Xu Youyu/Teng Biao | The Difficult Exploration of Liberalism in China

The Development of Liberalism in China

Teng: After the 1990s, you have conducted in-depth research on Chinese liberalism, and you are also one of the leading figures in promoting the development of Chinese liberalism. Could you please review the development of liberalism in China? it has started?

Xu: Yes, we can trace it back to Yan Fu at the earliest. He translated and rewritten "Tianyan Lun" and published it. This book had a great influence and became a trend. Of course this book does not directly spread liberalism, but it can be marked by it. Liberalism spread to China from the United Kingdom. In the 1930s and 1940s, there was a period of relatively vigorous development in China. Many people who studied in the United Kingdom and the United States and accepted liberalism returned to China to hold positions in government departments and universities. It plays a very important role in promoting public opinion.

After 1949, liberalism was completely suppressed in mainland China; of course, there was a tortuous development in Taiwan, but it completely disappeared in mainland China, and it was completely a negative synonym. Liberalism is simply as terrible as a scourge s things. After the reform and opening up, as the market economy gained a legal status, the discourse of liberalism also began to return, expanding from the economic field to the political and legal fields. But since a decade ago, the situation has deteriorated sharply, and liberal discourse has once again gone underground. But I believe that the historical task of China's constitutional democracy will not be completed, and liberalism will not disappear for a day.

Teng: Mao Zedong wrote an article called "Against Liberalism", which called such things as "liberalism" such as personal attacks, venting personal grievances, lack of organizational discipline, not speaking to the face, but talking nonsense behind the scenes. This demonization and distortion of liberalism has also affected the public's understanding of liberalism.

Xu: Mao Zedong's talk about liberalism proved that he was completely ignorant and confused in terms of theory. There are other examples, such as Mao Zedong's understanding of the concept of "metaphysics" is also wrong, "metaphysics" is actually a concept that has existed since ancient Greece, referring to transcending experience, Mao understood it as a kind of static The world view that negates movement is completely wrong in the basic concept.

Teng : During the process of spreading liberalism in China, especially during the period of the Republic of China, who were the important figures, and what contributions did they make to the development of Chinese thought?

Xu: The most important representative should be Hu Shi, who has had the greatest social influence, although his theoretical achievements may not be great. There are also people like Xiao Gongquan (advocating political pluralism) and Zhang Foquan (deeply clarifying the relationship between freedom and human rights), who have made great theoretical achievements, but it is a pity that our mainland intellectuals have not paid enough attention to them. It is worth noting that many liberals in China are actually difficult to distinguish from social democrats. For example, Luo Longji, Zhang Bojun, Chu Anping and others were later labeled as rightists. They are not so much liberals. Social democrats, or rather liberal social democrats, were actually influenced by Lasky, the British Labor Party theorist, rather than pure liberalism. Liberalism in China in the 1930s can actually be divided into two branches, one is relatively pure liberalism, but it does not occupy a dominant position, and the other is liberalism with a strong color of social democracy, which accounts for a small proportion Be bigger.

Teng: After the 1980s, the intellectual world rediscovered Gu Zhun. During the Mao era, was Gu Zhun's thoughts representative?

Xu: I think Gu Zhun should be an anomaly. He was deeply involved in the communist revolutionary movement and gained a considerable position in the Communist regime. In the end, his thoughts turned to liberalism, and he openly affirmed liberalism. I think this is It is a very peculiar phenomenon. This is caused by Gu Zhun's personal endowment. It can be said that he is a sudden genius, not universal or typical. In Mao's era, his thinking was empty, and few people followed his path. Later, when liberalism had begun to germinate in the Chinese intellectual circles, everyone rediscovered Gu Zhun.

Liberalism in Controversy

Teng: After the 1980s, did liberalism and other ideas often clash and debate?

Xu: Liberalism expresses its position in the process of criticizing the New Left, extreme nationalism and other ideological trends. The debate lasted from the late 1990s to the first decade of the new century, until no folk voices were heard anymore.

The emergence of liberalism in the 1990s was actually accompanied by the emergence of the Chinese New Left. After the emergence of China's market economy, the first reaction came from the New Left. The New Left believes that the basic social contradiction in China is no longer autocracy, but the power of new capital. Liberalism is tit-for-tat. It believes that the key is still the problem of Stalinism and the so-called socialist system. Simply put, the biggest problem in China is still the problem of a police state. It does not make sense to say that the things that hinder modernization and democracy in China are private entrepreneurs and the new capitalist market. What the New Left has played in China's theoretical circles is deceiving.

Teng: In the context of the West, what the New Left sees are some disadvantages of capitalism, and capitalism does have the problems they criticize; Criticism in China has become a new market force that does not criticize autocracy or state capitalism, but instead criticizes the people. Is this a misplacement or misinterpretation of the context?

Xu: Exactly. This is actually the essence of the difference between liberalism and the New Left. As for the New Left's analysis of Western society, there may be insights, but there may also be misdiagnosis and exaggeration. However, it is not acceptable to simply transfer the diagnosis of the West to China, because the entire context and social reality in China are completely different from those in the West; big capital groups have become the biggest force to be vigilant against in China. Not so.

Teng: People like Wang Hui, Gan Yang, Cui Zhiyuan, and Wang Shaoguang basically don’t criticize official Chinese practices and official ideology. Their conclusions are basically what Chinese officials like to see. Some nationalism and nationalism s things. I wonder if they really believe that criticism of Western capitalism is applicable to China, or do they dare not criticize the officialdom in China, but want to be innovative in academics?

Xu: I think it’s difficult to guess the subjective motivation; according to my judgment, it’s probably a combination of the two. First, it denounces capitalism, showing a strong sense of criticism, which can win a good reputation as a social critic, and at the same time Again very safe. When Bo Xilai gained power in Chongqing, a considerable number of New Leftists defected to him and advised them. This shows that they have common interests with the worst and most reactionary people in power in China. In China, the New Left can often speak freely, because of official censorship, the debate between liberalism and the New Left, the discourse environment is completely asymmetric. Sometimes liberalism does not dare to clearly target China's autocratic system, and is often hesitant. There is no way around this.

Teng: Many people have the impression that, at least in the 20 years before Xi Jinping came to power, the liberals should have had a clear upper hand in public opinion, and the New Left had no way to compete with liberalism.

Xu: I think this is an exaggeration of the influence and power of liberalism. Generally speaking, liberalism is more popular in Chinese media and the Internet, because the prerequisites for media and Internet activities are freedom of speech and freedom of the press. People feel the lack of freedom strongly every day and every day. need. Colleges and universities, on the other hand, are mostly positions of the New Left, and the more prestigious the universities, the stronger the New Left. In Western countries, the situation is basically the same, universities are occupied by the New Left. Liberal discourse often has the upper hand in public opinion because it fits China's reality and is consistent with people's common sense and daily feelings. Universities are an important position of the system, which is very suitable for the collusion between the New Left and the officialdom.

Teng: In addition to the New Leftists, there are also the Old Leftists, or Maoists, for example, a group of active Maoists based in Utopia. Are their positions in the Chinese ideological circle becoming more and more marginalized? Has their theory been proven to fail?

Xu: According to my experience and observation, the influence of Maoists or old leftists in China is quite large. The energy of their activities is also great, and the people they influence include government officials, intellectuals, and ordinary people, and their organizational forms are also diverse. To completely eliminate Maoism in China, I think the task is much more difficult than we imagined. At the same time, I also saw that there are many sincere people among them. Whether it is the Mao Zuo, the old left or the new left, some of them have participated in the struggle to defend their rights. I sympathize with and support their activities.

Teng: The Chongqing model implemented by Bo Xilai is also a more typical example of Maoist power. Liu Xiaofeng famously said that Mao Zedong was the founding father of China. How do you evaluate his thoughts? Which category should he belong to? What do you think of other followers of Schmidt, as well as Jiang Shigong from Peking University and young Tian Feilong?

Xu: When Jiang Shigong first debuted, his basic stance was generally liberal; but he was actually a pragmatist who relied on the government, and he used whatever could serve the government, so I don’t think he has any What importance is worth mentioning. Like Gan Yang, Liu Xiaofeng tried to come up with a very complicated and "smart" theory to defend and serve totalitarian dictatorship, thinking that his own theory came from both foreigners and ancients, and it should be better than those officials of the Central Propaganda Department. They are more popular with those in power, but in fact they are not. Their things are too high-brow and not appreciated. Because Chinese officials, so to speak, are a group of very vulgar people. If you try to curry favor with them with delicate and profound things, they won’t understand them, and they won’t bother to deal with those profound and refined things. Now these naked Suffice it to say about the vulgar remarks.

Teng: Neo-authoritarianism is also a school of thought in China. Is there official promotion or tacit approval behind it?

Xu: People like Wu Jiaxiang and Xiao Gongqin advocate new authoritarianism. Their thinking is: China’s major trend is to move towards democracy, but the reality is so far away from this goal. They want to take a compromise attitude. New authoritarianism is totalitarianism and freedom. A middle way between democracies. This is, of course, absurd both in practice and in theory. It is not accepted by the officials, nor by the intellectual circles. They are just talking to themselves. As I emphasized, this kind of ruling practice in China is very crude ideologically, and it doesn't make sense to use something that seems to have a certain degree of persuasion. It is a naked and unreasonable suppression. It doesn't care whether people really believe its own ideological rhetoric—in fact, it doesn't even believe it.

Teng: Liu Junning wrote a book called "Conservatism" in the 1990s that was read by many people, emphasizing that conservatism is the tradition of conservative freedom. But many people say that China does not have a tradition of freedom, so what is your conservatism? Now many Chinese intellectuals claim to be conservatives, including Liu Junning himself. His thinking has undergone great changes in many aspects, embracing the right-wing or even extreme right-wing conservatism that is opposite to Western liberalism and progressivism. Is there confusion between liberalism and conservatism among some Chinese intellectuals?

Xu: There is a strong and long-standing liberal element in the British tradition, so conservatism refers to the preservation of a liberal tradition, which makes sense; China does not have such a liberal tradition, so why should it be conservative? Is it not the king's land in the whole world? Liu Junning would say that to judge whether there are elements of freedom in Chinese tradition, we should not only look at Confucianism and the system, but also look at the free thoughts of the people. I think this kind of defense is a bit forced, but it is still a way of thinking. I don't think Liu Junning's thinking has changed much, let alone that he is an extreme right winger, he is a pure liberal. Like other places in the world, China's liberal groups also have different tendencies and colors, and you can call them left, center, and right factions. For me, I'd rather see the commonalities between them than highlight the differences. I take comfort in the fact that, broadly speaking, liberals of all shades and colors have gotten away with taking an anti-authoritarian stance.

But from a theoretical point of view, liberalism and conservatism are indeed a very complicated issue. When Yu Yingshi gave a speech at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and had a debate with Professor Jiang Yihua from mainland China, he talked about the fact that radicalism in China is getting stronger and conservatism is getting less and less. Later, Mr. Wang Yuanhua also agreed with this view. Wang Yuanhua also attached great importance to the conservative dimension, believing that it can play a positive role in China's struggle for freedom and democracy. Modern China abandoned and knocked down many traditional things, and the lesson is profound, and the beneficial things in the tradition should be restored. But can restoring tradition solve China's problems? Also not seen. Can elements such as constitutionalism, democracy, and human rights be extracted from tradition?

Teng: You mentioned Confucianism just now. How do you evaluate the ideas of this school of New Confucianism, including Jiang Qing, Chen Ming, and Bell Tanning? To what extent are they compatible with liberalism?

Xu: I think they are actually incompatible. From this standpoint, I resolutely criticize Jiang Qing. I think the value of Confucian culture is mainly in the aspects of ethics and culture. However, Jiang Qing's so-called political Confucianism is something that is in direct opposition to modern political civilization. He fundamentally denies the system of democratic participation of one person, one vote, and advocates the idea that "only the wise and the foolish are the same". The idea of anti-equality is incompatible with modern society, and it is completely unworkable in civilized society. Although Chen Ming carried the sedan chair for Jiang Qing, the two had very different ideas. Chen Ming did not deny the value of freedom and democracy in principle. As for Tanning Bell, it is not worth refuting to go to China to engage in academic speculation.

The new Confucianism should be stripped away. I am basically positive about the cultural revival of Confucianism. It is unreasonable for you to say that there are no outstanding things worth inheriting in China's thousands of years of culture. Sacrificing one's life for benevolence, sacrificing one's life for righteousness, the people are more important than the emperor, etc., are some very precious thoughts. This is of course not a modern democratic idea, but no matter what the tradition of a nation is, whether you call it a burden or a precious heritage, you cannot get rid of it.

If you want to deny it completely, you have to go against the deep feelings of the public; from the standpoint of liberalism, I am not willing to do this. This reality must be faced squarely and compromises must be made.

Teng: I basically agree with you. Confucianism has many good and positive things, but basically it is in ethics and self-cultivation. When it comes to modern political and legal systems, there is no need to consider Confucianism. What we need to learn from is the multi-party system, parliamentary democracy, and separation of powers, which have been tested in theory and practice and are quite mature.

Liberalism and Tiananmen

Teng: Let’s look at what happened to liberalism in the late 1980s. Is it possible to think that the Tiananmen democracy movement in 1989 can be regarded as a peak of liberalism, but the June 4 massacre made it fall to the bottom?

Xu: I don't think that the Tiananmen Democracy Movement in 1989 indicated that liberalism had reached a peak in China. At that time, people's understanding had not reached this point, and it was nearly ten years after liberalism was formally proposed in China. In my opinion, the thoughts and emotions that dominated and guided the 1989 democracy movement were the general sense of justice and moral stance of the Chinese people, such as the injustice against Hu Yaobang, the hatred for corruption and privileges, and so on. The June 4th crackdown certainly brought the democratic movement into a low ebb, but it also prompted people to think about China's past, present and future, why things are like this, and what do we really want? After deep thinking, some people finally found liberalism and established the goal of constitutional democracy. It can be said that the June 4th massacre brought the actual protest movement to the bottom, but it has greatly improved people's ideological understanding, especially on the issue of the legitimacy of the CCP's rule.

Teng: Just 17 days after the Tiananmen massacre, Bush Sr. wrote a letter to Deng Xiaoping expressing this kindness, and then sent a special envoy to meet with Deng Xiaoping a few months later. At that time, the United States and other Western countries imposed sanctions on Tiananmen, but The vast majority of these sanctions were quickly lifted. Then trade was decoupled from human rights, China was granted most-favored-nation treatment and a permanent trading partner, and joined the WTO in 2001. The Communist Party quickly recovered from international isolation and entered a stage of rapid economic development.

Xu: I think this is not only a policy of appeasement, but a policy of flattery. Politicians in the United States are afraid that the CCP regime will break the pot and take risks, so they will not hesitate to accommodate.

Teng: To some extent, it is a kind of complicity, a conspiracy with the executioner. Both parties in America fail on this issue. Hu Ping has a lot of articles analyzing that because the June 4 shooting caused widespread fear, the corruption and plunder of the powerful capitalists of the Communist Party can be more unscrupulous. The further acceleration of marketization and privatization, and the low human rights advantage (Qin Hui's words) are also important reasons for China's economic take-off. Do you agree with this statement? Also, how do you view Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour in 1992?

Xu: There is some truth to this analysis, because before 1989, public protests were common occurrences. After the June 4th crackdown, the situation of complete silence came into being immediately.

One thing Deng Xiaoping was still very firm about was that he felt closed doors, self-reliance, and state-owned monopoly would not work. I think this has a lot to do with his experience in the Cultural Revolution. When he was exiled to Jiangxi, he thought deeply about China's development path. His determination to maintain the rule of the Communist Party is very firm (even at the expense of massacres), but he believes that the way to maintain the rule must be to feed the common people. He wants to prove that the socialist system is not so bad, and that socialism cannot be practiced only if one is hungry. He said that whoever does not carry out reforms will be removed, and this is also his excellence. After June 4th, Jiang Zemin’s policy was still anti-revisionism, anti-revisionism, and opposition to capitalism. At that time, I could strongly feel that the line of the new Party Central Committee was inconsistent with Deng Xiaoping’s meaning. satisfying.

It can be said that Deng Xiaoping's speech on the southern tour was a way to turn the tide. His speech not only promoted the continued development of China's marketization, but also promoted it ideologically. etc. Of course, corruption was so serious later that it deserves deep reflection.

Teng: In the mid-to-late 1990s, the Internet entered China. China missed a lot of things when it closed the country, but China basically didn't miss it in the wave of the Internet. Of course, there are network censorship, firewalls and so on. Basically, during the Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao eras, liberalism developed rapidly in China. I went to college in the early 1990s, and my feeling is that most college students, especially those in the humanities and social sciences, have more or less accepted the concept of liberalism. You have made outstanding contributions to the spread of liberalism in China. Please talk about the development of liberalism in China after the 1990s.

Xu: I agree with your observation. Since the mid-to-late 1990s, China's civil society was relatively active and developed relatively quickly. I think China was basically moving towards a healthy constitutional democracy at that time.

Speaking of the rise of liberalism, liberalism is actually quite heretical in China, and the CCP’s hostility to liberalism is very serious. After Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour, the reason why he was able to open a gap was that China’s market economy had achieved Legitimacy, economic liberalism started to flow largely unimpeded in the mid to late 90s without any criticism. I still remember that the defense of economic liberalism written by Mao Yushi, Wu Jinglian, Sheng Hong, Zhang Shuguang and others was very eloquent and very popular. Liberalism spread so widely, deeply, and unscrupulously that it made conservatives very angry. They exclaimed and complained that the university's economics platform was completely occupied by liberals.

We argue that liberalism is desirable from a political point of view, and it is also related to the lessons of June Fourth. According to my observations, the starting point and destination of the students in 1989 were still on the premise of acknowledging the legitimacy of the Communist Party, advocating that the people of the Communist Party should be the masters of the country; they are very unclear about what is freedom and what is democracy of. Hu Ping said long ago that democracy as defined by the Communist Party is to let the people speak without the sky falling down. This is what Mao Zedong said, and everyone regarded this thing as democracy. It was at such a level back then.

After June 4th, there was a secret trend in the Chinese intellectual circles to seriously think about the path China should take, and whether the ideal goal we pursue is communism. I also conducted a lot of exploration, and finally extracted a few words: constitutional democracy. The emergence and development of the concept of constitutional democracy in the Chinese discourse system is the clearest conclusion reached by a generation of intellectuals after 1989 who deeply reflected on June 4th and explored the future of China. The emergence of Chinese civil society, the appeal for human rights, the rights protection movement, and Charter 08 all show that China's ideology and ideological level are quite different from before.

Liberalism and the Rights Movement

Teng: I also read a lot of liberalism at that time. The earliest and most influential one was economic liberalism, such as Mao Yushi, Zhang Shuguang, Sheng Hong, Zhou Qiren, Zhang Weiying, Wang Dingding, etc. In the academic world, Jiang Ping, He Weifang, Cai Dingjian, Liu Junning, etc. discussed a lot about human rights, the rule of law, and constitutionalism; sociology and philosophy were infiltrated by liberalism a little later. For example, the concept of human rights was criticized as a bourgeois thing before the 1990s, but it gradually gained legitimacy, and the central government also said that the country should be governed by law. Very profound progress. The spread of liberalism and the concept of the rule of law and human rights have promoted the rise of the rights defense movement. I am one of the promoters, and you also have a lot of participation. It is exactly the 20th anniversary of the rights defense movement.

Xu: The development of China's rights defense movement and civil society is not easy, but it is also a very memorable event. The initial development is indeed very good and promising, and the "Three Physicians' Letter" you participated in has also received official praise. If there is no turning back after 2013, I think the situation in China can still have an optimistic expectation.

Teng: In 2003, there were only a dozen or so human rights lawyers in the country, and later there were hundreds, and at the most nearly 1,000 human rights lawyers, as well as various other human rights defenders, some civil organizations, public welfare organizations, and so on.

Xu : The CCP’s autocratic and leftist things are very powerful, and the official “left” has turned into Maoist and New Left things when it reaches the people. Liberalism, which is closely related to the political goals of constitutional democracy, has almost become the mainstream of social discourse since the mid-to-late 1990s. It is a stroke of luck that liberalism can gain a foothold in China and become a form of official discourse. This is related to everyone's efforts, and also related to actual mistakes. For example, the ideological officials of the Communist Party did not have time to control, and many of them did not understand. As the market economy gained legitimacy, economic liberalism quickly became An unstoppable trend.

Teng: After Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour, China wanted to develop a (socialist) market economy. The logic of the market required economic liberalism and a certain rule of law; the Communist Party certainly did not want the separation of powers and Western-style constitutionalism, but the market economy and capital needed more legal rules, protection of property rights, judicial procedures for dealing with economic disputes, etc. But from the perspective of ideology and civil organizations, the speed, breadth, and depth of liberalism (the unintended consequences of the market economy) have far exceeded the level that the Communist Party wants to tolerate. This is the background of Xi Jinping's comprehensive crackdown on human rights lawyers, NGOs, journalists, and the Internet after he came to power: the development of liberalism has made the Communist Party feel that it poses a great and urgent threat to the regime.

Xu: Exactly. For example, Charter 08, you and I were the first signatories, it is in the same line as the Xidan Democracy Wall, the 1989 democracy movement, the party formation movement in the 1990s, the later rights defense movement, and various civil movements. I think that at every stage, there will be some progressive slogans and actions. But in a country as big as China, the democratic movement should have something programmatic to express our vision and demands. I think Charter 08 has played a milestone role and has been greatly recognized internationally. I made some comments on the revision of the text, and Liu Xiaobo and Zhang Zuhua basically accepted them. Speaking of Liu Xiaobo, by the way, the early Liu Xiaobo had many faults and weaknesses, which once disgusted me. Later I saw him change little by little. He really has a rare endowment. Every time he is in prison, he seizes the time to study and research to improve himself. He has a very deep reflection on his words and deeds. He himself is not a religious person, and he also said that he will not become a religious person, but he is actually a person with religious feelings. His ability of self-repentance and self-reflection is very strong, and he dissects and criticizes himself very thoroughly. , Compared with his early days, there are radical changes.

Teng: When Liu Xiaobo promoted Charter 08, he probably never thought that he would be sentenced to such a heavy sentence.

Xu: I really didn't expect that. …If Liu Xiaobo hadn’t been sentenced to 11 years, I don’t think he would have won the Nobel Peace Prize, and the impact of Charter 08 would not have been that great. The irrational cruelty of the Communist Party, combined with such a document with historical value, also contributed to the image of Liu Xiaobo to some extent.

Liberalism's dilemma

Teng: After the end of the 1970s, China moved towards reform and opening up. In the past 30 to 40 years, it has created an economic miracle and made many improvements in legal and social aspects. But on the other hand, China is still an authoritarian system today, the human rights situation is very bad, and the economic structure, corruption, inequality, environment, ethnicity and other problems are also very serious. How do you evaluate the achievements and limitations of reform and opening up as a whole?

Xu: With the implementation of reform and opening up, China has indeed made progress in terms of national economy and people's livelihood. The primary purpose of the CCP’s reform and opening up is of course to protect the party and its own political power, but for a considerable period of time, to a considerable extent, it is on the same path as the direction of historical development, and it overlaps with and coincides with the well-being of the Chinese people. place. The key is that it is a realistic and feasible starting point and initial path for changing China's status quo. Going down this path, if done well, it may also change its original intention and move towards the direction of universal human civilization. Therefore, for quite a long time, I have been able to speak within the discourse framework of "supporting reform and deepening reform". After 1989, especially since Xi Jinping came to power, China's development did not develop along the most optimistic and healthy direction, but embarked on the worst path among all possible paths. Now, it is meaningless to talk about "persistence in reform". The question now is whether we can brake and change course on the wrong and dangerous road.

Teng: At the very beginning, we knew that Xiaogang Village was contracted to households. They took great political risks and even risked their lives to promote reforms, which made the top management feel the pressure.

In addition, China's market economy is actually a distorted market economy, just like the European Union, the United States, and Japan have never recognized China as a market economy country because it does not have an independent judicial system and institutional protection of property rights, etc. There is a lack of a political and legal system compatible with a real market economy. It also created widespread corruption in China and this massive inequality. Many people know that China is one of the least free countries, but in fact it is also one of the most unequal countries. In your opinion, what are the prospects for the development of this model?

Xu: Many people think that a market economy will inevitably lead to democracy, but the facts prove that this is not the case. In the 1950s, U.S. Secretary of State Dulles proposed that socialist countries should also engage in economic construction, and those managers and factory directors who pay attention to practicality will become more and more in power, and finally implement peaceful evolution. However, it turns out that market economy and dictatorship are not completely incompatible. Dictators can more or less accommodate the market economy and use the market economy to maintain the dictatorship. I call this market Leninism. The market and dictatorship may coexist for a long time, and we should be mentally prepared for this. Of course, fundamentally speaking, I believe that the totalitarian system and the market economy are incompatible. In a limited period of time, under certain circumstances, the two can coexist, and there may even be situations where the market economy helps the totalitarian system. But fundamentally speaking, the totalitarian system is absolutely impossible to last forever. It either ends in internal social contradictions, or is defeated when it takes risks and conflicts with the outside world.

Teng: Clinton said similar things in the mid-1990s when he gave China most-favored-nation status and decoupled human rights from trade; at that time most people agreed that economic liberalization would lead to political liberalization. But now, it seems that everyone realizes the error of this statement.

Xu: Not only most people, but basically all people see it that way. It now appears that people have somewhat overestimated the power of the market and the power of the capitalist system, and underestimated the skills and energy of the communist regime in using the market and capitalism. However, from a historical perspective, everything that happened in the early 21st century is still a short-term issue after all, and it is not yet time to draw a decisive conclusion. Fundamentally speaking, I still do not believe that a rule that suppresses human nature and opposes human nature and human desires can survive for a long time. I firmly believe that human nature yearns for freedom and opposes oppression. In this regard, I am a staunch liberal.