This article is reproduced from the Lookout Think Tank
Author Zhan Dexiong
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the upheavals in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West thought it had won the "Cold War", and the mood was frenzied, and Professor Francis Fukuyama of Harvard University theorized it as the "end of history".
At this time, Mr. Ji Xianlin, a professor at Peking University in the East, put forward the theory of "thirty years of Hedong and thirty years of Hexi" rather "ignorant of current affairs", pointing out that the wind direction is changing, and "the 21st century may be a turning point."
1 Has the wind changed?
In 1989, when Mr. Ji put forward this view, Western capitalism was like the sky in the day, and there were many people in China who only followed the United States, so it caused some controversy.
In 1993, Mr. Ji wrote: "Such a problem can only be finally solved by the development of history, and no matter how perfect and wonderful the theory is, it can only be said to be utopian until it has been proved by facts." ”
Today, Professor Fukuyama himself has admitted that the "final conclusion of history" is wrong.
On January 5, 2021, Trump's supporters attended a rally in Washington, D.C., in the U.S. capital. Photo| Xinhua News Agency
Five years ago, I wrote an article about Mr. Ji's "Hedong Hexi" theory. At that time, Trump was still running for president, and in the blink of an eye, 5 years had passed, and he had already stepped down. What has happened in the past 5 years is enough to witness that the world is undergoing major changes unprecedented in a century.
Everyone in the world, without exception, involuntarily rolled in, and their bodies and minds were shocked and baptized.
Most people around the world, including Americans, agree with this.
Many people lament that "I can no longer understand the United States" and "the United States is no longer the original United States." What exactly the United States will become, I am afraid that no one can see clearly now. The decline of the United States will inevitably cause changes in the world trend.
An Article on the Us "Forbes" website on February 21 said that the "consciousness of U.S. hegemony is now over— globalization has not changed the world politically according to the American model." In fact, there is plenty of evidence that prosperity in 'democracies' has stopped and is being reversed. ”
How to reverse it?
New York Times columnist Thomas J. Friedman said: "We believe that, at least relatively speaking, the heyday of Western government was the 1960s. The United States was busy sending people to the moon, and hundreds of millions of Chinese struggled to feed themselves, the last time three-quarters of Americans trusted their government. ”
What do the British say?
An article on the website of the British Daily Telegraph on December 6 last year said: "The most important things of our time are picking up. The really major events of our time, the geostrategic general trend of absolute dominance of the point, is that the center of gravity of economic power is constantly shifting from the West to the East. Moreover, in the past year, this shift has been exacerbated by the epidemic. ”
The French didn't shut up either.
An article on the website of the French newspaper Le Echo on December 4 last year said: "The West considers itself a global leader, and as a result its cutting-edge science has not prevented hundreds of thousands of people from dying in a plague pandemic." Society eroded by racism and torn apart by the gap between rich and poor is even more fragmented, and the slogan "Beacon of Freedom" can no longer hide the disappearance of the common good, let alone the deplorable crisis of the American political system. Beijing feels its course is more solid, arguing that it represents growth, openness, cooperation and the fight against climate warming (announcing the 2060 decarbonisation target) and, in short, the future and sincerity. ”
From this point of view, the wind direction has really changed. Mr. Ji said that "the 21st century may be a turning point", which is not a false statement. Trump's emergence shows that late capitalism has to change. Of course, how this trend develops remains to be seen, and it must not be blindly arbitrary, and it is now "thirty years of Hedong", and it is still far away.
2 Western mythology is shattered
The Statue of Liberty was once a beacon to which many of the world's poor aspired, and now the United States has erected a high wall for immigrants, and the "American Dream" of people outside the wall and inside the wall has become a phantom.
Latin American migrants gather at the U.S.-Mexico border on May 10, 2021.
Not only has the dazzling image of "rich, strong and generous" been shattered, but some of the myths of the "caretaker" that are the foundations of Western capitalism have been shaken:
First, Western free-market economic theory.
Its proverb: Self-interest produces good deeds, and private evil creates public interests.
This is how Adam Smith, the patriarch of this theory, enlightened the masses.
I remember that at the beginning of reform and opening up, when an American economist came to China, this was how he spread the theory of market economy. He said why there is always bread in the bakery at the corner of the street, because everyone needs bread, in order to make money for themselves, the owner will always bake enough bread according to everyone's needs, and the farmer will always grow the corresponding wheat according to the needs of the bakery.
This theory is reasonable, and it is true that it operates in this way at a certain historical stage, and of course history proves that these "invisible hands" cannot completely solve all the problems of society.
Now has reached the stage of "financial capitalism", the flow of funds, especially the stock and financial bond market is changing rapidly, can not rely on this pair of "invisible hands" to regulate supply and demand, it is manipulated by "financial predators". A very small number of people have become rich by this means, and the masses have either stayed out of this financial market or have been ruthlessly slaughtered.
This is why the American masses angrily "occupy Wall Street" and raise the sharp social question of 1% and 99%.
Although I only know a little bit about economics, I see the speculative and barbaric nature of financial capitalism, and I know that it is completely unreliable to rely only on self-interest to produce the interests of the many.
On October 2 last year, the bimonthly website of the US "Diplomacy" published an article by Marianne Mazukato, a professor of economics at University College London, entitled "Capitalism after the Epidemic".
"The relationship between the government and the private sector has broken down. Fixing this relationship first requires addressing a fundamental problem in economics: academics' understanding of the concept of values has always been wrong. "The path to a more symbiotic partnership between public and private institutions begins with the recognition that value is collectively created." ”
I think that this is the foundation of the capitalist liberal economy, how can it be changed well? Their eyes were involuntarily looking east.
The second is the contract society.
In the Western 18th century Enlightenment, the concept of contract was scientific and revolutionary.
Rousseau (1712-1778) wrote the four-volume Social Contract, whose idea that sovereignty was in the people (neither in the church nor in the king), was the cornerstone of modern democracy, and profoundly influenced the European Revolution and the War of Independence in the North American colonies. The Constitution of the United States was written under this guidance, so it once had great appeal.
However, today, this spirit of contract lives up in name only. The contract between the people and the government — the people giving up certain freedoms and interests to the government, and the government guaranteeing the freedom and interests of all the people — has been broken.
The New Yorker columnist George W. Bush Parker's best-selling book, The Age of Sinking, reveals that Wall Street elites "are nothing more than elite fraud gangs, and the government's economic policies and top-level designs are simply unable to implement them." The contract that Americans generally believe in— a contract in which everyone gets what they want, has been unfulfilled since the last generation (post-80s). ”
As an investigative journalist, Parker felt a responsibility to tell everyone the truth about the "sinking" of the United States: the "only default power in American life" today is an organized chaebol whose power is so great that even politicians are controlled by him.
Biden is quoted as saying during the 2008 financial crisis: "People believe that our justice system and administration are useless, and they may never even have tried to effectively deal with the unethical and suspected crimes of the upper class." ”
This was a true sentence, which immediately caused an uproar and brought him great trouble.
But that's the reality in America, and it's no wonder that fewer and fewer people trust the government. The "contract theory" is beautiful in theory, but it has gone bankrupt in Western practice.
Third, about reason.
The 17th and 18th centuries are known as the "Age of Reason," in which people's thoughts are to be settled from the ideas prescribed by the Church and the king, and people derive their own opinions according to facts. At that time, reason was very loud, claiming that everything in history had to be declared in the "court of reason" for its existence, or it would be eliminated.
However, the United States has now disrespected the facts and entered the "post-truth era" – pandering to an era when respect is more important than respect, feels more true than truth, interests are more moral than moral, and attacks are more popular than debate.
Columnist Jane M. Meyer's long in-depth investigative report, "The Birth of the White House on Fox News," reveals the collusion between media mogul Murdoch and Trump. Anyone who criticizes Trump is called "fake news," and he tweets every day (including fake news) every day to attract voters, and Fox TV uses the sensational effect to make a lot of money.
The truth? The truth doesn't matter. When they throw out the lie of the "Chinese virus," they do not need factual evidence, but only need to cause a sensation, attract attention, and achieve their political goals.
3 Footnotes of changes
In his book Tension: The Decline of Democracy and Reason, David, a British political economy scholar, pointed out that the era of reason over feelings opened the revolution of science, but now this era has ended, and the rational and fact-based view of truth has been abandoned.
What will the "post-truth" West bring to itself?
If the social elite is not able to analyze the problem on the basis of facts, and there is no basic trust between the public and the elite, can the society survive?
Isn't this a crisis of civilization?
Moreover, there are more than the above three Western myths that have been shattered, and there are some examples that can be given, such as multi-party parliamentary democracy, freedom, equality and fraternity, and so on. These all belong to the cultural category, and the leaves are backward and autumn. These good things in history are now encountering various problems and challenges, and from the decline of the above cultures, can we not see the changes in Hedong and Hexi in the past thirty years?
For 4 years, Trump has pursued the "law of the jungle" to pursue excess profits, disregarding the interests of people around the world, withdrawing from climate change The Paris Agreement and the World Health Organization have moved against the tide of history, which is the clearest footnote for this change.
On September 18, 2020, A Brief History of Mankind by Yuval M. Harari published a long article titled "The World After the Coronavirus." "The current U.S. administration has made it very clear that it cares more about America's greatness than the future of humanity," the article said.
The Economist Political Editor Adrian M. Wooldridge also said: "Today we are moving towards a historical reversal that began 500 years ago. At the time, China was also far ahead of the world economy — a quarter of the world economy , and was the most mature government up to then. We forget these things, but China does not. If Asia can regain its lead 500 years ago, this year could be a crucial year – unless the West wakes up. ”
Mr. Ji said that "the 21st century may be a turning point", which is not a false statement.
4 The Prophetic Ji Xianlin
The famous historian Toynbee wrote in 1990: "For us Chinese, we certainly should not think that the world of Western flowers and flowers will prosper forever." "Now it is still thirty years in Hexi, when thirty years in Hedong, I dare not say exactly, this will definitely come is beyond doubt." The 21st century could be a turning point. ”
He believes that every civilization has a process of birth, growth, prosperity, decline, and demise.
In this regard, Mr. Ji is also in favor, and his cultural view can be roughly summarized as follows:
First, there have been several cultural circles since ancient times, which can be roughly divided into two major blocks, the West and the East; second, the exchanges, confrontations, and blends between various cultures have not stopped.
Second, the Westernization of the East has penetrated deeply into various aspects such as politics and economy, food, clothing, shelter, and transportation, which is a good thing, but the total Westernization does not make sense in theory and does not work in practice;
Third, each culture cannot escape the process of birth, growth, prosperity, decline, and demise summarized by the historian Toynbee, and now Western culture has reached the fourth stage;
Fourth, each culture has its best and the worst, and they are not fixed and change with the times;
Fifth, Chinese culture is not fixed, and has received several "blood transfusions" in history, such as the sinicization of Buddhism;
Sixth, the relationship between cultures is not the "victory" of one culture over another, but the integration of each other, and at a certain historical stage a new culture will be formed. Just as newborn babies carry the genes of their parents and ancestors, but babies mean new births.
Of course, this is not all first proposed by him alone, but at least Mr. Ji belongs to the prophets and foresights, especially as early as 1989, he put forward the theory of "Hedong and Hexi", which is really valuable and fully reflects his cultural self-confidence.
At present, the facts that are happening in the world confirm Mr. Ji's view that the world trend is indeed turning and is shifting to the East.
Cultural integration in the context of 5 major changes
The new crown virus in 2020 reminds people that you are related to strangers thousands of miles away, and if you stick to the foundation of Western values - individualism, only emphasize "so-and-so first", it is impossible to respond to the epidemic together globally, and if you can't respond together, you will never win.
As the Süddeutsche Zeitung website's late 2020 article "What Can We Learn from Asia" put it: "How do we defeat COVID-19?" Are we really only counting on vaccines to hit the market? Looking at Asia with a fresh, open eye may help to find answers. ”
What attitude should we have today when the world wind is shifting? I think the mind must be very clear.
Now the whole world is talking about the greatest change in a century: on the one hand, it may push mankind to a new and better historical stage; on the other hand, it may also lead to catastrophe.
Cultural integration is by no means just a matter of culture, it is inextricably linked to economics and politics.
The West has felt great pressure for change, with "strategic anxiety" and fear, which will be exploited by politicians to expand their "ticket bases" and not rule out being led to extremes.
Some American politicians are making a fuss about the Winter Olympics in Beijing, saying, "Communist China today is obviously more dangerous than Nazi Germany in 1936." This attempt to demonize China will not succeed, but it will affect Sino-US relations for a certain period of time and add difficulties to us in advancing.
On July 6, 2017, Trump went to Warsaw to deliver a speech to win Europe together to fight a "new Cold War" between China and Russia. "The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive," he said. Do we have faith in our values and can we defend them at all costs? ”
This sentence is worth savoring, the West really feels the existential crisis, and does not rule out the possibility of fighting to the death.
The question is: Is the crisis facing the West now of someone else's making or of its own making?
The United States always needs an enemy for the sake of domestic stability and unity, and even if you are indeed not its enemy, it will position you as an enemy, because this "post-truth" is good for it.
The CIA's internal documents read this : The United States wants to fight the Cold War, including trade wars, technology wars, diplomatic wars, intelligence wars, cyber wars, and cultural and public opinion wars.
They hope that China's youth will forget the Chinese virtues and "entertain themselves to death", hope that Chinese will not love the "People's Republic of China" even if they are "patriotic", and hope that the Chinese people will be separated from the Chinese Communist Party. They are even more fabricated china's nearly a hundred years of history and defamed the leaders of the Chinese people.
This kind of cultural public opinion war was once very rampant, and some people in China echoed it, and now this momentum has withered, but we still can't let down our vigilance.
6 True progress takes time to verify
In the face of the anti-China wave that the United States is trying to set off, we must deal with it calmly, first of all, do our own things well, and set a good example for the world. "Peach and plum do not speak, the next is their own", the people of the world will use their feet to vote, in the end who to follow, the decisive role is how you go.
This process will never be smooth sailing, and we must be vigilant, which can really be described as "heaven and hell in one thought".
Finally, I would like to quote two paragraphs to share with my library friends.
One passage is what Tolstoy said: "Really progressive activity takes place over centuries. Most people just live the life of animals, and they only blindly follow the public opinion of society for various problems in the human world. Mental effort, like the seed that can grow a great tree, is invisible to the eye. But obvious changes in human social life are taking place in it. ”
This passage tells us that changes in thinking and culture are long-term and cannot be achieved overnight. Do down-to-earth, obscure work. In addition to developing the economy and high technology, you translate a good book, write a good article, skillfully use the Internet, and so on, all of which are "silently moving", and you must have a clear direction and persevere in doing it.
Another passage is russell's visit to China in 1920: "In the next two centuries, the whole world will be decisively influenced by China, whether for good or bad." ”
"Can the strengths and virtues of Chinese survive in the world? Or is China bound to be tainted with the sins of harming others and benefiting others and taking advantage of its neighbors in order to survive on its own? If Chinese really imitated the peoples who invaded China, what kind of system would we become as a whole? ”
He was a Western philosopher with a sense of justice and a love of China who gave us advice. Now, 100 years have passed, and I believe that Chinese people will not disappoint him in the next 100 years.
In short, the change of "Hedong and Hexi" mentioned by Mr. Ji is underway, which makes people see more and more clearly. If we continue to work hard and continue the new Long March under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, which has dominated the earth-shaking changes of the past 100 years, a new culture that integrates the essence of Eastern and Western cultures will surely emerge.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Gu Wanquan Text Editor: Dong Siyun Caption Source: Xinhua News Agency Photo Editor: Zhu Xuan
Source: Author: Zhan Dexiong, a lookout think tank