Beaconism and the "Sichuanization" of Chinese Liberal Intellectuals

Feb 25, 2020

My thesis, " Beaconism and the Trumpian Metamorphosis of Chinese Liberal Intellectuals " ("Beaconism and the Trumpian Metamorphosis of Chinese Liberal Intellectuals"), was recently accepted by the Journal of Contemporary China . The typesetting version of the publication has not yet been released. I put the preprint at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3538736 , you can download and read it for free.

For the convenience of friends who are not used to reading English papers, I will summarize the ins and outs of the paper here.

Friends who often mix Chinese on the Internet must have noticed that since Trump announced his candidacy for the US presidency in 2015, there has been a strong trend of "Sichuanization (Trumpization)" in China's "public intellectual circle". This "sichuanization" has at least two types of manifestations:

One category I call "Trump powder" - although many Chinese intellectuals may not seriously agree with all of Trump's policy positions, they worship Trump's so-called ability, vision, courage, etc., and regard it as farsightedness And a superb politician ( https://matters.news/@linsantu/How to think about it-Trump looks crazy but is extremely smart-or will become the greatest president of the United States-this statement-zdpuApi3zBiWBAeNeQ4cA6h8CM9MQ32C4ZdugSuFUhuSoSVhv );

The other type I call "Trumpization"-many Chinese intellectuals may despise some of Trump's words and deeds in their hearts, but they quite support the policy positions he represents, or at least they are happy to oppose his opponents (often referred to by the Chinese). Netizens collectively referred to as "White Zuo") and supported his position;

Of course, there are still many Chinese intellectuals who are both "Trumpized" and "Trumpified".

Interestingly, the phenomenon of "Sichuanization" largely crosses the traditional ideological divide among Chinese intellectuals. Whether they are "liberals" or "anti-liberals" in the traditional sense, there are many "Sichuanizations" Some people are there (of course, there are also many "anti-Sichuan" people, but these "anti-Sichuan" voices are obviously at a disadvantage in the circle of Chinese intellectuals).

The "Sichuanization" of the "anti-liberal" side (especially the nationalists and cultural revivalists among them) is relatively easy to explain; even if it is "strongly protesting" some party-state defenses of Trump's trade war with China Scholars, more or less feel that his diplomatic model, which puts aside the "white left idea" of "human rights above sovereignty" and focuses on transactional commercial war confrontation, is more friendly and understandable to the party-state, so It is more or less like "meet the opponent in chess" and "the hero cherishes the hero".

However, the general "Sichuanization" of the "liberal" side requires some effort to explain; after all, Trump's many speeches and policies are all in line with the generally understood liberal concepts (human rights, constitutionalism, rule of law, democracy, etc.) ) out of place. Therefore, although the fact that "Chinese liberals generally support Sichuan" is an open secret on the domestic Internet, few people talk about it abroad. The most interesting thing is that in 2016, I was invited by an American media to discuss it. Several types of Sichuan fans in China, but the last published report completely cut off the part discussing "Chinese liberal Sichuan fans"; according to the reporter later, it turned out that the American editors thought this phenomenon was too bizarre, and it was too strange for American readers. It is too unbelievable and incomprehensible to understand, in order to avoid excessive brain burn, I simply deleted the matter (see footnote 1 of the paper).

So how to explain the "Sichuanization" of Chinese liberal intellectuals? One type of conjecture (which I call "pure tactic" explanations in this article) is that these liberals did not "similarize" in the true sense, but only strategically "supported"—such as It is believed (or expected) that the trade war launched by Trump can achieve the effect of "forcing the CCP to reform", so it does not matter whether Trump himself cares about human rights in China, or whether Trump himself is a mess in US internal affairs.

But this kind of speculation is not in line with the facts, because in the past few years, many famous liberal intellectuals in China have praised Trump too sincerely, and the dimensions involved far exceed the expectations of the effect of his trade war with China. The most common compliments are related to Trump's "anti-political correctness"; followed by some related to anti-immigration, tax cuts, etc. Therefore, the "Sichuanization" of Chinese liberals is not just strategic, but a process of "(internal)ization".

Another possible explanation (which I call the "neoliberal affinity" explanation in this article) is that the "Sichuanization" of the liberals actually reflects the conservatism and right-wing populism within the "Neoliberal Alliance" of countries around the world in the past few decades The hijacking and devouring of libertarianism.

However, this kind of speculation does not really explain the dynamic mechanism of internal changes in China's liberals. Unlike democratic countries such as Europe and the United States, China lacks an institutional mechanism for right-wing conservative voters to force neoliberal alliance politicians to submit through vote pressure (for example, in the United States, many Republican politicians have complaints about Trump in private, but they are afraid of the pressure from the party's "Trump fans" voters and primary challengers, so they can only defend Trump in public; see http://dikaioslin .blogspot.com/2016/06/Trump-GOP-contemporary-American-right-wing-extremisms.html ); without the link of electoral pressure, changes in the balance of power within the "alliance" alone are not enough to explain How this change affects intellectuals who play a unique role in the field of public discourse. In fact, even if Chinese liberal intellectuals do embrace the Reagan/Thatcher-style neoliberal ideology of the past few decades to a large extent, this embrace itself needs to be accompanied by (and their later "Sichuanization") explained phenomenon.

My own explanation of the phenomenon of "Sichuanization of Chinese liberal intellectuals" can be summed up in one word: "beaconism". This "lighthouse complex", more specifically, can be divided into two dimensions:

One is "political lighthouse doctrine"

——Generally speaking, Chinese liberals have developed a deep love for Western politics (especially the United States, which is the only country that can compete with China in terms of economic size) because of the painful memory of Mao-style totalitarianism and the fear of Xi-style totalitarianism. A kind of earnest projection, and can't help but collapse the complicated political issues into a simplified version of the "left/right" spectrum that I have experienced personally.

Due to this kind of projection and imagination, it is difficult for Chinese liberals to accept the denial and systematic reflection of the "Whig history narrative" of contemporary European and American politics by Western "white leftists" (such as https://matters.news/@linsantu/apartheid Roosevelt’s New Deal under the gloom-hijacked constitutional transition and its consequences-zdpuAr4nhqe9b3SqVUNmixftTVqJQsRDFzsWBvhbQKyAsSKVo ), the re-adoption of contentious politics (such as mass protests such as Black Lives Matter), attempts to re-explore balance points on complex political issues (such as in Looking for a space for "political correctness" on the issue of freedom of speech, see: https://matters.news/@linsantu/Lin Santu-Political Correctness-and-Freedom of Speech-c Forum-zdpuAuGsPLujerTDRxaaJiV7QYbqsLqGpzSYkHJvnK46xfGKp ).

The preference of Chinese liberals for neoliberal economics is also related to this kind of projection. The consequences of the planned economy in the past are unforgettable, so they are deeply suspicious of any regulation or regulation of the market.

All these projections, against the background of the deteriorating domestic political climate in the past few years, have also increasingly formed resentment against the "white left" who are "angry and indisputable", feeling that Hillary Obama and Merkel are too focused on "self-criticism". "Facing the "evil regime" of the rising China, it is too appeasement; so when there is a bastard like Trump who looks like he wants to "smash all the old order" out of nowhere, the love for him is overwhelming. It is "available" from the heart, not just strategically.

The second is "beacon of civilization"

— not just longing for "Western politics" but for "Western (white/Christian) civilization" in a broader sense, and thus worrying that the latter will gradually "fall" (because of the fertility gap) to non-white immigrants/ Hands of Muslim refugees/…etc.

In this regard, the "Sichuanized" Chinese liberals form an interesting counterpoint to many anti-liberal intellectuals who are obsessed with the "rise of great powers"—the latter actually uphold a "civilized name" ( Respect?) doctrine” [Note], that is, through the internal success and external export of the “rise of great powers” and the “Chinese model”, to recover from the humiliation since the end of the Qing Dynasty, and (re)sit in the “world hegemony” " on the throne. For the "Rising Great Powers faction", "Western civilization" is a strong enemy in their minds, and the third world (especially "Muslim civilization") is the object of being ruled by the hegemon and the destroyer that hinders them. Therefore, facing the "Western civilization" Decline" has a sense of "sympathy for each other", and on the one hand, it also uses this mentality to find excuses for the domestic suppression of Muslim minorities.

[Note] The English I used in the thesis is civilizational vindicatiism, and I haven’t figured out a suitable Chinese word to translate “vindicativism”——“Rectification of names” seems to be ambiguous, and the spirit of “respecting vindicatiism” is not too high. Correspondence; everyone is welcome to brainstorm and give me suggestions.

If we go back to history, we can find that "Lighthouse of Civilization" and "Rectification of Civilization" come from the same source, and are closely related to the ideological trend of "scientific racism" and social Darwinism imported in the late Qing Dynasty; this historical connection also constitutes the contemporary "Liberal Sichuan fans" and "anti-liberal Sichuan fans" are in harmony with each other.

Finally, some people may think that the "Sichuanization" of Chinese liberals should be attributed to the ecological deterioration of the contemporary Chinese public opinion field-if they were not deceived by fake news, Chinese liberals would not support Sichuan.

It is true that this kind of ecological deterioration has indeed contributed to the “Sichuanization”; I mentioned these factors in the last part of the paper (but due to word limit, I cannot expand in detail), such as the censorship mechanism of China’s Internet public opinion field, WeChat public account The rise of self-media, and the fake news manufacturing and handling industry that flourish in this distorted public opinion ecology, etc.

But these factors alone cannot explain why Chinese liberals tend to choose to believe in right-wing fake news rather than left-wing fake news in the field of bad information, or why right-wing fake news is more marketable in intellectual circles than left-wing fake news— —In the final analysis, to explain this point, we still have to go back to certain prejudices, anxieties, and ideological frameworks that intellectuals themselves have, that is, to return to the (liberal) "political lighthouse doctrine" and "civilization lighthouse doctrine" ( And the non-liberal "civilized name doctrine") psychological mechanism.

I started conceiving this paper in 2015 (and have received feedback from many friends in the past few years, see the acknowledgment section), but due to my meticulous care and my own delay, it was not until last year that the manuscript was completed and submitted. Now when I was accepted by the journal, when the domestic epidemic was severe, I came to introduce my thesis and talk about the internal problems of the Chinese liberals. Some people may think that it is not right. They think that at this time, we should work together to hold the government accountable instead of causing internal disputes. Let's mess around.

But I believe that the two efforts can go hand in hand; and it is precisely because those in power are disappointed and even hopeless, so we must try our best to avoid the opponent's self-sufficiency in the choice of the road, otherwise, if there is a day when there is a chance for change , we can only choose between "bad" and "worse", and then it will be too late. How to bring Chinese liberalism back to its original roots and recover from the trend of "Sichuanization" is really an issue that we urgently need to think about and act on now.

【Paper download address: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3538736 】

[Also, you may also like my papers on #MeToo ( https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3463859 ) and on same-sex marriage ( https://papers.ssrn.com /sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3452156 ) interested】