Gideon Rachman writes these days in the FT about the implications of China's self-isolation and calls it a global concern. I wrote about this tendency to seclude China from ROW already in 2017 when dissecting the Japanese term SAKOKU.

There is also reason for concern that a cosmopolitan FT correspondent like Mr. Rachman does not dig deeper and tries to understand the roots of this self-isolation and by unearthing the roots, giving the reader more insights about the consequences of such regime behavior. 

Since FT is restricted in access I copy Mr. Rachman's article here and ad a short video from my son's Chinese school. The Giant's Garden is a widely known primary school text. It is a fable about a Giant who denies children access to his garden and builds a wall around his estate to keep them out. Its a story which like no other explains the problem with China's self-understanding of cultural superiority and uniqueness.

Further reading:

• On Nippon Sakoku: A Blueprint for China?
• Hong Kong: Polis between two Empires
• An Extended Review of Age of Ambition by Evan Osnos

China’s self-isolation is a global concern

Beijing’s zero-Covid policy is damaging international business and global governance

November 8, 2021 1:00 pm by Gideon Rachman

The most important invited guest at COP26 did not show up. As president of China, Xi Jinping leads a country that emits more carbon dioxide than the US and the EU combined. But, unlike other world leaders, Xi did not give a speech to the climate summit. Instead he submitted a written statement of less than 500 words for the conference website.

Xi’s dismissive attitude to the climate talks was not so much Middle Kingdom as middle finger. But the Chinese leader’s refusal to travel to Glasgow for COP26 — or to the G20 summit in Rome, before it — is part of a broader pattern of national self-isolation.

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, China has installed one of the world’s strictest systems of border controls and quarantines. Foreigners or Chinese citizens entering the country must go into strict quarantine for a minimum of two weeks. Extra controls apply if they enter Beijing, where the leadership resides.

This system has in effect made it impossible for foreigners to visit China without staying for several months, or for most Chinese people to travel abroad. Xi himself has not left China for almost two years. The last time he saw a foreign leader in person was at a meeting with the president of Pakistan in Beijing in March 2020. Xi’s forthcoming summit with President Joe Biden will be held by video.

When much of the globe was in lockdown, the extreme nature of China’s measures seemed less remarkable. But as most of the world returns to something close to normality, China’s self-isolation is increasingly anomalous.

The effects on international business are already apparent. China continues to trade and invest with the outside world. But business ties are fraying. Foreign chambers of commerce in China report that international executives are leaving the country and not being replaced. Hong Kong’s role as a global business centre has taken a battering.

China’s leadership may actually welcome some of these developments. Yu Jie, a fellow at Chatham House in London, argues that the pandemic has allowed Xi to accelerate down a path where he was already heading — towards national self-reliance. That policy began well before the pandemic, with the “Made in China 2025” campaign, which promoted domestic technology and production.

But with Covid-19, an emphasis on economic self-sufficiency has become a much broader inward turn — with dangerous implications for China and the world. China’s extraordinary rise over the past 40 years was triggered by Deng Xiaoping’s embrace of “reform and opening” in the 1980s. Deng saw that the isolation of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution had led to poverty and backwardness. He was humble enough to realise that China could learn from the outside world.

The current mood in China is very different. Rana Mitter, professor of Chinese history at Oxford, points to a danger that “closed borders will lead to closed minds”. After 40 years of rapid growth, China is self-confident.

The Chinese media portray the west, and the US in particular, as in inexorable decline. The Chinese government believes that the country is well ahead in some key technologies of the future, such as green tech and artificial intelligence. Beijing may believe that the world now needs China more than China needs the world.

Pandemic control has also become closely entangled with the political legitimacy of Xi and the Communist party. The official death toll in China is under 5,000, compared with 750,000 deaths in the US. The Xi government argues that while the US prates about human rights, the Chinese Communist party has actually protected its people.

But China’s zero-Covid policies now risk becoming a trap. As the outside world transitions towards living with low levels of the disease, contact with foreigners may look even more dangerous to China — leading to a renewed emphasis on restricting interaction with the outside world.

Even relaxing internal controls in China is difficult, since the Delta variant has led to small outbreaks of the disease in two-thirds of China’s provinces. Suppressing these outbreaks encourages the worst control-freak tendencies of the Communist party, which uses technology to monitor citizens ever more closely. In one episode, more than 30,000 people were locked inside Disneyland Shanghai and tested, after the discovery of a single case of Covid.

These kind of draconian policies are now causing some public debate in China. But controls are unlikely to be relaxed any time soon. This week the Communist party is holding a meeting that is preparing the ground for Xi to extend his period in power at a vital party congress in November 2022. The Chinese will not want to take any political risks before then. After the congress, China will be heading into winter when the disease can spike. As a result, many experts think that China’s zero-Covid policy — and the sealed borders that go with it — will extend well into 2023.

By that stage, China will have been in self-imposed isolation for more than three years. The Chinese and world economies are likely to suffer as a result, and so will global co-operation.

Yet the biggest and most intangible effect may be on the Chinese people. It is much easier to believe that foreigners are dangerous and decadent if you never meet them. When China eventually opens up, the world may encounter a much changed country.

In a series of propaganda events to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) foundation in 1921 [庆祝共产党成为100周年] a national elite of primary and secondary school students assembled Jul 1 on Tiananmen Square to declare their absolute and complete submission to the Chinese nation. Paramount leader Xi Jinping observed the spectacle in a front row seat.

China Youth People’s Magazine [中国青年报], the party’s media outlet for Chinese youth, published on its wechat video channel a five minute long video which summarizes the mass event. The video has been each viewed, liked and shared by more than 100k users and has been during the last week the top content on the Chinese social media platform wechat.

4 model students lead a battalion of 1068 pupils from 37 schools from across the nation and share a message to their national age peers behind TV sets: CCP, be at ease, my country has me to stay strong! [“请党放心，强国有我!] Several battalions of soldiers from all Chinese war forces surround the students as if they were already part of one large army.

A frightening scene, in particular if one remembers Nazi-Germany youth rallies from the 1930s.  The Hitler Youth has been identified by some historians as the cradle of war and destruction. Will it be any different with the CCP youth? What are Xi Jinping’s plans with the next generation of labor and armed forces? World dominion or saving the world?

Nationalism is an obsolete concept in the era of the Anthropocene. Global challenges like the climate crisis or the radical transformation of labor markets through automation and digitization call for a post-national mindset, which offers truly global and paradoxically also truly local solutions. Political entities like nation states might sooner than we think be part of our collective history. If they are not, our species will be.  
 
The future – and our all survival - belongs to trans-national and trans-organizational movements like One Army, which empower people from all walks of life without any bias of race, gender, nation, religion or ethnicity. What counts is contribution to challenges our species faces by thinking globally and acting locally. 

Its truly distressing that not even educated Chinese realize how dangerous the waters in which captain Xi navigates are. When I shared my concerns about the Beijing Youth Parade in a wechat group which I moderate, two Chinese with completed academic education replied in a brain washed manner, that I have no right to make any analogy with historical events: China is unique and cannot be compared to anything that ever took place in human history.
 
As somebody who grew up in the country where Adolf Hitler was born, I am particularly entitled to make such analogies. On the contrast to most contemporaries I still remember accounts from my own grandmother about how nationalism unfolded in Germany and Austria and how it transformed into vicious fascism. Comparative historian Barrington Moore showed in his seminal work Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy social development and culture formation are subject to systemic laws. Laws which the average citizen does not see, but nevertheless laws which guide the evolution of societies.
 
Only societies with a strong and independent bourgeoisie turn out to be democratic. All others go down the route towards dictatorship, no matter whether it is called fascism or communism. The size of a country or its cultural hemisphere are insignificant variables in this equation. China’s bourgeoisie has either sided with the government or left the country in a diaspora throughout the last decade which can only be compared with what took place in the years preceding Hitler’s ascent to power in Germany.
 
Neither democratic capitalism which has evolved out of European 19th century nation state entities, nor Chinese state capitalism will save this planet and the next generation. The adaptive governance the CCP has installed might react faster upon systemic challenges, it is however still subject to the laws of nature. State capitalism as practiced in by the CCP devours natural resources in unprecedented scale and rejuvenates the words of economist and Nobel laureate Fritz Schumacher:
 
“The illusion of unlimited powers, nourished by astonishing scientific and technological achievements, has produced the concurrent illusion of having solved the problem of production. The latter illusion is based on the failure to distinguish between income and capital where this distinction matters most. Every economist and businessman is familiar with the distinction, and applies it conscientiously and with considerable subtlety to all economic affairs – except where it really matters: namely, the irreplaceable capital which man has not made, but simply found, and without which he can do nothing.”
 
Schumacher has shown that all of traditional economics is wrong and that small is beautiful. 21st century China is the largest capitalist economy humanity as ever seen and thus the ugliest human organization one can imagine.  If it proceeds to evolve in the manner it has done so far, we must expect similar consequences to what we have seen emanating from Nazi Germany. Events like the July 1 youth parade are confirmation of that trajectory.

Sources:

• Oriental TV youtube video on 100 year commemoration (Chinese)
• Soho article on Beijing 2021 Youth Rally (Chinese)
• 请党放松，强国有我 京都青少年在行动
• Youth Rally 1935 Nuernberg
• German youth parade 1937
• https://www.onearmy.earth//
• Barrington Moore: Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy
• 移民Leaving China
• E.F. Schumacher: Small is Beautiful – Economics as if People mattered.

 

A great leap forward has for a sinologist a negative connotation. The Great Leap Forward caused severe famine and cost 30-55 million Chinese their lives. Anthropologist turned social entrepreneur Colin Flahive refers though to a completely different leap despite having written this enticing account about urbanizing China from my favorite Chinese province, Yunnan. Colin writes about a leap into an adventure, into a different playbook than the one written based on your pedigree, education or family’s wealth.
 
Flahive quotes Henry David Thoreau, the great American essayist and transcendental philosopher who is best known for Walden – a life in the woods and Civil Disobedience: We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal and then leap in the dark to our success. Flahive, his friends and employees all made such leaps and were rewarded with exciting lives, which were all anchored at Salvador’s Coffee House. They left their old lives behind to make a new home in a foreign land and found their place in the modern Chinese dream.
 
I met the author last summer in Salvador’s Coffee House during my probably last journey to Southwest China, where he gave me his beautifully Klimt-like ornamented book as a present. We both arrived at a similar time about 20 years ago in China and we both ended up in Kunming, he more permanently though. We both got married to truly interesting Chinese countryside girls, and we both try to improve people’s livelihoods with our work. There is a lot we share, above all, I guess our side job as wordsmiths.
 
Flahive presents a blend between memoir and an applied anthropological study on cause and effect of urbanization: China’s urban migration, now the largest in the history of the world, is fueled by the idea that, regardless of birthplace or social class, cities offer everyone a chance at success. It’s an idea tantamount to that of the American Dream – that people can start with nothing but succeed through hard work alone. Some might argue that in today’s global climate the American Dream is dead, but for hundreds of million in China a similar dream is alive.
 
While Flahive moved 2004 from Dali to Kunming, I moved 2003 from Kunming to Shanghai, where my then not yet wife studied, then back to Europe and 2009 back to Shanghai. Shanghai is to me probably what Kunming is to Flahive – the city where I have spent so far most years of my adult life – it is my second home. When I describe Shanghai to non-residents, I compare it to New York of the 1970s: it’s the world’s epicenter, the Dragonhead of the world’s largest single market, the cutting edge of commercial and to some extent also social innovation. It’s the place where ambitious young people go in search of their dreams. The American Dream is indeed dead. We now all live our dreams against a Chinese backdrop.  
 
When outsiders hear about urban China, they hear about pollution, overpopulation, heavy traffic, mass consumerism and a blind rush toward modernization. Though all of those characterizations are often what people experience when they come to China, many millions of rural Chinese think of China’s cities in a very different context. For them, cities are the gateways to the modern world. [p169]
 
Flahive explains through the stories of his employees why they prefer long working hours in Chinese cities to staying in often picturesque villages. Cities are not only gateways to modernity, they are above all gateways to freedom. This phenomenon can only be understood when one applies a longitudinal perspective. China was in many ways until the 1980s stuck in a sort of European middle ages. The delayed onset of the scientific and industrial revolution meant that up till 2011 more than half of the population lived in the countryside as farmers while less than two percent of the labor force in industrialized nations works in agriculture.
 
The city has therefore a similar value like it had centuries ago in Europe. Kunming has given them the opportunity to look beyond their fate on the farm. It took coming to China for me to learn that cities are more than just consequences of growth. They are places where people can shed their rural shackles to become something more. [p172] School is the one place in the countryside where kids really get a chance to be kids. [p142]
 
It takes Flahive a while to understand in the narrative of his book why his employees want to trade a life which he seeks, to one he wants to give up. For me, China’s countryside represented the kind of lifestyle I’d always idealized. It was a place where there were no concerns about traffic and pollution – where people’s lives revolved around agriculture and family. The girls had come to Kunming for exactely opposite reasons. For them it was the city that they sought a lifestyle that I had left behind, while I sought a lifestyle that they left behind. [p130]
 
An explanation can be found in human development psychology and our species’ much underrated learning instinct, which I described in an essay on cities and their evolutionary value as learning spaces. But that’s another story. This one is about why we need to take great leaps if we want to find a fulfilling life. Flahive did it.

Jack Ma irritates Xi Jinping to the extent that the latter puts the hitherto world's largest IPO on hold. The FT asks this week whether the freedom of private entrepreneurship is at stake. There never has been such a freedom in China.

State media outlets like CGTN criticize "disorderly capitalist expansion" and point at Jack Ma while looking into a mirror. We witness a cutting edge power game between private capitalism and state capitalism. The situation makes me recall a quote from Jewish theologian Martin Buber: The real struggle is not between East and West, or capitalism and communism, but between education and propaganda.

The 2021 introduction of the world's first digital currency might be a final blow to rising Chinese tech companies which offer financial services. A technocrat government will win over corporate power. I explained in 2018 why people and planet will loose either way.

The EU has announced quite recently its ambitious Green Deal. Since the US are lost in a deeply corrupted world of corporate capitalism, European sober mindedness and environmental awareness are the last hope for humanity to get bureaucratic top down support in fighting climate change and creating more economic fairness.

Developing a European digital currency which puts the right values in place will play a crucial role in providing an alternative to Xi Jinping's dystopian ambitions. Nobody wants to be queuing in a line behind a billion people as Damian Ma wrote already in 2013.  

Abstract: This essay reviews Evan Osnos’ Age of Ambition – Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China and elaborates on how isolationism and moral corruption decides over a civilization’s ultimate fate. As such it reveals that the stages of development for societies and civilizations do not change but accelerate as a consequence of technological progress. For a completely different view on China’s state of affairs read Dan Wang. Its amazing how different the perception of one and the same thing can be. [approx. 4500 words]
 
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This is the first book in two decades which I read about China without being in the country myself. As such, I experienced an important change of perspective. Osnos was recommended to me by several people, but I had read too much about China already and felt a deep frustration with the country’s status quo. After having departed from where I felt despite all the challenges at home, it came a few weeks ago back to me, almost as if I had to read it to close a big chapter in my life. Yuanfen as the Chinese say.

I rank Osnos’ account of China on the same level as Edward Luce’s account of India Inspite of the Gods and David Pilling’s account of Japan Bending Adversity. It really is the book which anybody should read who has only time to read one book on modern China. It is free of accounts about the pre-Deng era and refers to Mao Zedong only rarely. But probably because I know China in contrast to India and Japan very well, I felt that Osnos lacks the depth of cultural understanding which make Luce’s and Pilling’s accounts so excellent. It is true what Winston Churchill said: “The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”

There is good bit of envy. Osnos lived the life which I wanted to live for a while. He worked for the Chicago Tribune and The New Yorker as Beijing based investigative journalist from 2005 to 2013 and witnessed during these years three important events and the surrounding preparations which mark China’s emergence on the world stage and the world’s transition into pax sinica: the Beijing Olympics 2008, the Shanghai World Expo 2010 and Xi Jinping’s ascend to power in 2012. All three of them reflect the ambition of a nation and its leading individual and confirm the perfectly chosen title.
 
Age of Ambition is structured into three parts - 1. Fortune (p 9-113), 2. Truth (p 117-274) and 3. Faith (p 277-355) - and is eclipsed by a short prologue and a substantial epilogue. Each chapter is eloquently written, and pages keep turning, but it becomes very soon apparent that each chapter is a revised New Yorker article. Osnos stacked his New Yorker stories into three categories to mold this book into a final summary of his China stint. There is nothing wrong with this. I would even argue that the depth of his research for single New Yorker articles improves the quality of the book. Moreover, it would have otherwise not been possible to work both as a full-time staff journalist and churn out Age of Ambition within the little time that Osnos spent in China. 
 
Part 1, Fortune, is really written for those who don’t know China yet and can be skipped by old China hands with the exception of a detailed account on the role of Macao’s casinos in money laundering and capital flight, and the last chapter in which Osnos joins as the only foreigner a guided tour of Europe with Chinese middle-class travelers. It is when Chinese are abroad that they provide the most stunning insights into their own and thus their nation’s psyche, probably best reflected by one of the Lu Xun quotes Osnos uses: Chinese have never looked at foreigners as human beings. We either look up to them as gods or down on them as wild animals.”
 
Part 2, Truth, oscillates too much around celebrity artist Ai Weiwei, celebrity blogger Hanhan and blind star lawyer Chen Guangcheng. It would have done the book good to portrait some of the struggles which ordinary laobaixing experience when searching for truth. On the other hand, I feel reassured that it was the right thing for me and my family to leave the country – I can’t keep my mouth shut or my pen idle for too long and this trait would have sooner or later inflicted pain on us. I think Jeremy Goldkorn said something similar after he had left the country in 2015.
 
Part 3, Faith falls short of capturing what faith means in modern China. I certainly recommend reading Ian Johnson’s The Souls of China instead or at least in addition. Part 3 would have been also the place to make a substantial reference to the title in terms of psychological or spiritual motivation. Ambition is quite a tricky word in Buddhist terminology and offers itself to expand upon the spiritual void which is experienced by large parts of the Chinese society. Too much ambition is a form of greed, which causes pain to oneself, others and – as we quite often forget - to the planet. The ecological and psychological damage done by China’s accelerated rise reflects that The Age of Ambition is nothing really great. In its essence it is what caused wars in the past, when kings forget humility and are tempted by hubris.

Download this pdf to read the extended review

Its fall again. How do you know? In busy cities like Shanghai one can quite forget the change of seasons. We spend most of our time indoors and hurry between our climatized homes and office buildings. Older Shanghai residents tell me that fall, and spring have become significantly shorter with drastic temperature changes between winter and summer within sometimes less than a month. Its ten years since we have made Shanghai our home and it seems they are right. The seasons of transformation are indeed short. 

Goldenrain Tree | 栾树

At the start of every academic year I have though a very clear indicator for fall, when I walk my children to school. We pass a lane in Jingan district which is decorated by an alley of Goldenrain trees and every fall they start to blossom in thick yellow as if it were spring. Only a week later their flowers begin to “rain” onto the city floor and their fruit leaves turn pinkish red. The combination of green, red and yellow makes this tree a delightful appearance and I enjoy our fall walks to school every morning.

Koelreuteria paniculata is a species of flowering plant in the family Sapindaceae, native to eastern Asia, in China and Korea. It was introduced in Europe 1747, and to America in 1763, and has become a popular landscape tree worldwide. Common names include Goldenrain Tree, Pride of India, China Tree, or varnish tree. While it grows only up to 7m high in the moderate climates of Europe and North America, it turns into a mid-sized up to 20m high tree in subtropical Shanghai.

Chinese Catalpa | 梓

Without doubt, there are other attractive trees in Shanghai, but they are rather the children of spring. My personal favorite is the Chinese Catalpa or Catalpa ovata, which is native to Western China. The Catalpa tree is an ornamental shade tree that produces dense clusters of white or purple flowers and long seed pods. Plant guides say that it can grow upwards of 7m in height, but I know 30m high trees in my Shanghai neighborhood. The Chinese Catalpa is an astonishing sight when in full bloom and which reminds me substantially of central European chestnut trees.

The long and equally ornamental pods are not edible, but bark and leaves have an extensive medical application. Teas and poultices made from the bark and leaves are often used as laxatives and mild sedatives, and to treat skin wounds and abrasions, infections, snake bites, and even malaria. The Catalpa ovata wood is used to build the underside of the guqin, a classic Chinese instrument.

Magnolia Grandiflora | 玉兰

A third contestant for the title Shanghai’s signature tree is certainly the Magnolia, which is also city’s official signature flower for good reasons. However, as below chart explains, a tree and a flower are not the same. Some trees grow flowers, but flowers in themselves are no trees. The arguably most important difference is their life span. While flowers are of very short life, generally only a few weeks, trees can live up to several thousand years.

Like the Chinese catalpa the Magnolia blooms in spring and she does so in breathtaking white and purple. The Magnolia grandiflora is a medium to large evergreen tree which may grow 120 ft (37 m) tall. It typically has a single stem (or trunk) and a pyramidal shape. The leaves are simple and broadly ovate, with smooth margins; they are dark green, stiff and leathery. The large, showy, lemon citronella-scented flowers are white, up to 30 cm across and wildly fragrant, with six to 12 petals with a waxy texture, emerging from the tips of twigs on mature trees in late spring.

Camphor Laurel | 樟树

Cinnamomum camphora is native to China south of the Yangtze River, Taiwan, southern Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, and has been introduced to many other countries. One could say, the Camphor is a truly Far East Asian tree. It grows up to 20–30 m tall. In Japan, where the tree is called kusunoki, five camphor trees are known with a trunk circumference above 20 m, with the largest individual,  the "Great camphor of Kamō"), reaching 24.22 m.

The leaves have a glossy, waxy appearance and smell of camphor when crushed. In spring, it produces bright green foliage with masses of small white flowers. It produces clusters of black, non-edilble, berry-like fruit around 1 cm in diameter. Its pale bark is very rough and fissured vertically. While the tree is compared to the Chinese Catalpa, the Magnolia Grandiflora and the Goldenrain Tree of rather modest appearance, its evergreen foliage produces an enormous variety of colors in all hues of green, yellow and red. Moreover, the Camphor Laurel has since known times been the source of an important culinary and medical substance.

Camphor is a waxy, flammable, transparent solid with a strong aroma, is found in the wood of the Camphor Laurel. It is used for its scent, as an ingredient in cooking, as an embalming fluid, for medicinal purposes, and in religious ceremonies. It was a widely used ingredient in sweets and dessert dishes in medieval Europe, the Arabic world and India; and was a much-coveted substance in early international trade.

Paper Mulberry | 构树

The fifth and last tree we explore in this short article about Shanghai’s most common trees is the Paper Mulberry, aka Broussonetia papyrifera. It is native to Asia, where its range includes China, Japan, Korea, Indochina, Burma, and India. Like the Camphor Laurel, the Paper Mulberry is of rather modest appearance and without attractive flowers. Instead of black berries it produces though in fall a fleshy red fruit which gives the tree temporarily a celebrative atmosphere.

While not cherished like the Magnolia as a modern ornamental tree, the Paper Mulberry has been for most of human history farmed like corn or wheat. It was a significant fiber crop in the history of paper. It was used for papermaking in China by around 100 AD, and in Japan to make washi by 600 AD. Washi, a Japanese handcrafted paper, is made with the inner bark, which is pounded and mixed with water to produce a paste, which is dried into sheets.

There is evidence that the Paper Mulberry, which grows on almost all Pacific Islands, was taken from early human settlements in the Pearl River Delta on their journey to the East. Paper Mulberry is primarily used in the Pacific Islands to make barkcloth and was therefore cultivated by Polynesian tribes like life stock. The fruit, leaves, and bark have been used in systems of traditional medicine as a laxative (increase bowel movement) and antipyretic (fever controlling). Without doubt, one could claim that the Paper Mulberry was something like killer app of Neolithic cultures.

Plane Tree | 悬铃木

There is one more tree which can’t go amiss on a list of Shanghai’s most important trees, the Plane Tree. It decorates many alleys in Shanghai and certainly defines in combination with European architecture the flair of the former French and British concession areas. It is one of the most massive trees of the temperate climate zone growing occasionally up to 50m high. Its size and its large leaves which make the Plane an ideal tree to provide shade in hot urban summers. Its leaves are cause for confusion because their palmate shape make them look similar to Maple leaves.  

Plane trees are native to the Americas and to Europe. The American Plane Tree is known as Sycamore, New World Plane or platanus occidentalis. The European Plane Tree is known as platanus orientalis and was originally distributed in an area stretching from the Balkan countries, Greece to Turkey. A third species of Plane tree is widely known as London Plane or Platanus acerifolia. Most modern authorities accept that P. acerifolia is a hybrid between P. orientalis and P. occidentalis. The belief finds support not only in the botanical characters of the London plane but also in its great vigour – a common feature of first-generation hybrids between related species – and in the variability of its seedlings.

While the origin of the London Plane is still debated amongst botanists, there is no doubt that the colloquial name of Shanghai’s plane trees is confusing. Most Shanghainese call the Plane tree 法国梧桐 or French Parasol Tree, most likely because it was introduced to Shanghai, when the city was influenced by its French residents. Considering that the Plane Tree alley in Jingan Park, a former military cemetery, is a natural monument of British rule in Shanghai, one is inclined to assume that Shanghai’s Plane Trees are indeed London Planes, which the British introduced to the city in the 19th century. Wherever they come from, Shanghai’s plane trees are pleasant to the eye and provide excellent shade.

Learn more about Shanghai’s trees in one of or Plants & Friends activities, which Green Steps facilitates in Shanghai’s city parks. Book the next available class on 247tickets and let us know which of the introduced trees should be Shanghai’s signature tree.

A.     Goldenrain Tree 栾树
B.     Chinese Catalpa 梓
C.     Magnolia Grandiflora 玉兰
D.    Camphor Laurel 樟
E.      Paper Mulberry 构树
F.      Plane Tree 悬铃木

There is something strange when walking past Jingan Temple, Shanghai’s most central and arguably most important Buddhist temple, observing a Hong Kong dragon dance troop preparing for their performance. Chinese pedestrians are delighted at their sight, amused, mesmerized. Cars slow down on Nanjing West Rd to watch those tiny Cantonese men building up their stage already clad in their colorful costume. Dragon dance performances on National Day elicit the feeling of a planned confluence of nationalist holidays with a pre-nationalist cultural tradition.
 
Recently I have come to the conclusion that I am a cynical idealist. Cynical about reality. Idealistic about the possibilities for humankind. While I see delight in the faces of most people only three Latin words cross my mind observing the scene: panem et circenses. As I cross Nanjing West Rd into Jingan Park, where the daily frenzy of multiple groups of septarian Taiji and Qigong practitioner competing for space and sound dominance is going on, I wonder about the significance of bringing gladiators from Hong Kong into one of the new Chinese capital cities on the occasion of Chinese National Day. Timing couldn’t be better.

Only an hour later I wait outside a print shop for my job to get done. On the opposite side of the road I watch a local kindergarten practice for their National Day performance. I walk over to the gate of the institution and peek into the playground where three to six-year-olds are lined up like a little battalion. Their headmaster, a woman in her late 50ies with dark green dyed hair, wears a headset and her voice echoes through the speakers.
 
I had the opportunity to observe dozens of children ages three to twelve during the last year while trying to qualify as a Montessori teacher. What stroke me as most interesting are generally poor practical life skills and underdeveloped gross motor skills in Chinese children. Observing the playground scene makes me therefore think that nationalism influences education early on. While many of these children have difficulties to walk on unpaved terrain or tie their own shoe laces, they are in the phase of the so called absorbent mind trained to behave like soldiers.
 
It is a collective inferiority complex which drives parents to subject their children to such a system. I can’t explain it otherwise. It is a collective inferiority complex and a cultural superiority narrative which drives the Chinese to become wealthier and stronger than the West. It’s the same psychological principle which drove the Japanese for decades until the isolation of elderly, the unhappiness of their urban middle-class and alarmingly high suicide rates made some question the national narrative.

July 1 is big date for Shanghai: the waste separation law comes into force. One of the organizations which has done a lot of educational work during the past years to reduce waste is Zerowaste Shanghai. Their latest blog entry explains everything you need to know about the new law and asks a few questions beyond it. Green Initiatives, another opinion leading environmentalist organization has made the law the subject of its July Green Drinks Forum. While I see rubbish bins in different colors distributed to large compounds and single households, everybody seems to be talking about this new law - and rightly so.
 
Coming back from Europe only a few days ago, where I showed to our son a modern recycling center in my home town, I have some additional thoughts to share which I have structured in a SWOT analysis, which – nota bene – looks at Shanghai and China at large as an organization with internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats.

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Back home everything seems to go well. Waste is being separated since about 40 years and recycling has become a habit for most people. It is necessary that such habits are instilled in citizens of emerging economies such as China, but large populations and population density change the dimension of the problem significantly and ask for different and faster solutions.
 
Al Bartlett, a professor emeritus of physics, is the first address to explain why. His somewhat arrogant summary of the problem: "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." We deal with two exponential functions at the same time: the first is related to the global population explosion, the second to technological development.
 

When I was born in 1976 the world population counted around four billion people, i.e. roughly half of todays eight billion. Back in the 1970s hardly any manufacturing facilities were as highly automated as most are today. These two observations compose a formula for dangerous results: faster and more efficient production for more and more consumers.
 
Pixar’s science fiction animation Wall-E has already back in 2008 anticipated the consequences: a deserted waste planet and a tiny (and obese) left over population on a large starship. Entrepreneur Elon Musk doesn’t like science fiction. He wants to prepare for the worst case scenario and builds with SpaceX rockets which shall populate Mars in case we mess up our only home, mother earth.
 
Shanghai’s waste management law comes therefore at a critical moment and it has the potential to catalyze significant global changes. One reason is that Shanghai is China’s dragon head. Whatever gets implemented here, might very likely come as a law for the entire country – and its easy to see from above graph that a success in China’s waste management will be a success for the entire world: China’s population makes up about 1/5 of the total. But think of Shanghai only: roughly 30 million people, that’s approximately the population of countries like Peru, Nepal, Angola or Australia, will get within a few months a completely changed recycling system.
 
Another strength of this law lies in China’s top down bureaucracy which has a solid track record of successfully coercing its subjects within a short time to unsurmountable tasks. Clear fines for both individuals and companies will be swiftly and most likely without pardon executed by respective public authorities. Shanghai has seen similar measures during the last few years in regard to traffic management, and we know that central leadership wants to emulate Singapore. From such a perspective, there is the possibility that the city if not the entire country turn into a gigantic carbon copy of Japan: spotless tidy and hyper modern.
 
While these arguments make the law promising, there are weaknesses and even threats – some of them more, some less obvious - which need to be discussed.
 
It has already been mentioned by several observers that the law will destroy the organically grown informal recycling system. One can question if this informal waste sorting mechanism was really as efficient as described, but it provided a large migrant worker group an additional if not main income. Thinking of some measures which have been implemented during the last three years in Chinese first tier cities, one of the driving motives could be making city life impossible for citizens without Shanghai household registry by depriving them of their source of income. More important though, we need to ask if the new waste management system will be better than the one which is in place.
 
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Philosophers ask law makers why they promulgate laws. They call this discipline teleology: the explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose they serve rather than of the cause by which they arise. Now, Chinese law makers will answer in regard to the waste management law that it had to be promulgated because of rising waste volumes, and it’s purpose is better waste management. So far so good.
 
The philosopher tends to go a step further in his inquiry and will ask why there is a rise in waste and why there is waste in the first place. Law makers will quickly – but reluctantly – arrive at the conclusion that the increase of overall consumption is the cause of increased waste and need to acknowledge that the law does ignore why we consume.
 
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Economists like Valentino Piana from the Economics Webinstitute define consumption as the value of goods and services bought by people. Individual buying acts are aggregated over time and space and constitute collectively the consumption of economies. Consumption is normally the largest GDP component and many judge the economic performance of their country mainly in terms of consumption level and dynamics.
Consumption may be categorized according to the durability of the purchased objects or according to the needs its satisfies. Durable goods (as cars and television sets) are different from non-durable goods (as food) and from services (as restaurant expenditure). These three categories often show different paths of growth. Another commonly used classification identifies ten needs of expenditure:
1. Food
2. Clothing and foot wear
3. Housing
4. Heating and energy
5. Health
6. Transport
7. House furniture and appliances
8. Communication
9. Culture and schooling
10. Entertainment
 
Now, this might sound awkward to you, but from an economist’s perspective more people consuming more health services and medication are good news. The same is true for education: the more parents invest in cram school, the better for the economy. And of course also for the entertainment industry: the more frustrated kids play computer games, the better for the economy. And yes, its also true for food, fashion and cosmetics: the more bags Kitty buys, the fancier the restaurants Cherry dines in, and the more expensive the skin whitener April puts on, the better for the economy.
 
So, now let’s think of how to dispose of all this stimulating and job-creating consumption.
 
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Another maybe not so obvious weakness of the law is the lack of penalizing wasteful production. China’s short but intensive experience with the sharing economy showed through football field large piles of disposed rental bikes that the government does not interfere with the market as long as it produces growth and investment. Other legislation don’t fare much better, but China is due to its size in a special position and its government has a significant responsibility. If it does not move into the right direction in due time, it will wreak havoc upon the planet.
 
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Ever since law school I have this probably strange idea that the purpose of laws must be increased well-being and that law makers need to inquire deeply or call upon expert assistance to understand psychosocial dynamics which result in more or less thereof. I contend that this law will not fare well under such an examination.
 
While we need to implement better waste management not only in China, but also in other parts of the emerging world, we need to ask ourselves simultaneously why we increase consumption and why we generate more and more waste. The documentary The Economics of Happiness provides a straight forward answer: Consumer markets and national entities destroy small and local communities. Increased consumption is therefore the result of a psychological compensation mechanism which has its root in less social interaction.
 
While above categorization of consumption talks of needs, we must acknowledge that much of what we consume does not satisfy a need but a want which has been instilled by an anonymous consumer society and a mighty advertisement industry. The advertisement industry on the other hand follows the orders of its corporate clients and those are sprockets in the large machinery of state capitalism – a form of governance which requires GDP growth in order to guarantee social stability, i.e. domestic peace.
 
If we think about the teleology of the waste management law in depth, we must arrive thus at the conclusion that despite its appearance, it is not an environmental but an economic law which intends to bring order into consumption and resulting waste generation with the far end of making more consumption and thus GDP growth possible for an economy which perceives itself separate from the rest of the world.  
 
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It might be surprising, but this Chinese policy is completely in line with the UN sustainability goals and reverberates the legislation of most industrialized nations. There is the opportunity that those who have been ignorant to the negative consequences of infinite consumption and material growth will wake up when China starts to thread the same path many small economies have been threading before her.
 
Jason Hickel commented on the flawed UN sustainability goals in an outstanding 2015 article: All of this reflects an emerging awareness of the fact that something about our economic system has gone terribly awry – that the mandatory pursuit of endless industrial growth is chewing through our living planet, producing poverty at a rapid rate, and threatening the basis of our existence.
 
Yet, despite this growing realization, the core of the SDG program for development and poverty reduction relies precisely on the old model of industrial growth — ever-increasing levels of extraction, production, and consumption. And not just a little bit of growth: they want at least 7 percent annual GDP growth in least developed countries and higher levels of economic productivity across the board. In fact, an entire goal, Goal 8, is devoted to growth, specifically export-oriented growth, in keeping with existing neoliberal models.
 
This is the mortal flaw at the heart of the SDGs. How can they be calling for both less and more at the same time? True, Goal 8 is peppered with progressive-sounding qualifications: the growth should be inclusive, should promote full employment and decent work, and we should endeavor to decouple growth from environmental degradation. But these qualifications are vague, and the real message that shines through is that GDP growth is all that ultimately matters.

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Historian Yuval Harari explains in his book Homo Deus eloquently why economic growth – and thus more consumption – is all that matters and why it has become for all governments, not only the Chinese, the solution to all problems: it has turned into a religion in which we blindly trust.
 
Modernity has turned ‘more stuff’ into a panacea. […] Economic growth has thus become the crucial juncture where almost all modern religions, ideologies and movements meet. The Soviet Union, with its megalomaniac Five Year Plans, was as obsessed with growth as the most cut-throat American robber baron. Just as Christians and Muslim both believed in heaven, and disagreed only about how to get there, so during the Cold War both capitalists and communists believed in creating heaven on earth through economic growth, and wrangled only about the exact method.
 
Today Hindu revivalists, pious Muslims, Japanese nationalists and Chinese communists may declare their adherence to very different values and goals, but they have all come to believe that economic growth is the key for realizing their disparate goals.
 
Japan’s prime minister, the nationalist Shinzo Abe, came to office in 2012 pledging to jolt the Japanese economy out of two decades of stagnation. His aggressive and somewhat unusual measures to achieve this have been nicknamed Abenomics. Meanwhile in neighboring China the Communist Party still pays lip service to traditional Marxist-Leninist ideals, but in practice it is guided by Deng Xiaoping’s famous maxims that ‘development is the only hard truth’ and that ‘it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice’. Which means in plain language: do anything it takes to promote economic growth, even if Marx and Lenin wouldn’t have been happy with it. In Singapore, as befits that no-nonsense city state, they followed this line of thinking even further, and pegged ministerial salaries to the national GDP. When the Singaporean economy grows, ministers get a raise, as if that is what their job is all about.
 
That Modi, Erdogan, Abe and Xi Jinping all bet their careers on economic growth testifies to the almost religious status growth has managed to acquire throughout the world. Indeed, it may not be wrong to call the belief in economic growth a religion, because it now purports to solve many if not most of our ethical dilemmas. Since economic growth is allegedly the source of all good things, it encourages people to bury their ethical disagreements and adopt whichever course of action maximizes long term growth. […] The credo of ‘more stuff’ accordingly urges individuals, firms and governments to discount anything that might hamper economic growth, such as preserving social equality, ensuring ecological harmony or honoring your parents. […] Yet is economic growth more important than family bonds? By daring to make such ethical judgments, free-market capitalism has crossed the border from the land of science to that of religion.
 
Most capitalists probably dislike that title of religion, but as religions go, capitalism can at least hold its head high. Unlike other religions that promise us a pie in the sky, capitalism promises miracles here on earth – and sometimes even provides them. Much of the credit for overcoming famine and plague belongs to the ardent capitalist faith in growth. Capitalism even deserves some kudos for reducing human violence and increasing tolerance and cooperation […] by encouraging people to stop viewing the economy as a zero-sum game, in which your profit is my loss, and instead see a win-win situation, in which your profit is also my profit.
 
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Capitalism as a religion is the product of a the age of nationalism and system blindness, one which puts the well-being of a small group of people over the well-being of a superorganism which encompasses this planet and all its creatures. China’s waste management law might well be a catalyst in bringing this awareness to more people, because it will become soon apparent that better organized waste disposal will not prevent life-stock epidemics like the African swine fever from eruption; it will not prevent the exploitation of oceans and the collapse of fish species; it will not stop the destruction of rain forests in favor of monocrop agriculture. No, it will speed up these developments and continue to waste natural resources.  
 
The German-British economist E. F. Schumacher put this idea into unmatched clarity: The illusion of unlimited powers, nourished by astonishing scientific and technological achievements, has produced the concurrent illusion of having solved the problem of production. The latter illusion is based on the failure to distinguish between income and capital where this distinction matters most. Every economist and businessman is familiar with the distinction, and applies it conscientiously and with considerable subtlety to all economic affairs – except where it really matters: namely, the irreplaceable capital which man has not made, but simply found, and without which he can do nothing.”
 
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Bill Mollison the founder of permaculture once said that he withdrew from society in the 1970s because he had been long in opposition to the systems that he saw were killing us. He decided it was no good to persists with opposition which gets you nowhere. He thought for two years and wanted to return to society, but only if he could come back with something very positive.
 
He did return and he brought back something very positive: permaculture. It is not like many believe, a model of farming, but much more an attitude of managing natural resources. Mollison adapted principles from various indigenous cultures and merged them into a new body of knowledge for modern humanity. Apart from a deep understanding how we have to treat the planet and ourselves, his most profound insight remains that we have to shift from consumption to production.
 
Continued focus on GDP growth will not only destroy the planet but most certainly result in more mental health issues and a future which will oscillate between 1984 and Brave New World: a population of consumers who satisfy their state ordained superficial wants and subdues their most authentic needs.   
 
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I have by accident stumbled upon quite a few comments to past posts which have strangely never been forwarded to me. Some people said that the RSS feed does not work. I have noticed also that the search function on my blog has been disabled and I have failed to fix it. Well, whatever is the reason for all this ... I am not unresponsive by default and hope you continue to read my occasional contributions to the world of China afficionados.

One day to go only. Then the CCP’s 2018 flagship event will finally start to celebrate a new era and a shared future. Xi Jinping will descend upon Shanghai and open the China International Import Expo. I wanted to write about the expo for some time, at least six months, but something held me back. Quite possibly the realization that I am not anymore observer in this grand Chinese spectacle of cutting edge human evolution, but personally affected like almost any other Middle Kingdom citizen. I have eventually melted into another society as Doc McIssac dreams, when returning after many years from Africa in Robert Kramer’s Route One USA, and I have to take it all, its light and its darkness.
 
The last year has deprived us in an unprecedented city clean up from many beloved places and some familiar faces. A few of our favorite restaurants, my hairdresser and the mesmerizing Caojiadu bird- and flower market fell victim to a nationwide policy of pushing 1st tier city GDP growth. Our own apartment has been downsized due to the strict execution of fire safety regulations. And our daughter enjoyed her first military boot camp in her last year of Chinese public primary school. All this has made me think more than once if it’s still worth to stay, and every time I came to the conclusion that, yes, it is.
 
It was about half a year ago that I noticed subtle changes out in Qingpu, a large suburban district which borders Zhejiang and Jiangsu. It’s a bit of a hidden destination for water sport enthusiast. Sailors and kayaking afficionados flock to Dianshan Lake on weekends and during holidays to spend some time in nature and away from the concrete jungle. I have re-discovered the area for biking about a year ago and started to go there frequently for day and multiday biking trips. About half a year ago overnight stays for foreigners suddenly started to get more difficult. One had to register at the local PSB office with passport and event itinerary. About three months ago homestays and private B&B’s were then asked by police to decline accommodation to foreign guests, and eventually even Chinese guests were not any more allowed to stay overnight. I shared my house during one of my biking weekend with two Tongji university graduate students of urban planning who conduct research on how urbanization affects rural communities. They were surprised that regulations in rural Shanghai appeared to be stricter than in other Chinese provinces.
 
Things escalated when in August a bunch of families who had already check into their weekend homestay were forced by police to pack up, get in the middle of the night on their bus and return to downtown Shanghai. Hui Mengfan, the owner of the homestay, was furious when I talked to him. He had invested substantially in the renovation of desolate farm houses and runs his homestays for the growing customer segment of exhausted Shanghai urbanites. His business model combines countryside living with organic agriculture. His clients are invited to unwind in a village setting not far from the city center, eat healthy and fresh food, which he grows on a piece of land right next to his homestays. People love it and his places are booked weeks in advance for weekends and holidays.
 
I first thought that the muddy waters of economic reform in the Chinese countryside were cause for all the inconvenience. The Shanghai government seemed to be unclear about how to increase the rural GDP without jeopardizing its urbanization maxim. Quite a few homesteads had opened without proper business license, all of them operating in a grey zone; tolerated for economic growth, shunned for tax evasion and lack of government control. But then it dawned on me that there was something bigger happening in the background. The large scale preparation of some political ritual.
 
Eco-tourism entrepreneur Hui Mengfan continued his rant: “The police is ignorant of my business. Late summer and fall is my peak season and now they tell me that I can’t take in anymore guest until mid-November, when the China Import Expo is over.” I ask him how the trade fair is connected to his business. He starts to slowly shake his head in frustration: “Xidada will come to open the fair and they have to make sure that things are safe.” We continue to explore the reason for the measures and arrive at the conclusion that they are some sort of anti-terror policy to protect China’s president and other high ranking officials attending the trade fair. Some internal PSB directive seems to make all of Qingpu a red alert territory for the three months before the fair causing local police officers to close down private homestays.  
 
Hui tells me only a few weeks later that rules have changed again. Chinese nationals are allowed to stay, foreigners continue to be ruled out. He receives instructions from the local PSB on a weekly basis and shrugs his shoulders with a typical mei banfa | that’s just how it is indicating the helplessness of laobaixing, i.e. people who have no say in government affairs. Sometime later over a cup of tea he confides to me: “Its quite scary that the entire local police administration scrambles forth and back only because XJP visits Shanghai. It feels like they are a flock of sheep who doesn’t know whether to run left or right when the wolf shows up.”  
 
Native Culture and Global Trade
 
Zhong Binhua implanted that idea of the China Import Expo being a political ritual first into my small foreign mind. He runs a fuzzy nature & art commune at Dianshan Lake and desperately tries to find some way to get the municipal government fund his projects. He, too, operates in a grey zone, having neither a deed for his venue nor a business license for his events. But the government keeps supporting his folk art festivals featuring downtown and suburban, modern and traditional artists. The key word in all this is 本土文化 ｜native culture.
 
Having studied the cultural revolution back in school and listened to atrocious stories told by relatives the term evokes strange associations. There is the bright idea of maintaining and promoting local crafts, traditions and art, the idea of respecting and cherishing native culture. But there is also the dark element of turning small structured native culture into a standardized and tightly controlled top down product churned out by a government which has recognized that people need small structures to stay sane when communities increasingly get vaporized by the industrial revolution. American anthropologist and poet Gary Snyder would call this probably institutionalized wildness. Artist Suzanne Treister perceived the control society as the devil – no matter how it clads itself.     
 
Zhong Binhua told me back in April that Qingpu bureaucrats had asked him after a successful event if he could also think of something similar for a larger audience. Only two weeks later he was euphorically telling me that the government had selected him to design a part of the opening ceremony for the China International Import Fair in November. Suddenly the jigsaw took shape and I saw the picture at large. An international trade fair to show off China’s traditional culture and a ground zero for a cyberleninist blend of tradition and modernity. That was a setup which tunes into what I have gathered till now from Beijing’s overarching political course.
 
How to Bridge Tradition and Modernity – and stay in control?
 
Kai Strittmatter, sinologist and Beijing correspondent of one of German’s most important newspapers, spoke earlier this year at the German Chamber Shanghai annual meeting to a large crowd about “The New China – How a country reinvents itself with big data, AI and a social credit system.” He shared his many insights of visiting China’s risen and rising tech stars and how they are locked into state controlled capitalism. What stuck with me is though his description of the perfect prison conceived by 18th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham.
 
The panopticon is a circular building with only one watchman in its center potentially observing all prison inmates simultaneously. It models the physical environment for a society with zero privacy. While Bentham himself had the idea with the reduction of administration and supervision expenses for England’s crammed penitentiary institutions, he thought of it also in terms of a power architecture and described the panopticon as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example".
 
The idea of the panopticon was invoked by French philosopher Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish almost two centuries later, as a metaphor for modern "disciplinary" societies and their pervasive inclination to observe and normalize. The Panopticon is an ideal architectural figure of modern disciplinary power. The Panopticon creates a consciousness of permanent visibility as a form of power, where no bars, chains, and heavy locks are necessary for domination any more. Instead of actual surveillance, the mere threat of surveillance is what disciplines society into behaving according to rules and norms.
 
Strittmatter who is about to leave China by the end of the year ended his presentation with a cryptic remark, “I don’t know what it is, but something very special is happening in present day China, something the world has never seen before, and I somehow regret to not be able to witness this in a front row seat.” The abundance of CCTV cameras on every building and street in rural Qingpu, the large monitor walls which are visible in the local PSB office, and the rediscovery of native traditional culture will be two essential pillars in this story.

Flagship Policies of A New Era and A Shared Future
 
The Xi administration pursues since 2013 two flagship policies, one which cries to be heard by the entire planet, the other simmers silently behind the Great Wall. The 一带一路｜One Belt One Road (OBOR) project is designed to turn Beijing into a 21st century Rome. It connects China through six economic corridors with the ROW and enables the Chinese empire with an infrastructure of roads, railways, sea- and airports to wield the same or even more power than Roman built roads did two millennia ago. There has been much discussion about the far objectives of the OBOR project, but there is a consensus that the infrastructure serves three main purposes:

1. Export China’s surplus production and strengthen the domestic economy
2. Import resources from all around the world in a magnitude and efficiency which renders global trade into a Chinese monopoly
3. Strengthen the Middle Kingdom as global 21st century power center

 
Much has been written in the past years about pax sinica, China’s resurgence and the shift in of power in international relations. Martin Jacques was 2009 one of the first to capture the picture in When China Rules the World. Howard French was the last of the serious authors to comment on how China’s history defines our global future in Everything Under Heavens. But none of these rather political books has given me as much insight as Tomas Plaenker’s Landscapes of Chinese Souls: The Enduring Presence of the Cultural Revolution. 
 
In contrast to the international or foreign flagship policy, the domestic flagship policy takes on a completely different subject: culture. There is no such thing as a catchy title like OBOR for this policy and that’s why it is so hard to make out. The keen observer and sturdy China watcher recognizes though a few patterns well known from cyclical Chinese history. One of cultural superiority. One of putting the Middle Kingdom in a class of its own and the ROW into a giant drawer labelled non-Chinese.
 
本土文化 ｜ native culture or literally translated culture from this soil is a concept of many layers, but it’s above all one which aims at establishing a cultural purity, which makes it easy to differentiate what is Chinese and what is not. It seems that what Henry Kissinger described in World Order so typical for Russia in terms of territorial control is for the Chinese true in terms of cultural control. Kissinger explains that Russian governance is hard to understand, in particular for small European nation states, because it is defined by the constant fear of a large, sparsely inhabited territory breaking apart. The only possible response to this challenge was throughout the 19th century permanent expansion to counter implosion.
 
Chinese governance seems to apply the same concept in regard to culture since about two millennia. It was the early population density on the Chinese continent, the multitude of languages and the number of tribal kingdoms which forced Chinese rulers early on to establish one writing system and a single currency. China fared well with this approach and early on a sense of cultural superiority formed at the ruling courts, one which prevailed even if the ruling dynasty changed. It was a cultural superiority which blended religion and culture at a large or in other words, which understood religion as a subset of culture; something many modern thinkers are still not capable of doing. Culture became superior to biology. Customs more important than kinship. Behavior more important than DNA. Nurture more important than nature.
 
Modern neuroscience confirms what Chinese rulers seemingly know since centuries. It is the construction of a common cultural reality which bonds subjects into larger entities. For the ruler the nature and thus race of a person – a widely held belief in the decades preceding the two WW - ultimately doesn’t make a difference as long as the ruled pay due taxes and respect the prevalent hierarchy. In order to maintain such hierarchies it is though required to create a homogenous culture, one of harmony and peace, one which never questions the existing power structures. This is the essence of Confucianism, a doctrine of cultural unity, born out of a period of permanent war and destruction and limited or no social progress. Confucius conceived his teachings under the marring impression of a Zhou Empire which was about to break apart and into small thiefdoms and competing petty kingdoms. He thought of cultural unity and pruning as the only solution to achieve social progress and was perhaps a bit nostalgic of the early Spring and Autumn period, when the Zhou dynasty reigned supreme over the Chinese heartland. 
 
That was 2500 years ago. Most of humanity was then organized in tribes, and even if part of a larger organizational form, local languages and customs prevailed. People lived on and off their land and despite their hardships they had a clear social micro-cosmos to navigate in. The West has since then brought the scientific and industrial revolution upon us – with all its blessings and curses. We have eliminated much disease and hunger from this planet, have delayed death substantially and have created a material affluence which has never been seen before. The industrial revolution has though also vaporized much of society as we knew it for millennia and has through nations, markets and technology standardized our cultures to such an extent that most global cities resemble each other to a far extent.
 
Under such general conditions it is highly questionable if political power should continue to seek the standardization of culture. Beijing has recognized this threat. Confucius is by some considered the father of sociology, although the modern discipline was only founded by people like Herbert Spencer, Max Weber or Emile Durkheim in the 19th century. This is no coincidence, because Chinese have always been far superior to the West in understanding the workings of societies and cultures. The main difference is though that the Chinese elite has kept these insights to itself up to this date, whereas the West has undergone a series of social revolutions which effectively lead to a wider dissemination of knowledge within society at large.
 
American author Ian Johnson described the resurrection of religion in his 2017 book The Souls of China as the central aspect of the Native Culture policy. It is a too remote concept for most foreign observers because we have been brainwashed for decades that China is an atheist and communist country, but all of a sudden we should believe that China has turned both religious and capitalist. Johnson explains XJP’s interest in religion like this:
Religion was [in ancient China] spread over every aspect of life like a fine membrane that held society together. MZD called divine authority one of the “four thick ropes” binding traditional society together; the other three were political authority, lineage authority, and patriarchy. A local temple could be like the cathedral and city hall of a medieval European town rolled in one. In the words of the historian Prasenjit Duara, religion was society’s “nexus of power.” But religion was more than a method for running China; it was the political system’s lifeblood. The emperor was the “Son of Heaven,” who presided over elaborate rituals that underscored his semi-divine nature. Officials duplicated many of his rites at the local level, especially by praying at temples to the local City God. From the fourteenth century onward, the government mandated that every district of the empire have its own City God temple [effectively a town hall to venerate the emperor].
It is under this light of Chinese history and the elite’s sociological understanding that the Native Culture policy has to be read. XJP started in 2013 to pour substantial amounts of tax money into the renovation of Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian temples. Shanghai’s Jingan Temple is only one of many elaborate projects with the far objective of tying the forth rope again around a society which is in a state of dissolution.
 
One might argue that there is no such thing like society in China. There was and still is only the ruler and the ruled and as such only the hierarchical relationship between the emperor and the subject, between father and son. China has never made this critical step in its social evolution or has it still ahead. It is ironically former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who said in an interview that there is no such thing as society, and without doubt her governance style could very well be labelled neo-Confucianist, but she said so in response to an over-boarding welfare system which deprived people of their self-responsibility, and was such as a political direction which can only be taken when the society has already been recognized as entity in its own right. Chinese governance has up to this date not resolved the relationship between the ruler and the ruled and it is this critical transformation which drives Beijing into total surveillance.
 
Social evolution might nevertheless have different trajectories. There is no natural law which demands that China must follow the same route Western industrialized nations have taken. There is actually quite a bit to say against that route, but I will refrain from this discussion since there is so much to read about the failure of democracies and capitalism. If China will indeed be the place where something completely new will happen as journalist Kai Strittmatter cryptically said is still open. The odds look good that it will, and I have little doubt about it. Will it though be cultural progress or what social psychologists call collective regression is another question.
 
We can summarize that China’s ruling elite drives with the two discussed flagship policies the main dichotomy of the 21st century: globalism vs. localism. OBOR intends to further unify the global market and beyond that establish a new international political system. The Native Culture policy tries to counter the dissolution of small structured social entities; and China’s push to control the AI industry serves as technological platform to achieve what some discuss as cyberleninism: total political control through technology. We are left with the challenging task of interpreting these policies’ far end: are they motivated by purpose or power?

Pointing At A Deer And Calling It A Horse

The China International Import Fair gives ample reason to ask this question. It is without doubt the 2018 flagship event of the XJP administration (despite so many more gargantuan conferences and projects) which sits at the confluence of both flagship policies. The many months-long preparations for this event and the way it was promoted both abroad and domestically give ample room for interpretation.  
 
Let’s start with a closer look at the main CIIE poster which adorns the streets of many Chinese cities throughout the last weeks. Shanghai is shown as the focal point from which a yellow light radiates in circles out into the ROW gradually losing its strength and eventually subsiding to the general blue of the planet. The symbolism of such a statement is incredibly strong and loaded with history. It contains the message of the OBOR policy which channels six economic corridors back into China, but it also resembles the more than two millennia old concept of the Huayi distinction, which separated the world into Chinese and non-Chinese, into cultural superior people and barbarians.
 
Monumental infrastructure investments, which have turned Shanghai literally upside down can be interpreted as required preparations for a large event or as a well-orchestrated performance of power. Its thus quite plausible to ask if the CIIE is not rather an event which shows Chinese citizens their Emperor’s might. The trade fair complex in Shanghai’s suburban West close to Xujingdong metro station is of such vast dimensions that the pyramids of Gize pale in comparison. The adjacent real estate developments which include hotels and office buildings have created a new CBD in a city which already has more business hubs than any other urban area on this plane.
 
China’s rulers choose names carefully and quite often the words they choose indicate that exactly the opposite is meant. This tradition is embodied in a Chinese proverb: Pointing at a deer and calling it a horse. The CIIE is labelled as the first global import fair indicating a paradigm shift from China as export powerhouse to import destination number one. There is truth in this statement: Chinese consumers are wealthy and numerous. But it should be also read in exactly the other way, because the CIIE promotes the One Belt One Road policy and as such China’s hegemony to export not only its goods but also its values and culture throughout the world.
 
A historical interpretation would turn the foreign exhibitors into tributary and vassal states - yet another element in the traditional Chinese self-understanding as superior culture - which show through their participation that they kowtow to the superiority of their Chinese host and emperor with divine mandate to rule all under heaven. Considering that according to the state owned Xinhua news agency more than 130 countries, 3 international organizations and more than 3000 corporations will participate in the fair, XJP has succeeded to not only sell the fair as an event which will soften the trade balances with many guest countries, but also on a domestic level as a confirmation of China’s global leadership.
 
From a domestic point of view – let alone the obvious face lift of Shanghai’s urban landscape -  the dramaturgy feels even more elaborate. I don’t know of any other country which shifts the holiday schedule for a capitalist trade fair. All but foreign schools and companies had to work the Saturday before the CIIE and then were granted an additional holiday on November 6 to spend time in massive traffic jams and multitudes queueing up to get into the trade fair or watch reporting about the fair and XJP’s opening speech on their TV sets. The CIIE is more than a trade fair, it is a ritual which celebrates capitalism as state religion and XJP as its pope, the son of heaven as the pope is called in Chinese tradition.

Nationalism and Cultural Superiority
 
Historian Yuval Harari spoke earlier this year eloquently on the TED stage about the difference between nationalism and fascism. He describes nationalism as a healthy collective sentiment supporting social progress and contributing to the peaceful coherence of a society. He explained nationalism from the perspective of the citizen very much like Henry Kissinger did from the perspective of a statesman as a system of equal nations which respect each other’s borders, cultures and values. Harari defines fascism as disrespect of other’s nations, borders, cultures and values. He says: Fascism, in contrast [to nationalism], tells me that my nation is supreme, and that I have exclusive obligations towards it. I don't need to care about anybody or anything other than my nation.
 
For an Israeli nationalism might have a better connotation than for an Austrian and as such I do not agree to Harari’s definition. The ghost of nationalism has paved the road to the monster of fascism. Nationalism has rendered once multicultural areas of central and southeastern Europe into monolithic entities which lack the richness of their predecessor forms of organization. Israelis, more than any other ethnicity, think of nationalism probably as the driving force which gave them a home territory and this explains why Harari considers nationalism mostly as one of the vehicles which unify human beings in ever larger bodies (the other two being money and religion). He forgets though that nationalism and fascism are 19th century children from the same mother: technology supported power politics.
 
I don’t want to argue here with Harari, much of what he says is true and its probably just a question of perspective whether we want to see nationalism as something positive and fascism as purely negative. Both models of organization turn foul if they install a control society which does not allow wild, uncivilized and uncontrolled behavior - no matter if other nations are disrespected or not. Both models affect the human mind in a similar way: they reduce pluralism and biodiversity and as such deprive (human) nature from much of its richness which survives only in small structured forms of organizations.
 
The two lines of thought which I want to discuss her in the context of the CIIE are related to cultural superiority, a concept which is not well known in the west. Is cultural superiority the same as fascism and is a nation allowed to proselytize its culture? If we apply Harari’s definition of fascism and exchange the term with cultural superiority it would read like this: Cultural superiority, in contrast, tells me that my culture is supreme, and that I have exclusive obligations towards it. I don't need to care about anybody or anything other than my nation.
 
Most China watchers will now agree that China is a fascist civilization. Paired with the Confucian family system China is probably the prototype fascist nation and shares this assessment with Japan. But in an era of emerging globalism we also need to ask if a culture which drives the cutting edge of evolution has a sort of natural right to disseminate its values to turn into a regional or global Leitkultur, i.e. guiding ever larger numbers of people into a unified framework of behavior. So, perhaps, the CIIE should really be understood as the ROW kowtowing at the Chinese court, because this is what we have to do in the decades to come.
 
If the control society is though the devil as Suzanne Treister suggested, then a culture which pressures its way of living upon others who have not asked for such a blessing is something that needs to be avoided. We thus ought to observe closely what machine learning combined with power politics brings forward. It will through the arteries of the One Belt One Road initiative spread into our very own neighborhood. Bentham’s Panopticon foresaw a single watchman and is as such in an international context the opposite of what according to Kissinger the Westphalian Peace in 1648 established as a system of checks and balances between more or less equal players. The world order which we took for granted for almost four centuries is about to change and XJP seems to step up as a single watchman of whom we yet don’t know whether he is enlightened or corrupted. An enlightened watchman supported by modern technology would be indeed something novel, but as philosopher George Santayanas once said “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
 
Further reading:

• On China being the cutting edge of human evolution
• On Shanghai’s urban facelift
• Jeremy Bentham’s ultimate prison design
• Roger Cremiers about China’s social credit system and cyberleninism
• On the One Belt One Road project in China’s Asia Dream
• On the resurrection of Chinese religion and socialist core values in Value Propaganda
• On cultural superiority in Hong Kong: Polis Between 2 Empires
• On the Chinese proverb: pointing at a deer and calling it a horse.
• Review of Henry Kissinger’s World Order
• Yuval Harari on the difference between nationalism and fascism
• Yuval Harari on the great divide between nationalism and globalism
• On why multicultural entities outperform monolithic nation states