Daniel F. Vukovich

From Making Revolution to Making Charters: Liberalism and Economism in the Late Cold War

This chapter offers an intellectual political account of the rise and fall, yet persistence and transformation, of Chinese liberalism during and after the Maoist era. The ‘case’ of China helps illustrate a global point: the weakening and degradation of liberalism, the rise of economism and de-politicized politics in place of an actual or socialistic left. But this global condition is also in itself co-produced, determined by the fate of Chinese politics during and after the revolution. In short what we ultimately have to attend to is not just a ‘Chinese’ problem or failure (as if de-politicization and economism were not global ills) but the state of the political right now. More specifically I will eventually argue that a certain ‘liberalism’—defined with the Maoists as an economism that seeks de-politicization and ‘stability’ or peace—informs the developmentalist Party-state today, and forms an evil twin alongside Chinese liberalism proper. The latter shares the official concern with economic and even political reform with many in the Party establishment, but it is also an anti-state intellectual movement that should be familiar to observers of libertarianism and neo-liberalism elsewhere. Taken together, both sides—sometimes in direct conflict, as with the dissidents, and sometimes in a more or less happy marriage, as in the ardently pro-market establishment liberals—speak to the global conjuncture as one dominated by forces and discourses that would like to put an end to politics altogether in favor of rule by markets (and by the ruling class of those markets).

On Illiberalism and Seeing Like an Other State

The People’s Republic of China (PRC), ‘China’ as a political entity, state, and intellectual political culture, is a problem. It infuriates and fascinates, perplexes and amazes. On that the Party and its liberal critics inside and abroad (where they are far more numerous) might well agree. And yet what an odd thing to proclaim, this problem, when as both sides might again nod—in obeisance to the hegemony of the market and profit motive—that same Party-state has lifted several hundred millions of people out of poverty. The latter is demonstrably true when one credits the Mao era foundations, let alone the life expectancies on the eve of the 1949 revolution. The PRC—which is to say the Communist Party-state, before and after Mao—has clearly returned China to the forefront of global recognition and power since the 1980s. The rise of China may be a cliche partially belied by its problems and iniquities, and by its per capita gross national product (GNP; China ranks 80th in the world as of 2014). But cliches nonetheless exist in a certain, significant relationship with truth and social reality. China has ‘arrived’ and is more like a bank that is too big to fail than a teetering state on the brink of collapse. Of course that same Party-state system has also plunged its people into a highly polluted and unequal modern society—a society rife with authoritarianism, excessive policing of speech, and heavy-handed, if ultimately failing, censorship. A society with little ‘soft power’ and approval in the Western metropoles of the former colonial world, and increasing disapproval in its southeast Asian periphery, thanks to its short-sighted governmental bullying and fear of American bases.

The New Left and the Old Politics of Knowledge: A Battle for Chinese Political Discourse

In the world of China after Tiananmen, 1989, after that violent and, what is more, that un-necessary crackdown in response to a large, mostly peaceful and ‘loyal’ if disorganized protest and shutdown of Beijing, most Western observers still expected—perhaps still expect—an eventual return of mass protests and demands for ‘freedom’ or ‘democracy’ or political and ideological ‘liberalization.’ While I (2012) and many others have written at length on 1989, the best place to begin is with some of the collections of documents from the era, for example, Mok Chiu Yu et al., Eds., Voices from Tiananmen Square (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1990); Suzanne Ogden et al., Eds., China’s Search for Democracy: The Student and Mass Movement of 1989 (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1992); and Lu, Ping et al., Eds., A Moment of Truth: Workers’ Participation in China’s 1989 Democracy Movement, and the Emergence of Independent Unions. (Trans. Gus Mok et al. Hong Kong: HK Trade Union Education Centre, 1990). By ‘loyal’ here I mean that the sentiment of the student demands was largely patriotic and a demand for inclusion of—it must be said—their own class fraction. By unnecessary, I simply mean that the students and most protesters—even the striking workers who represented the greatest potential power and ‘threat’—were fully in retreat by June 3. The use of violence—death—was simply terror; even in its own terms of stability and so forth the state could well have resolved the ‘crisis’ by means other than that, and the later neo-liberalization of the economy. But it was Deng’s party at this point, and his politics. What was called the ‘cultural fever’ of the 1980s before that event was precisely such a ferment, the wide-ranging embrace of ‘liberalism’ and ‘democracy’ (as signifiers, as translated texts, in various fora) of seemingly all things ‘Western’ (from global capitalism to popular culture). (Three notable studies of the 1980s era and culture fever remain: Jing Wang, High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Deng’s China. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Zhang Xudong, Chinese Modernism in the Era of Reforms: Cultural Fever, Avant-Garde Fiction, and the New Chinese Cinema (Durham: Duke UP, 1997); and Kalpana Mishra, From Post-Maoism to Post-Marxism: The Erosion of Official Ideology in Deng’s China (New York: Routledge, 1998). See also Chen Xiaomei, Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-discourse in Post-Mao China. 2nd ed. Foreword by Dai Jinhua. (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002)). This was perhaps best represented, before the student protesters themselves (as opposed to the striking workers), by the controversial yet state-funded and thus state-sanctioned documentary series He Shang, a paean to ‘the rise of the West’ and the decline of ancient, ‘yellow,’ Confucian, ‘feudal’ China (also represented by Mao in the film). If it pathologized peasants for lacking entrepreneurial and modern spirit, and idealized the rise of the modern, capitalist West, it nonetheless expressed genuine, widely felt enthusiasm for the new era; in its concluding minutes, He Shang even trumpeted political reform (which led to its still-current ban after 1989). With the image of the murky Yellow River emptying into the Pacific, it offered a vision and ‘China dream’ of endless development, progress, and possibility, a new order of bright sunny days stemming from globalization and capitalist expansion. As if it were sublimating and not simply (not only) rejecting political, equalitarian, Maoist revolution. Clearly the China of the 1980s and the Western ‘end of history’ sentiment (Fukuyama) must have indexed something big happening. After the awful interruption of progress on the morning of June 4, 1989, surely the zeitgeist, China’s convergence with political normalcy and ‘modern’ democratic forms would return, alongside its burgeoning and increasingly privatized economy and all those millions lifted out of poverty. The velvet, or jasmine, or Tahir Square moment awaits.

No Country, No System: Liberalism, Autonomy, and De-politicization in Hong Kong

If any space in the world today illustrates the powers and limits of liberalism, classical (which is to say: colonial), as well as contemporary or neo-, it is Hong Kong, the would-be city-state and, like Macau, a ‘special administrative region’ of southern China. (Two useful and widely read historical texts on Hong Kong are Steven Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), and John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007). An excellent overall study of the SAR’s recent politics up through 2004 is the collection, Remaking Citizenship in Hong Kong: Community, nation and the global city, Agnes S. Ku and Ngai Pun, eds. (London: Routledge Curzon, 2004). For the true basis of power and domination in Hong Kong, namely by capital and a cartel-like property market (and it overlaps clearly with mainland capitalists), see Leo F. Goodstadt, Poverty in the Midst of Affluence: How Hong Kong Mismanaged its Prosperity (Hong Kong University Press, 2013) and Alice Poon’s classic, surveying the system from the British onward, Land And The Ruling Class In Hong Kong (Second Edition. Hong Kong: Enrich Publishing, 2011).) While tiny by mainland standards at a mere seven million, and certainly not a major part of the bloody British Empire in the manner of South Asia, the city has a remarkably large, global footprint for its size, including within China. It must also be said that it is often poorly understood across the Lo Wu border on the one hand, and is ill-served by the academic and English media adulation of the territory’s ‘importance’ for the mainland as a ‘free’ and ‘open’ space on the other. The exceptional global presence of the city is due to many reasons—its influential movie industry, its unique landscapes (the most skyscrapers in the world by far), its particular culture and language, its food, and so on. But perhaps the strongest muscle for its footprint, its greatest leverage, has been its special status as an ‘autonomous’ city even after its handover/return to the mainland. This is thought to be written into the Basic Law or mini-constitution of the city as well as the ‘one country, two systems’ principle, as worked out by the Deng Xiaoping-led CCP and the local British and Chinese colonials. (Chapter 1, Article 5 of the Basic Law text notes that Hong Kong will keep its ‘capitalist system and way of life unchanged for 50 years,’ and China will not impose its ‘socialist’ one. This is the clearest, explicit legal statement backing up Deng’s 1c, 2s remark. If China was not fully capitalist in the 1980s—and certainly the breaking up of the commune system in 1983 marks the end of Maoist economics—it is much closer to it now, which radically undercuts the very idea that there are two systems, in political-economic terms. The absence of Marxism in Hong Kong intellectual political culture is felt acutely here. See the city government’s website for The Basic Law full text: http://www.basiclaw.gov.hk/en/basiclawtext/chapter_1.html. Accessed Nov. 24, 2017.) As we will see that Basic document turns out to be highly contestable in a battle over interpretations offered by the local democratic, that is, politically liberal politicians/activists on the one hand, and who are not powerless given their hegemony in educational and media institutions, and on the other hand by the obviously still more powerful sovereign, Beijing. More on the law and movement later. But so far what I am saying points to one thing: Hong Kong’s global footprint and highly favorable image in at least the English language media and political world has to do with its difference—a hierarchical, normalized difference—from the mainland. And this very much stems from its colonial past. It is better, more free, ‘special,’ and—in a rather condescending but popular phrase used in Hong Kong – ‘not just another mainland city.’ For much of that media and for the many who claim to want full autonomy or de facto independence from the mainland, it as if the SAR stood for Semi-Autonomous Region and not a Special Administrative Region.

Wukan!: Democracy, Illiberalism, and Their Vicissitudes

Hong Kong’s democracy, localist, and nativist movements (and assuming these are indeed three groups rather than one), before and after their opening up by the umbrellas, arrived at the same old dead end of political impasse, which is to say at a status quo victory for the property-owning class. This may have even been the point: the point is to participate in the ‘civil society’ and demand that which you cannot have, while waiting for the implosion or liberal-democratic convergence of the mainland, or you at least wait for the next opportunity to do it all over again. (This statement reflects my own response to the closing argument of Prasenjit Duara in his excellent chapter, ‘Hong Kong as a Global Frontier: Interface of China, Asia, and the World,’ in Hong Kong in the Cold War, eds. Priscilla Roberts and John M. Carroll (Hong Kong University Press, 2016).) The earlier, 2011 ‘Wukan Uprising’ that took place 120 kilometers to the east makes for an interesting, resonant comparison in the analysis of impasse, and the limits and failures of liberalism and economism, or in other words the de-politicization of politics through the market and ‘growth’ as much as by sheer force or repression. This chapter presents a basic narrative of the rise and fall of the Guangdong villagers’ protests over land seizures and for justice and ‘democracy,’ before turning to an attempt to mine their meaning for politics more generally. There are two political bottoms lines right now, in effecting political change and contesting or bending the government in some reformist or otherwise progressive way. But these exist, as in Hong Kong and as in much of the world, in a context of impasse, or a political conjuncture defined in no small part by the triumph of de-politicization and the power or rule of capital and money. But if this is a dark period for politics around the globe, it is—contra liberalism old and new—in some ways still more, not less, promising in China as compared to other places such as the USA and even Hong Kong.

The Ills of Liberalism: Thinking Through the PRC and the Political

As we might all agree, China is clearly not-liberal and therefore in a sense “illiberal” on semantic or etymological grounds alone (see the discussion in Chap. 1). The present study has offered an examination of an ‘illiberal’ China, of the PRC as an allegedly illiberal political regime. This turn of phrase is common enough in the media and ‘respectable’ journalism. But it is also invoked in, and still more often assumed by academic writing as well—as when the PRC is framed as illiberal because it is authoritarian (which like all states, it is) and (which like all states, it is). But is this merely a matter of degree, i.e., that it is more of these bad things than, say, the United States or India and it is this that makes it illiberal? Or is there more to this story about regimes and discourses and comparisons? China represents a threat or at least a challenge to liberal or liberal-democratic ideology. Elizabeth Perry aptly diagnosed this ‘challenge’ as early as 2012 in the academic literature, by framing the PRC as an attentive authoritarian regime: its contentious civil society and protest culture actually enhance Party-state rule, in part because the state attends to protest and problems and chooses to act or not act on them. (See the Introduction for further discussion. I should perhaps note that it is I, and not Perry, who presents this as a specifically ideological challenge.) This can be said to compare favorably to ‘real’ democratic regimes where even massive anti-war protests or ‘occupy’ movements (e.g. Wall Street) are duly and entirely ignored. This illiberalness aka ‘attentive authoritarianism’ is, however, seen as a bad thing, even if a not-so hidden admiration can also be discerned in such framings of China as, for example, a ‘perfect dictatorship.’ (My emphasis here. The book in question is Stein Ringen’s, The Perfect Dictatorship (Hong Kong University Press, 2016). One can detect a similar almost-admiring or appreciative sentiment within another, more academic and area studies text on the successes and systematicity of the post-Mao propaganda system. See Anne-Marie Brady, Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008).) It is framed as illiberal despite it having an undeniably active civil society and public sphere, a long history and culture of contentious and serious, if also subtle and non-European style, political protests. It is framed as politically illiberal even though it has never particularly aspired to political liberalism for the last century, and even though its skyrocketing numbers of ‘mass incidents’—brought about by a liberalization of the economy, it must be recalled—have at times won concessions from the state or forced it to address its failures. The argument in the present text is that the PRC’s ‘illiberalism’ is fundamentally ambiguous, and neither simply negative and objectionable nor merely ripe for a perennial liberal debunking by China watchers and self-professed experts.

Illiberal China and Global Convergence: Thinking Through Wukan and Hong Kong

This article examines the applicability of convergence thinking via two protests in southern China: the Wukan ‘uprising’ and the ‘Umbrella Revolution’. These failed to usher in ‘democracy’ in an unnamed, ‘Western’ procedural sense. Yet the global media events expose the limits of convergence thinking, both official/PRC and Western/liberal. In so far as convergence is also about hegemony and rivalry, the events also show the fading of the latter, liberal one and the rise of the Chinese state as something which must be reckoned with analytically. It is not that the Chinese version is truer but that its relative legitimacy and actuality must be used to further citizens’ ends. The challenge is to re-politicise the state and bureaucracy, and in this the villagers have a lesson for Hong Kong.

From Charting the Revolution to Charter 2008: Discourse, Liberalism, De-Politicization

Daniel Vukovich’s chapter focuses on the rise of a global “neo-liberalism with Chinese characteristics” and how we should understand this. The author analyzes the “triumph” of a particular liberal discourse and politics in China, as well as globally, since the post-Mao and late or residual Cold War era. In response to the common, erroneous equating of “liberal” with “democracy,” Vukovich draws in part on Roberto Esposito, Dominic Lusordo, and the ‘examples’ of modern colonialism as well as recent Chinese politics to remind us that for all its universalistic and humane pretensions, liberalism has historically been if not the very opposite of democracy (understood as mass rule and participation, the general will) then something quite different. The historical articulations between liberalism and colonialism or imperialism, let alone to an economic ‘freedom’ that obfuscates exploitation and class division, should forever give us pause. Against the clear preference of many, Vukovich argues that there is no good reason this reservation should not apply to China either. Moreover the rise of liberal and conservative China discourse (about the recent Chinese past) reveals less the Truth finally coming to light than a political and discursive shift in how we frame the world, a shift that stems from the intellectual political culture of the colonial era (the East lacks our freedom), as well as the Cold War and anti-communism. But ours is also an era of marked de-politicization, including within liberalism. A case in point is Liu Xiaobo’s “Charter 2008, ” which advocates a managerial and administrative.