Old Yu gossiped | Look at China from a different perspective

(The content of this article comes from the douyin live broadcast "Yu Minhong dialogue and display")

Yu Minhong: Hello friends, today I am talking with the young scholar Shi Zhan about China's history, China's position in international politics, and the development direction of China's manufacturing industry.

After graduating from engineering, he turned to humanities, studied international politics at Peking University, and made Chinese history a doctoral research topic. From engineering to liberal arts and humanities, his vision and perspective are not the same, so he can use new logic to explain the development of Chinese history and analyze China's position in the world today.

Dialogue session

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01. Find the very beginning of China's problems

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Yu Minhong: Hello Teacher Shi, I am very happy to be able to have a conversation with you today, I have read your book several times, it is too powerful.

Shi Zhan: Don't dare not dare, thank you Teacher Yu.

Yu Minhong: You studied engineering as an undergraduate, and then you turned to the study of international politics, civilization and culture, and Chinese history. What is the reason why you have moved from a profession like engineering, which can find a good job, to a study of international politics and Chinese history that is not easy to find a job, and that makes everyone feel that they are far away from life?

Shi Zhan: I studied systems engineering at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics as an undergraduate. This major may be as good as you say, from a job search point of view, but I'm not particularly interested in this one. When I took the college entrance examination, I didn't want to go to Beihang to study engineering, but I didn't do well in the exam at that time, and I didn't go to the school I wanted to go to. But no matter what school or major I study, I always want to figure out a question in my heart - how did China become what it is today?

Yu Minhong: When did this question come to your head? Because it's a huge problem. There is often a saying that we have a splendid culture and civilization, and the Chinese nation has always been in glory to this day, so few people will think about how China has become such a topic today. As a college student at the time, how could you have such a problem in your head?

Shi Zhan: This question was also refined after I went to graduate school. When I was in college, I also read some Western things, some world history, and I felt that China seemed to be different from others. How did it become what it is today? And always feel that it is possible to get better, how to get better? I've always wanted to figure it out.

I was really interested in this question when I was in college, and my original systems engineering major didn't give me the answer to this, so I started looking around for books on my own. Beihang is a pure engineering school, the content of humanities is very small, at that time I studied in Beihang, in addition to listening to the teacher's lectures, I will also find some books to read randomly.

My feeling at the time was that the reason why China has become what it is now, and that it has been beaten so often in modern times, including the process experienced in the later 21st century, is probably because there is no capitalism in China. My habit of thinking likes to find its very starting point at once, which can help me directly sort out its underlying logic, so I want to figure out what capitalism is all about and how it developed.

When I studied history in the past, I would say that the starting point of capitalism was in Britain, so when I was a master's student, I went to study British history. Of course, I went from engineering to self-taught hard cross-majors, and the process was also very difficult, and I took the exam twice and folded twice, and finally succeeded the third time.

After studying British history for three years, I feel that it seems that explaining China in terms of the absence of capitalism, especially china in the 20th century, seems to be far from enough, and I have thought about this problem simply.

For the history of China in the 20th century, it is possible that its core keyword is revolution, so I want to find out what the revolution is all about, how the revolution came about, and so on. Therefore, according to my way of thinking, I am used to finding the very starting point of the event at once, and the starting point and beginning of the modern revolution is the French Revolution, so when I was studying for a doctoral degree, I studied the history of the French Revolution, and I wanted to understand what the French Revolution was all about, what the modern revolution was going on, and I turned it around step by step.

On the one hand, my thinking habit is the habit of directly finding the beginning and the most starting point, and there is also a habit of thinking, which I often like to do backwards with people. When I was reading the history of the French Revolution at Peking University, my brothers and sisters were all studying which revolutionary, which revolutionary ideas, which period of history or which thing in the revolution, and I was probably the only one in our division who studied counter-revolution, and I always came in the opposite direction.

I think that counter-revolution is the boundary of revolution, and if I can make it clear, I will be able to know where the boundaries and limits of the revolution really are, and I will certainly be able to better understand the revolution. If I were to study the revolution only, I might not know where its boundaries lie, which may lead to a limitation in my understanding of the revolution, and I might as well start with the counter-revolution.

Yu Minhong: Your logical reasoning habit is to go from one point to another, and continue to go deeper, which is actually related to your study of science and engineering, and you are unconsciously using the method of systems engineering to decompose historical logic. Because the idea of finding the root of the source does not seem to be the same type of thinking as the general liberal arts people.

Shi Zhan: Many people ask me this, I don't feel this way myself, I ask too much, I think it may have a little impact.

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02. The History of China in The Hub

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Yu Minhong: It's been 18 years since you went to your Ph.D. and this year, and you've been exploring for so long and publishing books, do you think you've found the answers you're looking for in part?

Cast: Partly found. I later published "Hub", written about Chinese history, many people think that I am from the study of Chinese history, and later when they heard that I was from the history of the French Revolution, they were very surprised, how can people who study the history of the French Revolution transform in this direction? For me, studying British history and French history is ultimately about understanding China, and I want to get a good methodology for understanding China. I'm going to have almost enough tools, and I'm probably going to put an end to my study of French history and British history, and go back and answer the question I want to answer the most, about China.

I also said in "The Hub" that this book was conceived with writing and thinking, for eight years, I wrote 500,000 words, and for myself, I found an answer that could justify myself. In this book, I would like to give a different explanation of what is China from several angles than in the past. First of all, these angles are labeled with several historical periods, the ancient history part, the modern history part and the modern history part, and I have tried to give a new interpretation framework in these parts.

In the ancient history section, my explanatory framework is actually to find a theoretical solution to many of our dilemmas on the frontier today, to find a breakthrough. Our current narrative of Chinese history, as far as ancient history is concerned, often Chinese history is equated with the history of the Central Plains, and frontiers and ethnic minorities rarely appear in our narratives, and when they appear, they are often negative images, and the narrative in this case is very bad.

Now there is a saying that has been abused – "What is a country?" What is a nation? It is an imaginary community. "But this imagination is based on everyone's identification with a common story, and everyone agrees with the same story, so that we can agree that we should be a family with each other." Based on the identity of this story, what is the premise for everyone to form an imaginary community? It's this story that everyone has to share. If only some people in this story have a share and another part of the people do not, it will be difficult for another part of the people to be persuaded to agree with the story.

If the ancient history part only equates Chinese history with the history of the Central Plains, and reduces the weight of frontiers and ethnic minorities in this story, this story will definitely be incomplete and needs to be perfected.

So I have perfected this content in the ancient history section, and I want to knead the stories of the frontier ethnic minorities into the stories as the history of greatEr China, in which the history of the frontier and the history of the Central Plains are only part of the history of China, and they are constantly constructing and generating each other. If you leave the frontier, you can't explain the Central Plains, and in turn, if you leave the Central Plains, you can't explain the frontier at all, and they constitute a system of symbiotic evolution. In this context, what is Chinese history? Chinese history is the evolutionary history of a symbiotic evolution system, which is the complete history of China. I tried to construct such an explanatory framework in the Ancient History section of Pivot.

In the recent history section, I try to bring more aspects to life. There is no doubt that China has suffered a lot of humiliation in modern history, but we have not only had humiliation in modern history, but there are more things than humiliation. Modern history is actually a very important historical stage in the process of China's transformation from ancient times to modern times, and without the transformation of modern history, we may still be in the state of wrapping small feet and combing braids today. The problem is that the transformation of modern times cannot be turned around by China's own strength alone, and if it can be turned around long ago, China has actually brought about the impetus for transformation under the conflict and impact of the West.

This shock brought a lot of humiliation, which is needless to say. But a nation with a great historical memory, the more humiliated, the more motivated it is to rise, and if a nation without a great historical memory suffers that humiliation, it may be completely decadent, and this is also common in history.

Therefore, the impact of the West has brought China the impetus for transformation and wants to rise up, and then the West has brought a series of new technologies, new economies, new resources, new concepts, etc., so that China has obtained the tools it needs for transformation. Through these, we can see that the core of modern history is China's history of modernization and transformation.

If we put in the perspective of the "history of modernization and transformation", we will find that there is no doubt that there are many humiliations in modern history, but we have more things than humiliations, and if we can take these things into account, we will find that China and the West should not be a simple mutually hostile relationship, but both confrontational and at the same time there is a process of mutual shaping, mutual generation, and symbiotic evolution between China and the West. China's modern transformation has always been done in this world, until today. If China's modern transformation is separated from the world system and the world order, this modern transformation cannot be completed. I made this statement in the section of modern history.

Yu Minhong: Can it be understood that in the ancient history part, without the interaction between the steppe peoples, the plateau peoples and the Central Plains culture, China would not be called China? In modern times, if there is no humiliation imposed on China by the West, So That China has to open its doors to communicate with the world, China will not move toward modern China.

Is the reason why China continues to this day, or the tenacity and development of the nation, is it because in the past, through the integration with foreign forces, whether grasslands, plateaus or the West, China's ability to accommodate, transform and persevere has been exercised, and in the process has hatched a new direction of Development for China?

Shi Zhan: Yes, Teacher Yu summed it up very classicly. Since ancient times, China has always been intrinsic to the entire Eurasian continent, to the world system, and whenever it is fully open to the world system and absorbs good things from the world, China can produce a very prosperous and bloody history on its own. Whenever China gradually closed itself off, we may fall into the dilemma of internal volume, such as the late Eastern Han Dynasty, the Two Jin Dynasties or the late Qing Dynasty, and China fell into a relatively bad state.

Sometimes we collapse completely because of the inner volume, after the collapse we have no ability to block the external things from coming in, as long as the external things come in, there will be all kinds of chemical reactions with the Chinese local things, reactivate China, and China will stand up again and bring us a great enough historical memory.

For example, during the Wei and Jin dynasties, the internal volume was excessive, and after the complete collapse, wuhu chaohua and so on came, and when the five hu chaohua brought a lot of fresh things from the outside to reactivate China, what was the final result of the wuhu chaohua? It is the Sui and Tang dynasties. Without Wuhu Chaohua, there would have been no large number of external things coming in, and there would have been no Sui and Tang dynasties that were so proud of it.

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03. Barbarism can never defeat civilization

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Yu Minhong: The Wuhu Chaohua was a humiliating status quo that the Central Plains had to accept at that time. Why didn't Wuhu Chaohua eliminate the Central Plains civilization at that time in the end? What power did Chinese civilization have to turn the Hu people of Wuhu into recipients of Han culture? Even by the time of Emperor Xiaowen of Wei, the whole Sinicization was needed?

Shi Zhan: Why didn't Wuhu turn the Central Plains into grasslands after they came in? Didn't turn the Central Plains into Hu? Before discussing this issue, you need to respond to another topic. When discussing Chinese history and foreign history, there is often a saying that in history, barbarism often defeats civilization, such as the Germanic barbarians destroyed Rome, Wuhu Chaohua is also one of the examples, the Western Jin Dynasty is very civilized, Wuhu is very barbaric, including Jurchen defeated the Song Dynasty, Mongolia defeated The Jin, the Qing Dynasty defeated daming, and so on, all said that barbarism defeated civilization. But it seems to me that this is a huge misconception that barbarism can never triumph over civilization. How to explain the history similar to the victory of the Qing over the Ming, the victory of the Jin over the Song, and so on?

These histories are not at all the triumph of barbarism over civilization, these histories are organized over the unorganized, and the real strength comes from the ability to organize. Of course, this is not to say that civilization is unorganized, and if it is completely unorganized at the beginning, it is certainly impossible to establish civilization, but civilization may decay after it has developed to a certain extent.

Yu Minhong: For example, the ancient Chinese sedentary civilization and agricultural civilization were all based on the emperor as the core, and after a long time, they would self-corrupt, resulting in extremely low efficiency, and the result was that they could not resist the grassland civilization, or when they intersected with the grassland civilization, there was no strength to resist?

Shi Zhan: Yes, when we say that song was defeated by Jin or Ming was defeated by Qing, it was actually civilization that lost. Taking the Ming Dynasty as an example, at that time, the "Four Books", "Five Classics", the Four Great Talents, the late Ming novels, operas, art, etc., from an aesthetic point of view, these standards are very high, but this is only the shell of civilization, if civilization is only a shell, it is impossible to protect itself, civilization must be able to self-organize, what is the premise of self-organization? It is to imagine the story of the community, a story that everyone agrees with. Based on this story, everyone can find a way to organize themselves, and everyone agrees with this way of organizing.

In the early Ming Dynasty, everyone agreed, but in the late Ming Dynasty, due to eunuchs, party strife, etc., it led to a state of mixed interests from top to bottom, from top to bottom. In this case, although there is a shell of civilization, it has lacked the essence of civilization, the ability to organize has been completely lost, and it is only relying on the inertia of history to survive, and at this time, if there is another organized force that impacts it, it will not be able to hold on. At that time, the Great Qing was an organized force, they rushed over, and they could not bear it and lost, but this was not barbarism defeating civilization, it was organized victory over unorganized.

Conversely, for a truly dynamic civilization, barbarism is never an opponent, and a truly dynamic civilization can crush barbarism. There is a big difference between barbarism and civilization, barbarism can organize itself, but its self-organization is often based on tribal identity, ancestry, etc., and the scale of the organization that can be formed based on these is relatively small. Civilization is based on higher ideas and more advanced governance techniques, and as long as there is still a state of in-laws, the power that civilization can gather will be far greater than barbarism, because it can organize much more resources, several orders of magnitude worse. So as long as civilization is really cohesive, barbarism is not an opponent at all, and when barbarism can defeat civilization, it means that this civilization has actually decayed itself, leaving only a shell.

Why didn't the Central Plains be huized when the Five Hus were chaotic, but they themselves were Sinicized? The reason is that the Hu people's organizational methods, conceptual systems, etc., are only applicable to small-scale communities, not to large-scale communities. In the Central Plains, this was a large Han chinese population, and these people had to be organized, but in the last years of the Western Jin Dynasty, these people's self-organization ability had been lost. Therefore, the starting point of the Wuhu Chaohua was not the Hu people coming in at all, but the Han people in the Central Plains killing each other.

In the rebellion of the Eight Kings at the end of the Western Jin Dynasty, those princes surnamed Sima killed each other in a mess, and finally killed the red eye, and their soldiers were killed, they still wanted to kill, but they had no soldiers themselves, what to do? They could only find some Hu people to fight as mercenaries, so the Sima Wangye who were pinching on both sides each found a wave of Hu people to help him fight, and in the end, Sima Wangye was killed, but the Hu people were introduced by them.

At this time, the self-organization ability of the Han people in the Central Plains has been completely lost, and the Hu people need to reorganize these Han people, but this is a large group, there is no way to organize in the way of small communities on the grassland, and if you want to organize these large communities, you still have to use these han people to accept the way. Therefore, after they came in, there were no Huhua Han people.

There are also problems with the Sinicization of hu people. Emperor Xiaowen of Wei later tried to completely Sinicize, but there was a problem with his efforts to sinicize, and he moved the capital to Luoyang, before that, the capital of Northern Wei was Datong, which was along the Great Wall, which was a transitional zone between farming and nomadism, the Central Plains and grasslands. The capital is fixed here, can take into account both agricultural forces and nomadic forces, the resources of both sides can be mobilized, after moving the capital to Luoyang, he can only mobilize the central plains forces, can not mobilize the grassland forces.

In addition, he began to change his Han surname, speak Chinese, wear Han costumes, and intermarry with the Han people, he did not recognize the grassland, you do not recognize the grassland can not expect the grassland to recognize you. But there was a great risk for Emperor Xiaowen of Wei, because the military base of the entire Northern Wei Dynasty was in the steppe, and if the grassland did not recognize him, it was possible that the empire would collapse. Therefore, more than ten years after the death of Emperor Xiaowen of Wei, serious civil unrest occurred in the entire Northern Wei Dynasty, and then collapsed.

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04. Cultural fusion in the Dual Empire

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Yu Minhong: You have proposed the concept of dualistic empire, when the peoples on the grassland go to the Central Plains and become rulers, they have a dualistic identity, both the overlord of the grassland and the emperor of the Central Plains, such an identity usually reigns for a longer time, and the national fortunes will become better.

China built the Great Wall since the beginning of Qin Shi Huang, with the intention of completely separating the grassland civilization and the Central Plains civilization and stopping interfering with each other. But the role of the Great Wall in Chinese history is actually very limited, and no steppe nation has ever been blocked out of the Guanguan because of the Great Wall. But when the steppe peoples entered the Central Plains, if they could accept the Central Plains civilization at the same time and appease the relations between the various ethnic groups in the steppe, it would usually bring about a long period of prosperity, and it would also bring about the expansion of the territory on The territory of China.

Today, China's large territory, whether it is the Yuan Dynasty or the Qing Dynasty, has played a great role in contributing. Why did the Dual Empire come into such a state? Why can't some emperors and dynasties, such as the Ming Dynasty, do it?

Shi Zhan: I discussed this very carefully in "Hub". When discussing Chinese history in ancient times, because we have culture on our side and have the right to speak, we all stand in the central plains to write history, and often feel that Chinese history is not the process of Han expansion. The Central Plains will be directly understood as the Han People, and Chinese history is the process of the expansion of the Han people or the continuous survival of the Han people. But when we look at ancient China, we must first respond to a big question, how do we define the Han people in ancient times?

In ancient times, it was not to define the Han people by today's household registration books and identity cards, but by culture, that is, Confucian culture. In order to develop the Three Virtues of Confucian culture, the Three Principles and Five Constants, and so on, it is necessary to have a premise that people must be a settled way of life. Confucius said, "Parents are here, not far to travel, there must be a way to travel", if your parents are still there, you run far, and you don't know where you went, in case something happens to your parents, you can't come back to fulfill filial piety, which is a big taboo in the eyes of Confucianism.

Therefore, on the basis of a settled way of life, the Confucian three virtues and four virtues and the three principles and five constants can be unfolded, and this settled way of life is farming. Farming has one of the hardest constraints, a condition of pure nature, which is precipitation. If an area has less than 400 mm of annual precipitation and can hardly survive on farming as the main way of life, this has an effect, and the 400 mm rainfall line constitutes the distribution baseline of farming, and also constitutes the distribution baseline of Confucian thought or Confucian lifestyle.

Ancient cultures used Confucianism to define the Han People, meaning that the 400 mm isosurface line formed the distribution baseline of the Han people, and the 400 mm isosurface line was distributed on the Great Wall. This is not to say that the emperor measured where it was 400 mm and built the Great Wall wherever it was, but built the Great Wall at the northernmost point where the agrarian empire could advance, and the northernmost point they could push was the location of the 400 mm and other rainlines.

What is the result of this? In terms of ancient technical conditions, it is impossible for farming as the main way of life north of the Great Wall, which means that it is impossible to live in the Confucian way north of the Great Wall, and it is impossible to become a Han Chinese. Even the people south of the Great Wall were originally Han Chinese, and if they wanted to settle north of the Great Wall, as long as they wanted to live, they had to be nomadic, and once they were nomadic, it meant that he was not culturally Han. This is a phenomenon that we have rarely paid attention to in the past.

That is to say, in ancient Times, north of the Great Wall and south of the Great Wall of China were two completely different ways of life, corresponding to two completely different systems of ideas. This side is farming, that side is nomadic, this side is self-knowledge in the Confucian way, and there is self-knowledge in shamanism or something else. Two completely different ways of life, completely different ways of social organization, completely different military and financial logic, completely different conceptual systems, these are all ways to use one side to eliminate the other, with Hu Huahan or HanHua Hu, can not do.

Yu Minhong: Can it be explained as the impact of climate on history? Because there were also some Xiaoice periods in China's history, the grassland areas became particularly cold, and the nomadic peoples began to push south, affecting China's history.

The ancient Silk Road and the Hexi Corridor brought about the development of ancient cultures for China, such as the introduction of Buddhism and the introduction of other Western food and goods, and also had a relatively large impact on China. You wrote in "Hub" that the grasslands, plateaus, western regions, and corridors have a certain influence on the entire Chinese culture.

Shi Zhan: This influence is very interesting, and it is very related to the topic of Sinicization and Huhua. Today China has such a large territory, spanning the north and south of the Great Wall, there must be a dynasty whose rule can cross the north and south of the Great Wall, and then leave this territory. If previous dynasties had been only south of the Great Wall, we would not have had the territory we have today. Dynasties that can cross the north and south of the Great Wall at the same time must have the techniques and techniques of dualistic rule, with the central plains ruling according to the Confucian way of the Central Plains and the grasslands ruling according to the way of the grasslands.

The gameplay of the Central Plains and the Steppe is completely different, which means that the ruler of this empire must understand both ways of playing. Only one of them cannot rule the other side, pure Central Plains, those who have not seen the grassland, can not understand the grassland, pure grassland, have not seen the Central Plains, can not understand the Central Plains. Only people from the transition zone between the Central Plains and the steppe would have seen the Central Plains and the steppe and established an empire of dual rule, as was the case with the Northern Wei, Liao, Jin, Yuan, and Qing dynasties.

The rulers of the dualistic empire can only come from the transitional zone, and from the perspective of the Central Plains, the people in the transition zone are hu people, but it is these Hu people who have established a large empire spanning the north and south of the Great Wall. Therefore, Zhongyuan put forward the great concept of universal unity and great unification, but it was the Hu people who completely turned this concept into reality.

So what role did western Buddhism play in these things? A particularly interesting phenomenon can be seen from the Period of The Five Hu Chaohua Period. Many people know that Buddhism first came to China in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and legend has it that the second emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Emperor Hanming, had a dream that there were immortals in the West, and there were white horses carrying scriptures, so he built a white horse temple in Luoyang, which is what Buddhism first entered China. But in fact, from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Wei and Jin Dynasties, although Buddhism has come in, its influence on China is very small, because Buddhism is completely heterogeneous compared with traditional Chinese culture, so the rejection reaction is particularly strong.

At that time, there were basically only Hu monks and Hu merchants who came to do business to believe in Buddhism, and there were also those who were persuaded to believe in Buddhism in the Central Plains, but the number was very small, and it was completely out of climate. When did Buddhism begin to enter China on a large scale and in a systematic way? It was precisely at the time of the Five Wilds. After the Hu monarch ruled the Central Plains, it was necessary to use Confucianism to rule the Han people, but once Confucianism was used, the bloodline of the Hu monarch became a problem, so the Hu monarch faced a dilemma: if confucianism was not used, there was no way to rule the Han people, and if Confucianism was used, the bloodline was a bug. These Hu monarchs thought that maybe they could find another culture, have an extra layer of legitimacy endorsement, and have a blessing of legitimacy, they could solve these problems and become emperors themselves. Where does another culture come from? At that time, it could only come from the Western Regions. So for the Hu monarchs of the Wuhu Chaohua period, they had every incentive to use the power of the imperial court to introduce Buddhism.

Yu Minhong: In fact, it is to find a theoretical basis for rule, and this theoretical basis should be integrated with the traditional Chinese Confucian cultural foundation, at least not contradictory, and there can be an explanation for the people in the Central Plains at that time, so that everyone can recognize the rule of the Hu monarchs over this land.

Shi Zhan: Yes, this is related to the importance of the Hexi Corridor. The Hu monarch used the power of the imperial court to introduce Buddhism, but if it was introduced directly, there would be a problem. Buddhism spread to Hexi during the Eastern Han Dynasty, but it was too repulsive to native Confucianism. However, during the Wuhu Chaohua period, a large number of very high-level Han Intellectuals could not stand the chaos of the Central Plains and fled to Hexi, so Confucianism was born in Hexi. At that time, Hexi was still ruled by Hu monarchs, and the local Han chinese did not have an overwhelming advantage in numbers, so Hexi had a characteristic, both high-level Confucianism and confucianism did not dominate. In this case, Confucianism is willing to dialogue with Buddhism on an equal footing, and with the basis of equal dialogue, Buddhism will know how to integrate with Confucianism, and the Hu monarch will be able to introduce Buddhism into the Central Plains.

It was precisely because he spent 17 years in Hexi that he understood how to integrate with Confucianism, and then he was brought to Chang'an as a senior monk, and Buddhism really began to enter the Central Plains.

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05. The two major conditions for great unification

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Yu Minhong: In the Spring and Autumn Period, the various feudal states were very similar to the sub-feudal states in the European Middle Ages, why did Europe maintain the state between various small countries later, even if some countries were later merged, there were still more than a dozen or dozens of countries in Europe, but China became a big empire from the beginning of the Qin Dynasty. Why didn't China continue the tradition of dozens of countries or seven or eight large countries during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and continue to do so?

Shi Zhan: This is a very interesting question, some people have explained before that because Chinese culture pursues great unification, we can unify, but this explanation is not enough. Many other cultures also pursued great unity, such as Christian culture, and until the 18th century, many people could still be seen talking about the need to establish a unified Christian world.

Similarly, in the Islamic world, there are many scholars who say that a unified Islamic world should be established. They are all pursuing great unification, but only China has done it, and they have not done it, which means that it is not enough to pursue great unification culturally, there must be other necessary conditions.

As I explained in The Hub, this probably has to do with some specific military financial conditions. Whether a place has a large enough pool of wealth, the imperial court can draw resources from it at low cost, and exceed the threshold that the power of the central government has a crushing advantage over any local resistance force, and once this is achieved, the great unification is irreversible. If the imperial court does not have a crushing advantage over the local resistance force, and the local government wants to resist, the imperial court cannot suppress it, so it is separated.

Europe never had a pool large enough to accumulate resources at low cost, so there were two near-unifications in Europe's later history, but they were soon separated, once by Napoleon and once by Hitler. They were all close to unity, but they were still separated, because they could not crush all the resistance forces.

China did not exist at the beginning, China certainly did not work in the Spring and Autumn Warring States period, but then Qin Shi Huang found a way to unify the world, but after reunification, it is still not possible, although China's wealth pool is large enough, but the cost of extraction must be low enough, which depends on the self-organization ability of society. If the social self-organization ability is relatively strong, and the ability of the society to resist the imperial court is relatively strong, the cost drawn by the imperial court is high, and there is no overwhelming advantage over the resistance force, which is the case in India.

There are two places in the world where the pool of wealth is large enough, one is China and the other is India. The ancient pool of wealth is actually to see the scale of the farming population, because the ancient economic production mode is mainly farming, fighting for land, fighting for the size of the population, and only China and India in the world have large-scale land and population gathering. India is based on a caste society, highly self-structured, and the ability of the central government to absorb social resources is very poor, so India has not had a long history of great unification before the British came, and always separated after a period of unification.

In China, after the Qin unified the world, there was another important structural transformation in history, the changes of the Tang and Song Dynasties, which brought about important structural changes in Chinese society. Before the change of the Tang and Song dynasties, in the history from the Han to the Tang, the social structure of the Central Plains was the Hao society. There are many local tycoons in society, and the local tycoons have the ability to self-organize themselves in society, and the ability of the imperial court to absorb resources is relatively poor, and the ability of society to self-organize is relatively strong. In this case, the local resistance forces have not formed a crushing advantage, and the great unity is reversible. So from the Qin to the Song, our history is a long-term great unification, then a long-term great split, then a long-term great unification, and then a long-term great split, back and forth.

However, after the Song Dynasty, the entire social structure became a civilian society, and the society began to scatter and desertify, which meant that the self-organization ability of the society fell sharply, and the ability of the imperial court to absorb rose sharply, and the threshold was exceeded as soon as it entered and exited, and the imperial court had a crushing advantage over the local resistance forces. An intuitive result is that from the Song Dynasty to the present, there has been no longer a long-term great split, and after the end of one great unification, it is another great unification that replaces it. Therefore, it is not enough to rely on culture alone, culture only provides a legitimacy for great unification, and whether it is unified or not is still determined by the financial and military structure.

Yu Minhong: After the great unification, in principle, the government's financial ability should become stronger and stronger, and its organizational ability should become stronger and stronger, but there is a cyclical process in China: a dynasty is established, it begins to become stronger, then it begins to decline, and the recession can only die out in the end, and then repeat a new round. Sometimes strong wealth capacity does not mean that the dynasty can be sustained, for example, the wealth ability of the Northern Song Dynasty is actually very strong, but in the end it still cannot unify the Liao.

Shi Zhan: The imperial court can have a crushing advantage over the localities, first of all, it must have the ability to absorb finances, how much financial ability can afford to raise how many soldiers, and then talk about whether to crush the localities. A large enough ability to draw means that there must be a sucking machine, and this machine is the bureaucracy. The larger the empire, the stronger the ability to absorb, and the more efficient the bureaucracy itself must be to complete the extraction process. We often explain that the emperor of the dynasty was unreliable and abused eunuchs because the bureaucratic system of the Ming Dynasty was too strong, resulting in a lot of constraints on the emperor. When the emperor had to play a game with the bureaucratic system, he engaged in various tricks. Those tricks were usually carried out by eunuchs, so it seemed that the Ming eunuchs were particularly rampant. In fact, the eunuch was the emperor's "white glove" to help the emperor achieve what he wanted to do outside the bureaucracy.

If the imperial court wanted to draw on large-scale resources, it had to have a particularly efficient bureaucratic system, and it was very large and complex, to complete a large enough amount of savings. But the bureaucracy itself has its own interests, officials will be corrupt, will engage in their own interests, which requires the emperor to have the ability to restrain and balance the bureaucracy, otherwise the bureaucracy becomes corrupt, there will be nothing for the emperor, and the world will be broken. The problem is that if the emperor is to be able to balance the bureaucracy, he must have a particularly strong insight into the world's affairs.

The first or second generations of monarchs who founded the country were strong enough to balance the bureaucracy. But since the third generation, the emperor has grown up in the deep palace, has never been out of the palace in his life, has never seen the folk model, and has not touched the door to human nature and many other things. In this case, the emperor's ability to balance the bureaucracy will be greatly reduced, and once this ability declines, it will mean the decline of society and civilization. But after all, the total scale of its wealth is large enough that it can be maintained for more than a hundred years by inertia, but after more than a hundred years, it cannot be maintained. So there is a specific time period in Chinese history, 600 years an ice age, 600 years a warm period.

Roughly speaking, by two or three hundred years, the nomads in the north will go south, and if the south is united, there will be no problem in crushing the nomads, and once the south has been separated from Germany, the nomads can fight and the dynasty will collapse. We will see such a process.

The same was true of the Northern Song Dynasty, where the bureaucracy was very decaying in the last years of the Northern Song Dynasty. Zhu Xi's "Zhu Zi Language Class" records various conversations between Zhu Zi and his students during class, including a passage in which Zhu Zi specifically discussed ancient political affairs with his students. Zhu Zi was a native of the Southern Song Dynasty, and he said that at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, he said that at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, hui, the second emperor of Qin, but whenever major decisions were made, there was no time not to make mistakes and not to make faint moves. In this series of decisions, one or two tricks may lead to the difficulty of destroying the country, not to mention that there are so many tricks in succession, and it is impossible to not destroy the country. Why are there so many tricks? Because no one was willing to take charge, and it was the last year of the dynasty, and the cycle had arrived.

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06. Modern Chinese history cannot talk only about humiliation

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Yu Minhong: In the last year of a dynasty, there will be two kinds of forces, one is that the northern peoples go south to destroy the dynasty; The other is the overthrow of the dynasty by internal forces, such as the rebellion of Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, and the overthrow of the Yuan Dynasty by Zhu Yuanzhang. But in Chinese history, when the Qing Dynasty was already in ruins, why was a large-scale uprising such as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom quelled by Zeng Guofan?

Shi Zhan: Regarding peasant uprisings, there has always been such a historical cycle in Chinese history. At the beginning of the establishment of the dynasty, the monarch and the subject were one, and the upper and lower hearts were one, in this case, the dynasty would move forward relatively smoothly, which was an upward curve. But it is possible that after more than a hundred years, it will gradually enter the downward curve. In another hundred years, there will be natural and man-made disasters superimposed, and there will be peasant uprisings within, and finally the overthrow of dynasties.

At any time in history, peasant revolts have actually been because the victims have no food to eat, but when there is food to eat, no one will come out to play for their lives. What does it mean to have no food to eat? After the peasant uprising, the first thing to do would be to flock to the place where there was food to eat. The place where there is food must be the financial core of the empire, and it must be the richest place in the empire. After the rebel army rushed over and occupied the financial core area, trouble came for the imperial court, the financial core area was completely out of control, and there was no money to suppress the peasant army, and the imperial court collapsed. Almost all of this has happened in history, there have been no exceptions, the only exception is the Qing Dynasty.

After the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom rose, it also rushed to the Jiangnan region, the richest part of the empire, and occupied the financial core area. According to the previous historical law, this dynasty will perish, but the Qing Dynasty actually did not perish, and it also flourished, what is the reason? It was because the Qing Dynasty found other sources of finance outside jiangnan. At that time, the most important sources of finance were customs duties, as well as the cents they levied by Zeng Guofan, that is, the transit tax between the provinces. Being able to feed such a large army by transit taxes and tariffs means that the scale of foreign trade is large enough, and if the scale of foreign trade is small, the tariffs are not enough to feed such a large army, nor is it enough to stimulate inter-provincial trade in the interior.

At that time, foreign trade tea, porcelain, silk, etc. were produced in Jiangxi, Hunan, Fujian, Yunnan and other places, and sold in Shanghai, Ningbo, Xiamen and other places, which would have a long process of commodity transportation. The process of inter-provincial transportation of these commodities brought Zeng Guofan the opportunity to collect gold. Only a large enough scale of foreign trade can bring a sufficiently large scale of tariffs and gold, so that the four zhongxing ministers of the late Qing Dynasty, Zeng, Zuo, Li, and Hu, have the opportunity to suppress the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. How can foreign trade that is large enough come about? This is related to the Western impact on China. Without the Western invasion of China, forcing the Qing Dynasty to change from one-port trade in Guangzhou to five-port trade, and later more trade, China's foreign trade scale would not have risen. The inability to scale foreign trade meant that once the Taiping Rebellion revolted, the Qing Dynasty would not be able to save itself through new sources of finance.

For the Qing Dynasty, you were beaten up by the West and forced to open the door of the country, which is undoubtedly very humiliating. But you are surprised to be forced to open the door of the country and get a new means of preserving the empire. If it had not been forced to open the door of the country, once the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom occupied Jiangnan, the Qing Dynasty would be finished. Therefore, the mere use of humiliation is not enough to explain China's modern history, which has many more things than humiliation.

Zuo Zongtang's recovery of Xinjiang is a similar logic. When Zuo Zongtang proposed to retake Xinjiang, the Qing Dynasty had just destroyed the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and Zuo Zongtang repeatedly told the empress dowager that he must take back Xinjiang, and finally said that he had moved the empress. But the empress dowager clearly told him that if we want to recover Xinjiang, this war must cost a lot of money, we have just destroyed the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the national treasury has no money, and this military expenditure has to be different. The empress dowager said, I have no money, but I give policy, you can take out a loan. So Zuo Zongtang went to the British HSBC bank to borrow a large amount of money, what is the loan collateral? Use customs duties as collateral. Where did hsbc's loan to Zuo Zongtang come from? It was HSBC that issued 6 points of bonds in the financial market in London, took the money raised to China, gave Hu Xueyan 8 points of profit, Hu Xueyan gave the empress dowager 12 points of profit, and the empress dowager allocated this money to Zuo Zongtang.

Of course, the most profitable person here is Hu Xueyan, but Zuo Zongtang has received military funds after all, and he has to get military funds to recover Xinjiang. In this case, we see that the Qing Dynasty not only relied on tariffs to obtain the means of self-preservation, but also indirectly completed the docking with the London financial market through HSBC, issued bonds from the entire capitalist world, raised funds, and then issued military expenses to recover Xinjiang. The reason why China can maintain Xinjiang today is also directly related to the world financial market that was far away in London.

Therefore, of course, China's modern history has been greatly humiliated by various shocks from the West, but when these things are put together, there must be much more than humiliation in China's modern history. We can't just stand at a two-dimensional perspective, we must incorporate other elements and enter a higher dimension, so that we can see a more complete and three-dimensional Chinese history, and we will have a more peaceful mentality when facing the world.

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07. China's hyperscale

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Yu Minhong: If China's opening of the door in modern times is in a sense forced, or even humiliatingly knocked on, then the subsequent reform and opening up can be said to take the initiative to open the door to the world, take the initiative to meet the changes, and extremely hope to dock with the world. This docking was undoubtedly successful because it brought prosperity to China.

Whether it was the five ports of trade or the eight ports of trade in the Qing Dynasty, they were forced to trade by prying open the door, but in modern times, we are undoubtedly actively seeking foreign trade, taking the initiative to join the world economic system WTO, and also actively seeking links to various relations with the world. What is the difference between China today and the state it was in the beginning? Facing the future, what kind of attitude should China adopt towards our relationship with the world?

Shi Zhan: One of the biggest differences between today and the beginning is that we have completed a new kind of self-integration politically. In the late Qing Dynasty, we passively joined the world economic order, but as long as we joined passively, many of our things were certainly not ready. At that time, there were many Chinese and labor costs were very low, but such a cheap labor force was difficult to really translate into its own competitive advantage because China was too large. As a super-large-scale country, China has a series of things that can be explained by super-scale. First of all, we have a large enough pool, with a low enough extraction capacity, to be able to maintain a large unity, which is a feature of hyperscale.

Another feature of hyperscale is the large population, especially after the Qing Dynasty. During the Ming Dynasty, the Central Plains and the grasslands were still in a state of confrontation, and there was no way to reduce taxes every day. After the Qing Dynasty came in, the Grasslands of the Central Plains were ruled as one, and the scale and frequency of wars also dropped sharply, and the Emperor of the Qing Dynasty was able to reduce taxes, so Kangxi said that "after that, the population will never be enriched." Paying less tax, the people can raise a few more children, so there was a population explosion during the Qing Dynasty, resulting in a large population in China.

From the perspective of the Central Plains, it is certainly a good thing to have more children and more blessings, but too much population brings a problem, that is, too much labor. There is a lot of surplus labor, no matter what kind of work, they are willing to do it if they give some money, and they have no income, so if they give some money, they will be willing to do it, which will lead to extremely low labor costs. The extremely low cost of labor is that it is difficult for us to have endogenous technological transitions. Any good technological transition will save labor, but for China at that time, the most important thing is labor, so those technologies that can save labor are useless, and there will be no technology, there will be no way to endogenously appear technological transitions, and then there is no way to endogenously appear industrial revolution.

The industrial revolution is based on the premise of technological leaps, and the inability to appear in the industrial revolution means that when the country that has the industrial revolution comes to hit you, it has a crushing advantage, because you are a cold weapon, and others are a hot weapon. So hyperscale can explain two things: First, why China can maintain great unity; Second, why China has lagged behind in modern times.

Then came the third thing, After being beaten by the West, China passively joined the world order, but this joining may bring new risks to China. If China's scale is relatively small, after passively joining the world order, it is possible that the West can pull your economy as a whole by relying on the world capitalist economy, such as a small country like South Korea, the capital population accounts for half of the national population, the outside world pulls a city, pulls its capital, it is very easy to do, pull the capital up, the capital penetrates outward, and the whole country is pulled. This is okay for small-scale countries.

For a country of China's size, it is not feasible, because the scale is too large, so large that no force can pull you up as a whole, only pull the part, such as some port areas, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Tianjin, etc., other areas can not be pulled at all, still under the traditional social state. What are the consequences of this? As a result, in those port areas such as Shanghai, his connection with New York and London may be much greater than the connection with the countryside 300 miles away, and the whole society will be highly torn apart and completely dualized.

In this case, the more the outside world pulls, the more torn the inside. This kind of tearing is also unsustainable, and sooner or later it will trigger a civil war, and after the detonation of the civil war, it is possible to zero out the fruits of previous developments, which has happened many times in modern times. So we must first complete the political self-integration, and use political power to ensure that the whole country can join the world economic system as a whole, so that our advantages of large population and cheap labor can be released. Therefore, the revolution in China in the 20th century is very important, and we have completed the political self-integration through the revolution, and after the self-integration is almost complete, we will let the country join the world economic system as a whole.

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08. Supply chain network of the world's factories

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Yu Minhong: After the reform and opening up, our cooperation and integration with the world have greatly stimulated the development of China's economy, and have been pulled to this day, but this time of opening up, China has more than a billion people, the labor force is cheap enough at the beginning, in principle, such integration should not be able to pull such a large country, at most can pull Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou these cities, similar to the previous five ports of trade, but why this time, the whole of China has been pulled?

Shi Zhan: When we first reformed and opened up, our labor costs were cheap, and we had the political power to ensure that China as a whole joined in, and there would be no more dualization in modern times, which was more and more pulled and torn apart. But if only rely on labor costs cheap, after the development to a certain extent, people will definitely become richer, labor costs will become higher, it is reasonable to say that there will be no opportunity at that time, and development can not continue, but China still continues to develop, here is interesting, this is still related to China's super-large-scale.

In the late 20th century and early 21st century, the West entered an unprecedented period of demand for innovation efficiency. Before the end of the Cold War, most countries were in a state of economic scarcity, and any product was of good use, but after the end of the Cold War, soon after the end of the Cold War, it began to enter a state of economic excess, and people began to pick and choose.

In this case, if you still want to continue to sell products, you must have enough innovation to compete with others to have the opportunity to continue to occupy the market, so after the end of the Cold War, the West's requirements for innovation efficiency have become more and more large. To do a good enough innovation, there is a premise, you have to hand over the production process, can not be placed in their own hands, once placed in their own hands, if there is a new idea appears, the entire production line must be re-modified, the cost of innovation will be very high.

So at that time, in order to ensure the efficiency of innovation, Western countries must outsource the production links, and the demand for large-scale outsourcing appeared, and China caught up with the time window of large-scale demand outsourcing and rose rapidly.

The time window for large-scale outsourcing is roughly in the late 90s and early 21st century, the West is outsourcing, corresponding to someone can contract, for the contract, must meet two conditions at the same time: First, work efficiently enough. If you are not efficient, you can't get orders, and to be efficient, you must be professional enough, but once you are particularly specialized, you will create a huge risk of being locked in the upstream specific ideas.

So second, be flexible enough. The upstream has to outsource because it is necessary to throw out the risk of transformation. Upstream ideas can change at any time, locked in the upstream specific ideas, when the ideas change, outsourcing can not survive. In order to survive and not risk yourself, you must ensure that you are flexible enough: you can't be too specialized, and once you are too specialized, you will lose your elasticity.

However, without specialization, there is no efficiency, without efficiency, you can't get orders, and you don't have a chance to die. In this case, as a contractor, efficiency and flexibility must be met at the same time, but these two conditions are contradictory, how can they be met at the same time? China has gradually evolved a set of gameplay, placing efficiency and flexibility at different levels at the same time.

At the level of individual factories, a large number of small and medium-sized private enterprises can be seen on the southeast coast with extreme specialization. When I was investigating, I saw many cases, specialization to an unimaginable extent, once the things he produced were particularly specialized, his products may be reduced to a very basic factor of production, after being restored to such a basic factor of production, it will bring a result, he and other products are particularly compatible, and can be compatible with a variety of other products. Just like building Lego, a single company only produces lego bricks of a specific shape, each company produces a different shape of lego bricks, all the companies together constitute a huge supply chain network, they produce things together, can spell out a thousand strange things.

Therefore, these individual enterprises in China are extremely specialized, these enterprises are complementary to each other, and this supporting relationship can also be continuously dynamically reorganized, they together constitute a huge supply chain network, at the level of a single enterprise to ensure specialization and efficiency, in the supply chain network can continue to dynamically reorganize the supporting relationship, to ensure flexibility. Efficiency and resiliency are placed on different levels at the same time, that is, the existence of a supply chain network is the basic premise for large-scale outsourcing.

Once the supply chain network elements are taken into account, the size of the network becomes a new and important variable. When the size of the network exceeds a certain threshold to a certain extent, it may substantially change some cost composition structure. In the past, when considering costs, the basic analysis method at the economic level was the three elements of cost: labor cost, land cost and capital cost.

However, in the supply chain network, in institutional economics, a fourth cost is added - the cost of transactions, that is, when trading with each other, whether there are various factors that make it difficult to trust each other, so that additional credit means are needed to complete the transaction. This entails a lot of transaction costs.

Once the supply chain network is large enough to a certain scale, it will bring about a qualitative change, that is, the proportion of transaction costs in total costs will increase significantly, while the proportion of labor, land and capital in total costs will decrease significantly. Once this step is reached, even if labor prices rise, they will not pose a challenge to the ability to control integrated costs. Due to China's super-large-scale nature, China's supply chain network has long broken through that threshold, so the rise of our reform and opening up, the transfer of manufacturing to China, and the growth of China brought about by China's opening up to the world are indeed very different from history.

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09. Retain manufacturing and supply chain with trust

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Yu Minhong: In response to the concern that China's manufacturing and supply chain will shift to Southeast Asia and other places, you have specifically visited Vietnam and other places and written the book "Overflow", can you introduce the reasons and core content of this book?

Shi Zhan: After Trump took office in 2018, he launched a Sino-US trade war, and then many Chinese companies moved to Vietnam. At that time, there were all kinds of articles on the Internet, saying that China might be replaced by Vietnam, Vietnam was about to become the next world factory, and China's status as a world factory would not be guaranteed. At that time, I wanted to see what the logic of this transfer would be, and whether it would pose a substantial challenge to the position of China's factories in the world.

In 2019, I went to Vietnam to do a more in-depth research, after the Vietnamese research, along their supply chain network, clues, I went back from Vietnam to China's Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta to do a series of research, through this series of research, I came to several conclusions: First, at least at the time, the so-called transfer from China to Vietnam is actually not a transfer, but a Chinese supply chain spillover to Vietnam. If it is an overflow, China does not need to be nervous or worried about such a shift.

Second, why is there such an overflow? This is related to the rise of China and a series of structural changes in the world economy. There is an interesting data, in the global economic and trade structure in 1990, more than 70% of the trade of various countries was trade in manufactured goods, and less than 30% was trade in intermediate goods and semi-finished products, which means that the vast majority of products are produced within a single country.

When I wrote Overflow, it was 2019, and the data I got was 2018. In 2018, this data is exactly the opposite, more than 70% of the trade of various countries is intermediate goods trade, semi-finished product trade, and less than 30% is manufactured goods trade. This means that 30 years ago, the vast majority of products were produced in-house in a single country, while 30 years later, the vast majority of products will be produced across multiple countries.

If the physical space that occurs from the initial raw materials, spare parts and components to the final finished product is called economic space, the economic space and the political space dominated by the state were roughly overlapping 30 years ago, but after 30 years, they are no longer overlapping at all. A complete lack of overlap means that the role that a trade war could have played 30 years ago cannot be achieved 30 years later. That's one reason why Trump's trade war didn't have the desired effect at the time.

In addition, the political space is dominated by the state, and when the economic space and the political space are not aligned, the economic space can no longer be dominated by the state, but by businessmen. Merchant domination of economic space is a problem, it is another spatial logic, the state actually has no way to effectively manage this space, but this still requires a series of rules of management in this space, so I put forward a hypothesis in "Overflow": there may be a need for a new merchant order.

There is no way for countries to formulate rules and dominate management for economic space, because the scope of the state's dominance, control, and application of rules can only be limited to its own national borders. But the economic cycle has completely transcended national borders, so there is no way for the economic space to be dominated by the state, but it needs to have corresponding rules and governance, where do these rules and governance come from? It can only be generated by the merchants who dominate these economic spaces. I mentioned the merchant order in Overflow, which has not yet appeared, but sooner or later. If it does not appear, this economic space will encounter many problems, and it is relatively cost-effective to pay a certain cost to establish order, otherwise the loss will exceed the cost paid by the merchants.

Yu Minhong: When you visited Vietnam, after all, it was before the epidemic, which was a normal state, and now the three-year epidemic must have had a relatively significant impact on China's manufacturing industry and supply chain; In addition, international relations and Sino-US relations have also entered a new stage. These two backgrounds may actually affect the state of China's manufacturing and supply chain when you first examine it.

As ordinary people, our concern is that China's supply chain and manufacturing industry will be unconsciously transferred or weakened, which will have a relatively large impact on the Chinese economy, at the same time, it will also affect the livelihood of the people, the survival of small and medium-sized enterprises, like now, I know that some small and medium-sized enterprises are facing survival problems because of the reduction of orders. Looking to the future, how can China's manufacturing and supply chains be preserved and further developed?

Shi Zhan: First, some manufacturing, small and medium-sized enterprises, and manufacturers are indeed moving outward, but they may not be as fast as those articles on the Internet. The nature of financial capital is like a liquid, it flows very fast and there is no obstacle, but industrial capital is different, industrial capital can also flow, but more similar to jelly, it can also flow, but it flows very slowly. Compared with the two, financial capital will soon flow away, but industrial capital will flow slowly. If China's manufacturing industry will shift, it will also be a jelly transfer, at least three or five years.

Therefore, at present, there is no need to worry too much in three or five years, China may suffer great difficulties, pressures and challenges because of the epidemic, but it will not turn away so quickly because of pressure and challenges, after all, jelly is not so easy. But also know, because it's jelly, it turns out very slowly, maybe for years, but once it's turned out, it's going to be very difficult to turn back, because it's still jelly.

So, will it really turn out? Especially in the current situation in China and the United States? I think it can be explained that internationally, China now seems to have a strong economic force, but we have to distinguish clearly, and this strength is mainly manifested in the manufacturing level. The advantages of China's manufacturing industry are mainly in the low-end manufacturing industry, the advantages of the West are innovative industries, intellectual property rights, high technology and some high-end manufacturing, then China's main competition is the cost advantage, and the West is mainly competing for technological advantages.

Technical advantages are difficult to replace, but cost advantages are not irreplaceable, unless your costs have always been lower than others, but even if your costs have always been lower than others, the other party also needs to consider other factors. Under what circumstances can one think only from a cost perspective? When there is no security issue, when I don't need to think about whether I need to trust you, I just have to think about it from a cost perspective. But once it's related to security, I don't just think about cost.

China's advantages are concentrated in the low-end manufacturing industry, the main competition is the cost advantage, if the other party no longer cares about the cost, your advantage will encounter challenges. In the case of a good relationship of mutual trust between the two sides, the security problems that were once in the past can no longer be security problems today, and if the relationship of trust between the two sides becomes worse, it was not a security problem in the past, and it will become a security problem today. Once there is a security issue, cost is no longer a factor of consideration, and our advantage in cost can no longer be called an advantage.

In this case, whether China's manufacturing center can be maintained, I think the problem is not too big within three or five years, because industrial capital is a jelly attribute, can flow, the speed is very slow, but once it flows out, it is difficult to flow back. How can I get it to not flow out as much as possible? It depends on the mutual trust between the two sides. If the relationship of trust continues to be broken, people will no longer consider the cost problem, even if it flows slowly, it will flow out.

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10. Accomplish others,

in order to achieve their own achievements

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Yu Minhong: Trust is indeed a big problem. The cost of trust is actually very high, and the trust between people is the same, if two people trust each other from the bottom of their hearts, their communication costs and transaction costs between the two people will be very low, but if the two people do not trust each other, there can be no transactions and exchanges, let alone costs. In this sense, cost is determined by both parties, and trust is also determined by both parties.

In recent years, the United States has also embarrassed China and expressed all kinds of distrust of China, trust is not something that can be done unilaterally by China alone, but China should put on a posture. What kind of attitude do you think Chinese businessmen or entrepreneurs, Chinese businessmen and manufacturing industries should have in order to retain this trust as much as possible and to retain good cooperation with the world as much as possible?

Shi Zhan: For businessmen, we need to realize that the reason why China has grown up so quickly is because China has joined the world order, and China is the biggest beneficiary of joining the world order. China has developed very fast over the years, and we feel that we are very strong, because we are the world's factory, but it also means that there must be a world mall, and the things in this factory can be sold, and without the world mall, the world factory itself is dead. This shopping mall cannot be your own, because China's production capacity is too large to be consumed by itself, our production capacity must be consumed by the world, and we must maintain a good enough relationship with the world to connect between the world factory and the world mall.

To maintain good relations with the world, on the one hand, we must not take an aggressive nationalist posture, after all, this is an interdependent world, and it is difficult for one side to play on its own without the other. On the other hand, we must also realize that the greater the ability, the greater the responsibility. In a specific sense, China's ability as the world's factory is very large, and the greater the responsibility. You use these abilities to provide the world with enough public goods, and the world will naturally trust you, because public goods are valuable to all people, you provide more value to others, and the more you achieve others, the better you can achieve yourself. Successful entrepreneurs must have this experience, this feeling, and the same is true in the relationship between China and the world.

Yu Minhong: You just said that the economic space and political space in the world today are increasingly separated, but in fact, we can also see that in the real world, politics interferes with economic space, such as various restrictions on China by the United States, trade barriers, and with the tension of Sino-US relations, it has also led to the current estrangement. Is there any possibility that this gap will be eliminated at present? What can China do, and perhaps better results?

Shi Zhan: I also talked about such a topic in "Breaking the Cocoon". When any good entrepreneur or manager encounters difficulties and troubles, if you are a good entrepreneur, your first reaction is certainly not to feel that the enemy is too cunning to cause me to suffer losses, but will first reflect on whether you can do better.

So, now the United States has all kinds of challenges to China, the United States has its own problems, but we can still reflect on whether we can do better, how the opponent challenges, so as not to really hurt ourselves, if the opponent challenges, we will be hurt, certainly we have a lot of worth improving. Today, China has actually done a lot of corresponding reflection in this regard, and we do have a lot of room for reflection, including how we can make everyone have more stable expectations for the future, how we can have a more appropriate understanding of our relationship with the world, and understand that we and the world are not an antagonistic relationship, but a relationship of mutual achievement.

To go forward, if we did not join the world order in the late Qing Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty could not even save itself, and if we did not reform and open up later, and did not join the world order, China could not develop so fast, so without joining the world order, China could not achieve itself. For the world order, after such a large country as China joins the world order, the world order cannot remain the same, which is once again determined by China's super-large scale. A pool, which we jumped into, is a pool, but if a whale is thrown in, the pool becomes a fish tank because the size of the whales will redefine the pool. The same is true of China, whose size will also redefine the world order.

But redefinition is not how you want to be, whales will redefine the pool, it is not what the whale wants to be, the whale and the pool also need to adapt to each other. Corresponding to today's China and the world, the world can no longer be the same, but it is also impossible for China to do whatever it wants, everyone needs a process of mutual adaptation, and China and the world need to grow forward together. What is the end result of growing together? Those big entrepreneurs who can succeed in the end, or the big countries that can really achieve their world status in the world, have a characteristic, that is, to achieve themselves by achieving others. The more you achieve others, the more opportunities you have to achieve yourself, the more your interests will be realized, and if you are not willing to achieve others, your own interests will not be realized.

I gave an example in Breaking the Cocoon, before world war II or in World War II Germany has always had the idea that Germany is the greatest nation in the world, the highest nation, so the world should obey Germany, should revolve around Germany, and if you refuse to give Germany such a superior position, I will beat you until you recognize the superiority of Germany. Therefore, at that time, the strength of Germany was very strong, they did not want to achieve others, but to think about how to make others obey me, and as a result, although Germany once almost defeated Europe, in the end it was defeated, and all the "gains" were spit out.

After World War II, when Germany was divided and occupied by East and West, West German Prime Minister Adenauer realized that Germany must complete two tasks at the same time, the first task, Germany must complete economic reconstruction, if it can not complete economic reconstruction, it is possible that a communist revolution will break out in West Germany, and the whole of Germany will be included in the Soviet Union's sphere of influence, which is a particularly terrible phenomenon for the West, germany is not rebuilt, it is possible to break out of the revolution, so it must be rebuilt.

In the eyes of Germany's neighbors, a dead Germany is a good Germany, and if Germany completes reconstruction and becomes stronger, it is impossible for neighbors to trust you. If the trust of its neighbours is not gained, the reconstruction of Germany cannot succeed, and if it cannot be rebuilt, there is a possibility of revolution in Germany. So, the second task is to gain the trust of the neighbors.

One is to gain the trust of neighbors, the other is to complete reconstruction, these two tasks are contradictory, how can they be achieved at the same time? Adenauer finally realized that neither task would be achieved unless I abandoned the idea that Germany was German. If I abandon this idea, Germany is no longer the German Germany, Germany is the German Germany of the Europeans, the reconstruction of Germany is equivalent to the reconstruction of Europe, and if I can get to that point, Germany will have the opportunity to complete two tasks at the same time, and at the same time gain the trust of its neighbors.

But the question is, what is Germany called the Germany of the Europeans? How can you get your neighbors to trust you and accept your new perspective? You have to have a concrete solution, so Adenauer joined forces with France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and several countries to form the European Coal and Steel Consortium. Under the technical conditions at that time, the most important raw material for waging war was coal and steel, and all the member states of the coal-steel joint venture put the production of coal and steel in the coal-steel joint venture, in this case, how much coal and steel Germany produced was transparent to other member countries, and other member countries felt that something was wrong and could be stopped at any time. Similarly, how much coal and steel is produced by other member states is also transparent to Germany, which feels that something is wrong and can be stopped at the level of the alliance.

Both sides can stop, both can be transparent, and mutual trust can be achieved. Because I believe in your development, your economic recovery will not pose a threat to me, and once I feel that there may be a threat, I can call it off at any time, and I will not be so worried. In this case, Germany abandons the idea of being the German Germany itself, making Germany the Germany of the European, and the contradictory tasks of Germany's revival and Germany gaining the trust of its neighbors are fulfilled at the same time.

Today's Germany has more influence on Europe than at any time in history, far more than when Hitler almost unified Europe, but no one is afraid of Germany anymore, but on the contrary, they are eager and demanding that Germany should take more responsibility, because you are a great power, you have such an obligation. In this case, as a big country, the more you achieve others, the more you can achieve yourself, and these historical experiences are all necessary for Today's China.

Yu Minhong: In the book, you specifically mention the importance of super-large countries, and the construction of the underlying order and underlying logic of super-large countries to maintain the world order, and in this process, you mention that the super-large countries are mainly the United States, China and Russia. But there was the Russo-Ukrainian War a few months ago, do you think that after the Russo-Ukrainian War, the world order will change significantly? What impact will it have on daily life in China?

Shi Zhan: There will definitely be changes, Russia was the second military power in the world before the war, and it is not after the war, which is definitely a huge change. This is somewhat similar to the Beiyang Marine Division of that year, and Li Hongzhang said at that time that our Beiyang Marine Division fleet was very powerful, but this was for people to see, not to fight. It's scary to look at, and using this as a deterrent to negotiate can get 60 points. But Li Hongzhang knew that in fact, when this army really fought, there was no chance of winning, and it would be zero points to negotiate again. Russia's situation this time is a bit similar, when you don't fight, you are the world's second military power, at least in the military sense worthy of a super-large country, but once you fight, although it has not yet reached zero points, there will certainly be no one who takes the hat of the world's second military power so seriously.

In this case, the game of global order and the situation we face personally will certainly change. After Russia tossed and turned like this, Russia helped them to achieve internal self-unity and self-integration that the West had not tried for many years, but Russia helped them to do it in two months. Once the West has done it, it must be a lot of pressure on China, and how to deal with this pressure will require wisdom. Of course, we must believe in the wisdom of leaders, this is indeed a huge challenge, poor use may pose a great threat, good use will be a huge opportunity.

Yu Minhong: I hope we can better cope with this series of challenges. China's past few years have really been very difficult, the epidemic, Sino-US relations, trade wars, and now it is the Russian-Ukrainian war that could not be fought with China, indirectly and directly have brought us a relatively large impact, and it is not clear what will happen in the future. But I believe what you said, with The wisdom of China, with the diligence of the Chinese people, I believe that our motherland, including the lives of our people, will surely get better and better in the future.

“

11. The "information cocoon" is in dire need of a new ethic

”

Yu Minhong: You specifically mentioned the concept of "information cocoon" in "Breaking the Cocoon", but with the rise of some populism and nationalism, there is a kind of estrangement between each other. Does it also involve individuals? Now through the algorithm push, everyone watches the news every day is what we like to watch, the news I don't like to watch will not be pushed to me, the collision and debate of views is gone, the single point of view will lead to the ability to accommodate and accept different views decline, and such a situation has also appeared in the world. Is there a better way to break the "information cocoon" between countries and achieve a better state of trust and understanding between countries?

Unfolding: The "information cocoon" is not at the national level, but at the social level. The emergence of social media has brought about two structural changes in the dissemination of ideas. One is the push algorithm, which will make you only see what you are willing to see, and what you are not interested in, you can hardly see. This leads to the result that you seem to get a lot of information, but in fact the nutrition is very simple, you can only lock yourself in a very one-dimensional flow of information. In this sense, it constitutes an "information cocoon".

The second is brought about by social media. Before the development of social media, there was a heavy social relationship between people, a considerable proportion of social networking must be done offline, and the identity relationship between offline people and people is pluralistic and multi-attribute, because completing social offline means that I have to deal with the people around me. It's diverse, because I have a conceptual consensus or conflict with him, and at the same time we may all be AC Milan fans, and I like to fish, he likes to swim, we may also have the identity of father, the identity of engineer, the identity of account manager... It means that even if you and I are opposed in one thing, we still have the need to cooperate in another, which is to emphasize social relationships.

Under the heavy social relationship, because the relationship between each other is particularly intertwined, even if you are opposed to other people's views on some things, you will restrain your impulse to release your emotions, because you can't tear your face and never see him again, and you still have a lot of things to look up with him and not to see him.

After the advent of social media, it entered an era of light socialization. In the era of light social networking, people are basically social on the Internet, this kind of online socialization makes people's identity relationship between each other become very single, it is possible that I and you chat very warmly every day, but in fact there is no chance to see offline, and one day I find that the three views are not compatible, and you will not have any concerns, because I can not contact you again in this life, for me there is no loss. In this case, people will not restrain their impulse to release their emotions.

In the era of socialization, you will restrain your impulse to release emotions and will be willing to have rational discussions with people. But in the era of light socialization, after all, rational discussion is very tired, far less relaxed than breaking the mouth and scolding to release emotions. Therefore, in the era of light social interaction, people's habits of rational discussion are becoming less and less, the voices of rationality on the Internet are becoming less and less, and the voices of pure emotional catharsis are more and more. This emotion is vented to a certain extent, and people will have an instinct to defend their own views, even if they realize that this view may be problematic, but once they quarrel with others, they must also try to defend this point of view.

This process of defending your point of view, coupled with the "information cocoon" of the recommendation algorithm, you will more and more close yourself in the "information cocoon", and the world will become more and more incomprehensible in your eyes. In the same way, in the eyes of the world, you become more and more incomprehensible. This is not only the case in China, but almost everywhere in the world, and we can feel this phenomenon in general.

Yu Minhong: This is actually a phenomenon that cannot go back, people are now very accustomed to virtual social media, such as through a variety of platforms to express their views, and do not need to be responsible, and can even express their views in anonymity. In the future, with the rise of metaverses and so on, it will even create a more virtual reality, allowing oneself to express one's emotions or extreme thoughts immersively. A society must be maintained normally and rationally in order to become a society that is constantly developing positively. What should we do in this situation of not being able to go back?

Shi Zhan: I don't think it is necessary to go back, after the new technology comes out, it raises some problems, and then there will be some new ethics. Platform companies that recommend algorithms lead to a state of less and less social rationalization, but this will also be of great harm to those companies, and if this highly irrational, highly emotional voice continues to ferment, no company can guarantee that it will never get on the cusp of something. So for those companies, once they enter the cusp of the storm, it will instantly be shoveled, which is also a huge harm to this company. So for these platform companies that use recommended algorithms, even for self-preservation, they need some kind of iteration of algorithmic ethics.

I once imagined a possibility, such as in order to prevent users from completely entering the "information cocoon" because of the recommendation algorithm, I want to adjust the parameters in the algorithm to ensure that 40% of what the user sees is always that the user is not interested in, or even contrary to his point of view, in this way to make the user realize that there is a world different from him, and then when he encounters that world again, he will not jump like thunder. This means an iteration of algorithmic ethics, which I believe will not take long to evolve, because these companies will also have such a real need, and if they do not iterate, they themselves will be hurt. This is a possibility of a breakthrough.

There is also a possibility, just now you mentioned the metacosm, the means of payment in the metacosm is naturally digital currency, digital currency to be driven by blockchain technology. Blockchain technology has a very interesting feature, your every move will be distributed on the blockchain accounting, will always be recorded, will also be because of some of their own activities to generate data, using the data generated by your activities can get dividends. For example, a popular NFT application STEP IN, you buy a pair of shoes in it, run every day to accumulate mileage, punch card can earn money, get dividends, the actual so-called earning money, is to earn the currency sent to you by the NFT.

In this environment, there will also be some new network ethics, if you are particularly leveraged in this, you will destroy the community atmosphere, this community will gradually evolve the rules of autonomy, once the bar will deduct your coins, deduct the coins, after this rule evolves, the bar will be inhibited. In essence, the lever essence is only to vent emotions, only to ask the position, not to ask the reason.

Yu Minhong: In fact, human beings or society have a self-correction mechanism, and when a thing reaches a critical point that may bring society or business to an uncontrollable state, it will lead to the emergence of a fault correction mechanism. Everyone will go in a more rational direction or in a more intermediate direction, so that everyone can maintain a relationship with each other and the normal development of society, right?

Cast: Yes, similar. There are many examples in history of the complete collapse of the entire order because of the inability to reach consensus and reason. But there are also examples, after the birth of a new technology, the past order is subverted, causing a series of problems, and then a series of new ethical rules appear, rebuilding the order, the reconstructed order has greater scalability, brings more possibilities, and human beings enter a better state. The question is, is our current situation more likely to go in the direction of collapse, or is it more likely to go in the direction of iteration?

Now there is a popular saying on the Internet called the curse of knowledge, if you know something, it is difficult for you to imagine when you did not know it. That's why it's so hard to be a good teacher, because you already know that knowledge, and it's hard to imagine that you don't know the state of that knowledge, you don't know where the student is stuck, it's hard to explain this knowledge point, which is the curse of knowledge.

But looking at this matter in reverse, it can be called a blessing of knowledge. If you can't imagine what the future will look like, you don't know how to plan it. Once you've imagined a future scenario that's ideal enough, and you've roughly drawn this roadmap, the future scenario is really possible. The new iteration of ethics just talked about, what the ideal scenario should be and what the roadmap is, we can actually draw a rough picture. I roughly drew a road map in the third part of Breaking the Cocoon, and if this road map can be drawn, why can't it be a blessing of knowledge? Together, we come up with a better future, and we push for this future.

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12. The moment of recommendation

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Yu Minhong: In terms of time, you can introduce you to your three books.

Shi Zhan: The core of "Hub" is to explain what China is, and I have given a new framework for explaining what China is from ancient history to modern history to modern history. This seems important to me because only by being able to say who you are, you know what you want, you know what your national interests are, you know your goals, your direction, and whether your specific policies are good or bad, right or wrong, can you get a unified and coherent standard of judgment. So, Hub wanted to try to answer that question.

Overflow is a response to some real-world questions. At a time when the Sino-US trade war is raging in 2018 and 2019, many people are worried about whether the position of China's world factory will not be preserved. Will Vietnam replace China as the next world factory?

I went to Vietnam to do a more in-depth investigation, and then from Vietnam back to China's Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta to do more research, the conclusion of the survey is: First, this is not a transfer from China, but an external spillover of China's supply chain; Second, this spillover process is due to the fact that today's economic space and political space are highly inconsistent, and this economic space cannot be managed by the state, and requires the emergence of a merchant order.

The third book, "Breaking the Cocoon", was written in 2020, because the arrival of the epidemic in 2020 has led to great challenges to the trust relationship between countries in the world. Once the trust relationship is challenged, it will lead to a problem, the reason why China's manufacturing industry is very strong, our comparative advantage is in the low-end manufacturing industry, mainly relying on cost advantages, while the Western comparative advantage in high-end manufacturing, as well as high-end service industries and innovation capabilities, those are technological advantages.

Technical advantages are difficult to be replaced, but the cost advantage is not irreplaceable, the reason why it is difficult to be replaced today is because our cost control ability is too strong, but if the trust relationship is lost, people no longer consider the problem from the perspective of cost, the challenge will really come. So in Breaking the Cocoon, I discussed the importance of trust, how to rebuild trust, and what kind of plan and roadmap should be used to rebuild trust in today's digital world era like the Internet.

I am now writing a new book, the title of which was originally called "Rivers and Mountains", taking China's great rivers and rivers and mountains and rivers as the context and clues, stringing together China's history and reconstructing the explanatory framework for Chinese history. Then, placing Chinese history in the context of the whole eurasian continent, we rely on landscape relations to see how China has achieved itself by opening up to the world. Whenever we open up to the world, China can achieve a history that is more magnificent than we think in ancient times, and if China is closed to the world, it may fall into some kind of difficulty, and when it is reopened to the world, we can create an extremely glorious history, and all this unfolds between the landscape and the world and the space of Eurasia.

Yu Minhong: Very good, I hope this book will come out as soon as possible, and then I will talk about "River Mountain" again. There is an idiom in China, "with rivers and mountains", which means that rivers and mountains constitute the whole picture of China. Chinese people have integrated a pluralistic Chinese culture in the vastness of "the desert is lonely and the sun is setting", and it has been prosperous to this day. Facing the future, I believe that China, as a hub, will continue to play a major pivotal role in China's own development and the development of the world in the future.

Finally, I would also recommend to you the personal account of Shi Zhan Teacher on various platforms, called "Shi Shi World", where you can see the latest opinion expression of Shi Shi Teacher. Shi Zhan also has a "Daguan Academic Team", which includes many young Chinese scholars, whose mission and feelings are to provide constructive advice for China's prosperity and development, and is a group of young scholars with feelings. I hope that everyone will pay more attention to their views, and I believe that they all have a sincere heart and hope to provide ideas for China's development. Thank you also for your efforts, thank you! Due to time constraints, we are here today.

Shi Zhan: Okay, thank you Teacher Yu, goodbye.

End

Yu Minhong: Hello friends, just now I had a conversation with Shi Zhan for more than two hours, and although the content of the dialogue was a bit serious, it did contain a lot of ideas. The views we say are not necessarily all right, and there are some points that are debatable, but in any case, we listen to different views, expressions, and especially feel their hearts, like Shi Zhan's true disposition that wants China to develop further, become stronger, and prosper further.

In the future, we will invite more thoughtful people like this to talk together, due to the time relationship, today will end here, thank you!

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