classics, which were written quite differently from typical Western philosophical works. It is also important that you notice the symmetry between my domestic and international proposals.
Now, about how to identify the meritocrats, first, I argue that on the very local level, only one person one vote is needed. Only in larger communities, is the bicameral structure needed. Of the meritocratic chamber, exam is only one way to select the meritocrats. Members of the upper chamber can be voted in by legislators one level lower. This "levelled" model was practiced by the Americans during the founding of the U.S. Another mechanism is to identify "proxies" for merits (capacities of compassion and intellect). A quota system can be offered to the military, environmental and other NGOs, scientific associations, and etc. A two-term governor can be given a one 10-year term in the upper chamber (with no possibility of reappointment). Exam is used only as one of the three mechanisms, and even here, I suggested that exams should only be used as qualifications for people who wish to run for the upper chamber. Yes, those who do well in exams are not necessarily wise and compassionate politicians, but exams do test people's capacity to learn and to persevere. Besides, wouldn't it be good if every American senator can pass the foreign service exam (so as to know where Iraq is) before they can vote on the Iraq war?
Of the de-facto class stratification and solidification, it happens in any and every society, and I don't see how the three mechanisms fare worse than a democratic system. The "Confucian" state offers at least the education (which will be tested) that the higher status of someone can only be justified by the service to the "lowly" people.
On the international scale, military interventions are only the last resort. More often, for example, in my proposed order (the Confucian Tian Xia Order), a country cannot hide behind sovereignty while emitting a lot of CO2. Other countries are justified to criticize or even sanction that country. Only in extreme circumstances, for example, when people of a state are starving to death, and this state still threatens other countries with military invasions or is busy with producing nuclear weapons, can a military intervention be justified. No military intervention (not even an economic sanction) can be justified on values alone. Indeed, your counterexample is more like what I am worried about liberal interventionism: a country can be attacked for violating human rights (or whatever values the liberal democracies hold sacred).
“ “[Barbaric state] is one that either tyrannizes its people out of incompetence or indifference, fails to offer basic services to its people, leaving them in great suffering; moreover, it threatens the well-being of other people or completely disregards its duty to other people such as the duty to protect a shared environment” (p. 185).” Isn’t that an apt definition of the US?
“barbarians”
Since the May Fourth Movement, the prevailing mindset in China is to perceive the West as having more civilised values than the Chinese traditional ones.
The May Fourth Movement emerged in 1919.
Its spirit is still very much alive, especially among the ruling class of PRC.
A sidetrack: the traditional "western" political system has two elements – in politics (which is theoretically egalitarian nowadays) and in bureaucracy (which is ideally based in meritocracy and hierarchy). The bureaucratic element was, as far as I know, heavily influenced by Chinese confucianism when it was introduced by the socalled civil service reform movement in the mid 19th century. The idea is that the political element decide about the Whats, and the bureaucratic about the Hows. Of ccourse it is not that clearcut, in reality there is much haggling.
But it seems that it is not the bureaucratic element that is breeding inequality but the politic. Political families and political cliental networks seem more common than bureaucratic dito. How can one explain that?
When I encountered these ideas, the first article that came to mind was 'The Self-Awareness Problem of 20th Century Chinese Intellectuals—A Foreign Scholar's Perspective' (the title was translated by me, and the article is in Chinese) by Thomas A. Metzger. For those who read Chinese, you can find it here: https://www.aisixiang.com/data/13841.html
Professor Tongdong Bai’s argument comes across as a thinly-disguised apologia for the continued rule of the Chinese Communist Party and as a contribution to the CCP’s attempts to instrumentalise Confucian philosophy in its ideological war against fake, bourgeois, ‘Western’ concepts of democracy.
Why the latter is fake, and why the CCP is communist in name only, is revealed in the following two luminous quotes, the first from Lenin, the second from Marx:
“An abstract or formal conception of the question of equality in general and of national equality in particular is in the very nature of bourgeois democracy. Under the guise of the equality of individuals in general, bourgeois democracy proclaims the formal, legal equality of the property owner and the proletarian, the exploiter and exploited, thereby grossly deceiving the oppressed classes. Claiming to uphold the supposedly absolute equality of individuals, the bourgeoisie transforms the idea of equality, which itself reflects the relations of commodity production, into a tool in the struggle against the abolition of classes. The real meaning of the demand for equality consists in its being a demand for the abolition of classes.” (The first of twelve ‘Theses on the National and Colonial Questions’ presented by VI Lenin to the second congress of the Communist International in 1920).
Why the ‘idea of equality… reflects the relations of commodity production’ is explained in this from Karl Marx:
“the concept of human equality…acquired the permanence of a fixed popular opinion… only in a society where the commodity-form is the universal form of the product of labour, hence the dominant social relation is the relation between men as possessors of commodities.” (Capital Vol 1, p152 Penguin edition).
Readers unfamiliar with China's bureaucracy may be interested to know that, to reach the interview stage of their civil service examinations, an IQ of 140 is required, more than enough for a PhD in theoretical physics.
China is governed by geniuses, guided by the volunteers in the Communist Party of China.
A moral elite overseeing an intellectual elite, you could say.
As you mentioned according to his own definition the ideal Confusion state is liberal Republic. People don't have the capacity to come with good policy but have the capacity to figure if the ruling class is doing a good job. Outside of perhaps Switzerland that's how all the modern Republics are governed.
Also I never understood the argument behind a meritocratic government. Like why would I assume just because you're smarter than me, that means that you will act in my interest. I doubt there much evidence of higher IQ people being that much more benevolent than the average person.