[Published 2020-07-07 here and on Reddit. Internet Archive link.]
I’ve recently begun to follow Reading the China Dream, a website containing “translations of Chinese texts that we consider important, together with discussions of related issues and a number of reference tools that can help those interested to navigate the project.” Two recent translations on the website consist of an essay, “The Coronavirus Pandemic and a Once-in-a-Century Change” [1], and an interview, “Political Gamesmanship and American Chaos”, both by Yuan Peng, apparently an important voice on the subject of “international affairs, the United States and Sino-American relations” to Chinese elites. I do not know enough about the People’s Republic of China to verify that Yuan Peng is actually representative or influential personally, but he was presented as such on both the website and various China watchers on Twitter [2]. I read both of these documents because they showed up together in my RSS feed, but this post will mainly be about the interview. The essay is more important if you want to learn about the near future of the PRC, but I thought the interview was strangely revealing.
My thesis here is that, assuming 1) that Yuan Peng is representative or influential and 2) these are not solely propaganda pieces, these documents indicate that PRC elites have basically no understanding of the United States’ internal affairs aside from the surface-level view presented by mainstream media sources. Furthermore, they are probably strongly influenced by Western progressive ideology.
On the first reading of the interview, I skipped the initial commentary by the translator, and so I was shocked by the way it presented various issues. For example, here are some excerpts from the interview:
But the deeper reason behind these protests is America’s deeply rooted history of racism. From the end of the Civil War through the Civil Rights movement, the problem of African-Americans remained America’s most pointed racial issue, as well as its most important political issue. After the Civil Rights movement, it seemed that the problem of African-Americans’ political rights had been resolved, but the problem of their unequal position in society was not, and all kinds of discrimination continued to exist. With the Obama victory in 2008, the first election of an African-American as president, African-Americans were elated. But there were limits to what Obama could do to solve problems of racism, which left most Americans somewhat disappointed. Trump’s rise to power was seen as the victory of the “blue collar whites,” but instead of solving racial issues, he intensified such conflicts by attempting to do away with Obamacare and building a wall on the US-Mexico border.
[...]
If such ethnic contradictions are not resolved, the spirit of America—an immigrant country—must necessarily wither.
[...]
As expressed in the relations between men and women, American women have suffered long-term, systemic, broad-based, institutionalized discrimination, a public and hidden sexism that is simply shocking.
It summarizes past events in a way which would be unnecessary for American audiences, but the narrative it presents is still thoroughly within the U.S. mainstream. Rather than the feeling I get from reading American China watchers, which reads to me as presenting an outside perspective [3], reading that interview gave me the impression that the worldview of Yuan Peng is nearly the same as some moderately intellectual American. Even the language used is suspiciously similar, including mentions of America as “an immigrant country”, our “deeply rooted history of racism”, “institutionalized discimination”, etc.; while I acknowledge that this is a translation, the translator acknowledges this as well as my other points:
What struck me on reading this essay for the first time is that it reads less like a State Council White Paper and more like an editorial in the New York Times or any other slightly left-of-center American publication. His references and arguments are almost completely American, and with the exception of the use of the word “contradiction” where we would say “problem,” even Yuan’s language seems little different from American norms. True, Yuan bashes the Democrats more than the Times would as part of his critique of American party politics, but most of the piece reads not like a smear based on low-hanging fruit (classic White Paper tactics) but rather like a sober commentary on a sad situation. To some extent, The debacle of Trump’s America has redeemed, to some extent, Chinese media commentary [sic].
This interview was published in Chinese. It was not intended to be propaganda for American audiences, and most regular people in any country do not pay attention to intellectuals. Thus, I feel comfortable asserting that these are likely the genuine ways Peng analyzes internal affairs in the United States.
I think that various narratives alternative to the mainstream on such matters should be familiar for regulars in r/TheMotte. Understanding how the mainstream narrative can be challenged is not only key to understanding the function of the U.S. right-wing, which is itself important for analyzing U.S. domestic affairs, but also how the current situation can be viewed in the light of American history rather than through more short-term perspectives. As Yuan’s purpose in both of these documents is (in part) to discuss the role of the United States internationally and his analysis of U.S. domestic affairs is in service to that, I believe that his analysis is flawed and that it likely also exposes serious flaws in the thinking of many PRC elites.
I understand that the obvious objection to PRC elites having already been penetrated by progressive ideology is the situation in Xinjiang and similar developments. However, I think that compartmentalization is very easy for most people and that most can accept the progressive narrative even despite personal abberations, as is the case for most U.S. citizens. It is also easier to maintain such beliefs if one is without much practical influence, as may be the case for young people and intellectuals. As another example, I don’t believe many would suggest that European BLM protesters are non-progressive simply because they probably still dislike Romani.
Now, in regards to the essay, “The Coronavirus Pandemic and a Once-in-a-Century Change”: on initial reading I felt it was not worth very much intellectually, being full of sweeping generalizations and painful simplifications. Personally, it seems to be very obviously incorrect on various points, such as opinion about the PRC in Europe (“China-EU relations are at their best point in history”), the PRC’s and the United States’ relationship with Japan (“Japan and India basically want to remain on the fence, taking advantage where they can”), etc. However, Tanner Greer (writer of Scholar’s Stage), Rush Doshi (director of the Brookings China Strategy Initiative), and the translator all indicated that the essay was reflective of an emerging consensus in China, so presumably details and citations are not as necessary in that case since it would serve the role of a summary.
I have less to say on the essay because it mostly avoids talking about U.S. internal affairs. While I think its brief statements on the pandemic in the United States and electoral affairs are not exactly correct, I assume these topics are ones in which Chinese intellectuals must hold closely to the Communist Party line. That being said, nothing I read there disabuses me of the view I gained from reading Yuan’s interview.
I do not mean to imply that my thoughts are definitive; although I know more than the average person about the PRC I am by no means well-informed. Rather, my intention here was to share something which greatly surprised me as a result of my recent decision to learn more about this subject.
[1] Rush Doshi suggests on Twitter that the language about “great changes” should not have been translated into “once-in-a-century change” but rather “great changes unseen in a century” since it often refers to a series of systemic changes and apparently the Party often translates it this way.
[2] Tanner Greer and Rush Doshi
[3] My understanding is that we simply don’t know a lot about what goes on in the PRC. While the Party is more open than one might expect, we can’t know what goes in behind closed doors in Zhongnanhai; this has been emphasized to me. In contrast, I suppose perhaps it’s just Yuan’s style to project confidence, but I feel that his presentation is actively misleading.
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