Eight years in Beijing

Maybe it’s the relationship between people in middle age. In the past two days, I read “A Tale of Four Cities” and “2012, Some Idealistic Stories” again, and I felt a little uncomfortable about the part that wrote about myself. I used to be such an expressive person, and now I just want to completely hide my private side. I don't want to talk about my personal affairs, and I don't like to express unreflected opinions because those words are worthless to me. That's why, for four days in Beijing, I was silent at dinners of more than three people, unless they brought the subject up to me.

The first time I came to Beijing was in the summer vacation of 2011, the second time was in the spring of 2012, and I would come every year in 2015, 2016, and 2018. Except for 2018, I met Mr. Chen Guanzhong and several left-wing youths. In other years, I came to Beijing. My memory is very vague. If I were to talk about my impression of Beijing now, I would still be stuck in the first two years. One night in April 2012, I stood out from Gulouwai Street and wandered around for a long time until there was no bus to go back. I followed a map of Beijing that I got from somewhere and walked towards Anhuaxili. The dark night road in Beijing made people feel like they were in another world.

At that time, the big cat hadn't died. I lived in his house twice, and Liu Yuxiang also lived in his house for the first time. That was our most desolate era: Big Cat earned five or six thousand a month for a web design job in a company, and Liu Yuxiang earned only half of his income as a web editor, and he could only write soft articles for "First Financial Weekly" as an amateur. At that time, my doctor's living allowance was just 1,000 per month, and I asked the big cat if he could survive in Beijing with this amount of money, and he said it was a bit difficult. We are at home every day, and we choose the kind of pork and green onion dumplings that are calculated by the catty for take-out, and a meal cannot exceed 15 per capita.

On the evening of the 2nd, we ate hot pot in the coffee shop of Qianci. The three tables were joined together, and it was the first time to taste Haidilao's takeaway. On the way back, Guo Siwei and I took a taxi. I asked him on the way, there are many people you know who scold me in the past two years, right? I know that since I met him, he has been listening in various colleges and universities in Beijing and participating in various reading clubs. In 2012, I went to give a lecture at the Chinese Youth Academy, and he also came and listened to it for two weeks. Before I left, he gave me some warm words, probably saying that I let him know what a young scholar should be like in academics. of.

Since then, I have offended countless hills, not to mention Shi Pai and Mainland New Confucians. The scholar I exposed as plagiarism is a big name in the field of analytical philosophy. In the past two years, there have been Wu Guanjun and Zhao Dingxin. These people and their students, friends, and supporters have absolutely no reason to like me. Guo Siwei said with a smile, not to scold you, just that you have become a "symbol", whether you agree with you or against you, when you talk about you, you will talk about the thoughts and camps behind you.

I said, that's fine, at least better than chatting about my private life.

Before the death of Big Cat (at the end of 2014), he was doing data visualization in Sohu Finance, and his income had tripled, and he was the first one among us to publish a book. A year before his death, he said to me, if you come to Beijing to teach, you can live with me without charging you rent, and I can give you 2,000 yuan in pocket money every month. I said, aren't you taking care of me? He said, you are the only one of us who is still insisting on doing academics, I really don't want you to give up like this.

I used two "inside us" above, but if he and I were really in a certain community, it wouldn't be "the Big Dipper" either. Our group of friends are Brother Huan, Liu Yuxiang, Aunt Pu, Guo Siwei, Wu Wanqian, Zhang Shuchi, Bee, Zhang Yi, Huang Ligang, Representative Wang, Dong Zeyu, Peng Xiaochen, Li Zhuoran, Shi San... We did meet through Beidou, but most of us are not members of Beidou. I read some memoirs now, and it seems that Beidou swept the liberals of Renren. Admirably, they have not given up their voices in the public sphere so far while their careers have been steady.

I have almost forgotten what articles I wrote from 2010 to 2012, but my contacts with the "Beidou" circle are because of these articles that can't be put on the table now. I do remember some of what other people wrote, such as Liu Yuxiang's "Revolution or not, it's not up to intellectuals" and "You came from Syracuse and want to go to the Gulag?" ", and Chen Xuan's "Resolutely Don't Surrender to This Fucking World". I still think that everyone's idealism was sincere at that time, and many of them had friendship because of this idealism, and this friendship survived until their ideals were no longer available, which in turn helped them overcome their ideals. Nothingness after ism.

When I went to Beijing for the first time, in addition to talking to Liu Yuxiang about political philosophy, I also wanted to ask the Beidou people about their experience in holding a book club. The second time I went to Beijing, in the words of a senior sister, I hoped that there would be more liberals in the academic circles in Beijing. At the time, I, and my opponents in political philosophy debates, truly believed that our victory or defeat in abstract principles could affect future political situations. Several young Shi factions and I had debated with each other over whether people were born free and equal. Later, Zhang Shuchi took over their arguments and fought with me to the end. Until the "Left Liberalism and China" conference in 2014, I was still using "political liberalism" to criticize "holistic liberalism" because I thought the latter would put liberals in the wrong place.

Beijing has seen a lot of changes in the past eight years: subway fares have risen, but it has become cleaner, shared bicycles are everywhere, no longer have to worry about walking home, and many public toilets have wash basins. These eight years, for me and my friends of the same age, is the stage from "youth" to "middle age". According to the secular standard, if a person has potential when he is young, he should be famous now. . My friend Yuanyou from college is from Beijing. He recently moved his company to Tokyo. His wife and children are in Hong Kong, and he invested in Southeast Asia. He has truly lived a global life.

According to this standard, I should be a standard "failed middle-aged man": not only did not get married, but also did not buy a house, to put it more seriously, if one day my friends heard that I was in prison, it would not be a surprise to them unexpected. Of course, they are no safer than me. A teacher who made an appointment with me has been arrested twice for political issues in his life, and now there is a national security guard who has followed him for a long time. At a sensitive time, information will be exchanged among our friends, who has been drinking tea again, whose parents have been harassed, and who has been warned by the leader of the unit. The whereabouts of several left-wing youths I met last year are completely unknown now.

My friends and I who sing carols to the party-state have indeed taken different paths gradually in the past eight years. In all fairness, their level is much higher than Zhou Xiaoping and Zhao Haoyang, so even if they sing carols, they sing with reason, but those who have read their previous articles can smell a strong "butt decides the head" smell. .

Those friends are definitely not people who lack the ability to think independently and are led by political propaganda. If so, they probably won't be able to write the articles that moved us before. Nor are they selectively blind to past history and what is going on in the present, on the contrary, I believe they have a more thorough understanding of certain histories and realities than I do. They are not opportunists like Justin Sun. One of them went to a factory in Dongguan when he was young and experienced a life of sweat and sweat with an income of less than a thousand a month. The other also took political risks to participate in the local people's congress election.

Of course, they would say that after entering the society for a long time, they have a deeper understanding of China, so they gave up that naive liberalism. I think this only tells part of the facts at most, because this so-called "deepness" has a strong value presupposition behind it.

Most of these friends of mine came from economics, or used economics as the basis of their political ideas. Since I got to know them, their Austrian tendencies have not changed. In fact, since 2008, the people I have seen in the public sphere who hold an Austrian position have turned into supporters of the current system in the end. Among them, the Pencil Club is the most famous. At first, I couldn't figure it out logically: How could the Austrian faction, known for its criticism of big government, support the current system that retains public ownership, state-owned enterprises, and strong macro-control? I realized later that it all stemmed from the Austrian aversion to democracy, welfare and strikes.

Although the Austrians hate big government, and the Chinese government can be regarded as the representative of big government, according to the standards of many Austrians, there is almost no government in the world that meets the standard of small government in their minds, not even the United States. China is not so bad by comparison. China's global economic freedom ranking is not high, why is it not bad? This starts with the Austrian classic "The Road to Serfdom". What Hayek is trying to say in this book is that the kind of welfare state that was emerging in Europe at the time could eventually lead to a totalitarian regime like the Nazis again. Hitler gained a large number of votes by promising workers to solve the employment problem. After he came to power, he implemented a series of government investment policies to create employment, giving workers far higher benefits than those in the United Kingdom and the United States. The Chinese Olympics' distaste for "welfare" is inseparable from Hayek's attack on the welfare state. Although Hayek had some ambiguous relations with Chilean dictator Pinochet, he himself did not completely oppose democracy. Some Austrians in later generations further believed that democracy would inevitably lead to "tyranny of the majority", the expansion of government power and Welfare expansion, so even democracy is opposed. They believe that "enlightened autocracy" or authoritarian governments that guarantee property rights and free markets are far superior to democratic governments that "rob the rich and give to the poor."

Therefore, in the opinion of the Chinese Austrians, China's system after the reform and opening up is very consistent with their rejection of democracy and the welfare state. The "low human rights advantage" mentioned by Qin Hui is a real compliment to them. Not only that, in developed countries, companies are often overwhelmed by workers’ strikes, while China’s trade unions are only tools used by the ruling party to control workers, and workers’ strikes are also regarded by the government as disrupting the production order, which guarantees the entrepreneur’s well-being. Operations will not be interrupted by strikes. Therefore, in a "socialist" country like China, the "rights" of private enterprises are not necessarily less than in capitalist countries. Austrians in China, as long as they do not stick to dogma, have no need to oppose the Chinese system. It is worth mentioning that although Zhang Wuchang is closer to the Chicago School, he is also the first economist to praise the Chinese system and criticize the "Labor Law". It's not that big of a contradiction.

That's why I'm often suspicious of libertarians, and I'm scratching my head at those approaches that insist on critiquing the current system through a critique of Marxism. I later criticized libertarian conservatism, not that I disapproved of all their efforts, or that I thought their vision of incrementalism in those times was too naive (there were of course some who thought so, but it was prescient after all) Or an afterthought, I have no way of knowing). I just think it's a little too "light" for them to push the totalitarian disaster of the 20th century to the concepts of European enlightenment, constructive rationality, positive freedom, cultural innovation, and social change. In contemporary China, the relationship between ideology and politics is more complicated. Politics certainly precedes ideology, but ideology can also be used by politics. I certainly don't think it's accurate to use "neoliberalism" to define the political and economic structure of 1978-2012, but the Chinese system does have that resilience to use the elements of "neoliberalism" to its own advantage. However, as intellectuals, because some of the policies of the authorities are suddenly in line with their own ideological standpoints, the idea of "getting the ruler to follow the Tao" is a joke. .

These few friends of mine do not necessarily put themselves in the position of "intellectuals", but their transformation, in my opinion, coincides with his initial ideological tendency. This does not mean that all people who hold Austrian or libertarian ideas will inevitably fall to the system. I do know quite a few right-wing liberal dissidents, but their dissent positions are not so much from their right-wing Liberalism, rather, stems from their own life experience.

For me, this kind of life experience cannot be simply reduced to "liberalism".

The second time a secretary came to me, I told them that I just wanted to do research. They say you are welcome to do research, but you can't break the law.

Does the law have a stipulation that research on political philosophy cannot be done? No, but there are many accusations of "chattering the law" in history.

Living in this country, you will find that there are many activities that you think are normal, which are prohibited here. Some people ask me, why don't you go to college if you want to do research? When I graduated with a Ph.D. a few years ago, a friend was kind enough to help me pass a resume to their school. During the interview, the opponent was a doctor who came back from Germany. If my friend's remarks were not exaggerated, all the teachers who had heard our trial lectures finally voted for me. However, after the vote, the party secretary of the hospital directly used his laptop to Baidu my name, and read a passage from the article "The Mind of a Liberal" to everyone, saying that sensitive matters were mentioned, and this person is not politically competent. close.

Some people once believed that the current regime has a very flexible place, that is, it gives intellectuals some invisible privileges. For example, ordinary netizens are likely to be arrested if they say some "rebellious" words. Nothing happened. Through such privileges, intellectuals can test the boundaries of the system from time to time. People in the system also acquiesce to such temptations in order to explore the direction of reform.

I doubt very much that such a "privilege" ever existed, and if it does, it is quickly being swallowed up. My major is ethics and political philosophy. My teachers and friends in colleges and universities are now only publishing papers on the success or failure of some abstract theories. This is of course a great job, but I understand this as a "historical problem", that is, they were recruited a long time ago, and that's what they have been doing, and now they can't suddenly be asked to do something about greatness The ideological research of leaders can only gradually marginalize them. For those who are recruited in the future, the political and ideological scrutiny they will have to go through can be imagined.

Can't do some research on something else, or write something else? Of course you can, and many of our friends do. In addition to politics and political philosophy, I am interested in literature, history, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and even, I only study Kant's ethics. I used to prefer to write novels, and novels that are absolutely non-political, can I pick them up again? I love traveling so much, why can't I learn from the ancient literati who expressed their feelings for the landscape, and only reveal between the lines of the unhappiness in my heart?

Yousi, who came to me, also suggested the same thing. He said that if you do some less sensitive research, such as about the second generation of the deep, it will not prevent you from exerting your talents.

If my eyes weren't opened, I could have. It's just that, after I've experienced certain things and become enlightened, when I look around, there are materials for political philosophy research everywhere, I can't feel at ease and write those irrelevant articles. This era needs recorders. People with ambition may not have research ability, people with research ability may not have my perspective, and people with my perspective may not have my guts. This is the meaning of my existence.

The biggest difference between me and those friends who have changed their positions long ago is not the difference in our ideological positions (I am a left-wing liberal and they are libertarians), but that we have gradually changed over the past eight years. life experience.

When I had occasional contact with them four or five years ago, the focus of their conversations had gradually shifted from public domain topics to showing off their wealth, such as who recently quit, how much their salary increased, or who went to where How much does travel cost? It is understandable to return from idealism to everyday life, but such a hard landing makes me very uncomfortable.

In fact, it is this: if a person cares about worldly success and wants to live a life of a wife and children, sooner or later, he will embrace the system, because everything in the world depends on this system.

However, everything in the world is not everything in life. Human beings have a need for "transcendence", to transcend worldly life, to transcend one's own selfishness, to transcend a life in vain, to transcend the bustling era, and of course to transcend the regime itself. The system does not conflict with the secular, but it is fundamentally in conflict with this transcendental demand. That which is bearable for the sake of worldly things, is unbearable for transcendent needs.

If a person really wants to devote himself to artistic creation, academic research, and public welfare undertakings (not to mention political and social movements), he or she will most likely conflict with certain aspects of the regime, because artistic creation often requires breakthroughs Taboo, academic research must be based on truth, and public welfare undertakings must gather the strength of all parties. If a person sincerely believes in any religion, it is also discouraged by this regime, because it is equivalent to taking the side of belief when religious beliefs and political mandates diverge. More fundamentally, if a person wants to be a good person, he may not be able to do so, because such an environment is full of all kinds of injustice, and any courageous action will be regarded as an unstable factor by the system.

The only values that can be perfectly compatible with such a system are marriage and family.

So China's problem is not only a question of "how do we live together" in political philosophy, but also a question of "how should I live" in ethics. In the current Chinese society, only one way of life is allowed, that is, making money, getting married, having children (Confucianism), and "poetry and distance" (Tao) as the other side of its coin. One of the reasons why China can form a "super-stable structure" is that most people are indeed content with such a life.

If there will be any changes in the future, it may be because of two points. One is the expansion of the lives of most Chinese people. They gradually realize that their lives are not limited to everything that the world can provide, such as freedom of thought, freedom of religion, Freedom of speech and freedom of the press requires participation in political decision-making and social governance; second, there is a contradiction between the system and secular needs, and the system is gradually unable to meet secular needs. Solidified so as to block the channel of the bottom rising. Although I don't believe in the concept of "nationality", from the perspective of Chinese history, the latter point seems to be more likely.

I am not writing this article to ridicule those friends who have parted ways. In such an era, the initial echoes of idealistic high-fives were gradually submerged in the differences in each other's ideas and values. Probably this is Liu Yuxiang's favorite sentence before: This is life.