Beware Chinese development strategy
Hu Jintao has advocated state censorship
Samuel Huntington got it radically wrong when he imagined that the forthcoming major ‘clash of civilisations’ would be between Islam and the West. Yes, the world is still acting out George W. Bush’s fantasy ‘War on Terror’ but from a world-historic perspective the difference between Islam and the West reflects little more than what Freud would call the ‘narcissism of small differences’.
The so-called War on Terror is basically a family feud amongst the spiritual descendants of Abraham over who does the better job of upholding the sanctity of human life. The disagreement is serious but unfortunately it tends to be conducted by violent means. The bigger long-term problem concerns the China-oriented parts of Asia, for which the value of human life is itself so negotiable that it becomes a matter of intrinsic indifference. I speak from experience.For the last five years, I have taught in a summer school at the Helsingborg campus of the University of Lund in Sweden that George Soros has sponsored for the purpose of enlightening students from ex-Communist countries on the virtues of the ‘open society’, a phrase that Soros adopted from his former teacher at the LSE, Karl Popper. Those who teach in this school agree with Soros that free markets require free minds, free press and the rule of law.
However, a striking but chilling feature of the student body is that those from mainland China, decked out in American sweatshirts and Americanised accents, regularly query their own need to repeat the undeniably divisive and violent period associated with democratisation in the West, in order to enjoy the fruits of a booming capitalist economy. They seem quite comfortable operating within a ‘survival of the fittest’ framework associated with Social Darwinism – no doubt because they imagine themselves coming out on top. Government censorship, then, is simply a benign means that enables the fit to stay focussed on the prime objective, which is to make more money.
The Chinese may have devised a winning strategy, but only if the West adopts a laissez- faire attitude towards China, permitting it to engage in human rights violations within its own borders as long as it does not disrupt trade relations with the West. But this is no time to resort to relativism.
We need to keep up the pressure on China by both national and international means. Equally we need to shore up the resources of our major cultural allies in the region, India and Japan, who can provide a counterbalance to China.
Steve Fuller is Professor of Sociology at Warwick
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“The bigger long-term problem concerns the China-oriented parts of Asia, for which the value of human life is itself so negotiable that it becomes a matter of intrinsic indifference. ”
Nice. You do how massively racist this is right? In fact, it’s uncannily similar to something William Westmoreland, US commander in Vietnam, said decades ago:
“The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does a Westerner…We value life and human dignity. They don’t care about life and human dignity.”
Of course, this was a man carpet-bombing peasants on an industrial scale.
” the purpose of enlightening students from ex-Communist countries on the virtues of the ‘open society’”
Because the poor drones need the enlightenment of a currency speculator whose actions have thrown millions into poverty? Soros’ ‘Open Society’ tends to do it’s opening under your feet, like a trap door.
“Those who teach in this school agree with Soros that free markets require free minds, free press and the rule of law.”
Sadly a proposition not justified by history, in which the remolding of societies in the image of the abstraction “free market” has entailed censorship, dispossession, and coercion significant scales – and necessarily so.
“However, a striking but chilling feature of the student body is that those from mainland China, decked out in American sweatshirts and Americanised accents, regularly query their own need to repeat the undeniably divisive and violent period associated with democratisation in the West, in order to enjoy the fruits of a booming capitalist economy. They seem quite comfortable operating within a ’survival of the fittest’ framework associated with Social Darwinism – no doubt because they imagine themselves coming out on top. Government censorship, then, is simply a benign means that enables the fit to stay focussed on the prime objective, which is to make more money.”
“No doubt” this is not only shamelessly unsupported generalization, it is also dangerous. You do realize you’ve just accused en bloc the Chinese students at this university, indeed everywhere, of being “chilling” authoritarians “quite comfortable” with “social darwinism”, little more than survival machines who “imagine themselves coming out on top” (‘imagine’ because it’s a fantasy?).
You assert the ‘prime objective’ of these “chilling” drones is “to make more money”, except this is not particular to Chinese students – it is the basic injunction of capitalism, both in the sphere of ideology and practical necessity.
Your only novelty here is to effect a rather peculiar revision of traditional “Yellow Peril” tropes, combining them with a faux concern for the dehumanising aspects of capitalist society.
“The Chinese may have devised a winning strategy, but only if the West adopts a laissez- faire attitude towards China, permitting it to engage in human rights violations within its own borders as long as it does not disrupt trade relations with the West.”
So China does what it does because Father West permits it? In fact, “the West,” the ruling political and economic elites in ‘western states,’ do not adopt a laissez-faire attitude to China, but rather are actively complicit with and enabling of its suppression (for example providing surveillance technologies). This is because China and the West are locked in an economic symbiosis, and the two elites have more needs in common than they have with their own peoples.
“But this is no time to resort to relativism.”
Indeed, except this is precisely what you are doing in asserting the authoritarian nature of Chinese students. I’m afraid this is yet another example of Western particularism masquerading as a critique of relativism. It’s takes an especial chutzpah to invoke Huntingdon *against* relativism.
“We need to keep up the pressure on China by both national and international means. ”
Who is we? The people of the world concerned with the practices of the PRC regime? Or…
“Equally we need to shore up the resources of our major cultural allies in the region, India and Japan, who can provide a counterbalance to China.”
A “We” that has “cultural” allies in the region, that just happen to also be the West’s geopolitical allies, and who will somehow provide a “counterbalance” (how does “culture” counterbalance?).
By “We” you mean Western states, and what you are advocating is geopolitical maneuvering against a China you perceive to be a threat: no amount of ‘culturalist’ window dressing disguises this.
The sad product of your project is the propagation of racist generalisations about Chinese students as killer ants in “american sweatshirts”, which will do nothing but sour relations. But then perhaps that’s what you’d like?
Z sums it all up. This “professor” is scum.
“The bigger long-term problem concerns the China-oriented parts of Asia, for which the value of human life is itself so negotiable that it becomes a matter of intrinsic indifference.”
Fuller owes us a very good explanation about this sentence.
I think this article explains quite a lot: http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Fuller.cfm
Why is Nouse publishing an article from this guy anyway?
Why is Nouse publishing articles which could be offencive to a large proportion of the students on campus? Seriously, what were the editors thinking on this one?
*offensive
One can only wonder why he claims that he identifies with the left when he says things such as “free markets require free minds, free press and the rule of law.”
Apparently, he also identifies as a ‘secular humanist’, while at the same time being one of the most prominent supporters of Intelligent Design and saying that he’s “very sympathetic to Christian ideas”, but just doesn’t “go to church or belong to a particular demonination.”
What a hypocrite.
Seriously guys, there are some extremely dubious statements made in this; there isn’t any news, comment or worth in what he’s saying, he’s a Professor from another University who, looking through the internet, has very little value outside of “postmodern philosophy-sociology” which in my mind makes his work itself dubious (without looking through it).
Indeed he is a ‘secular humanist’ but also ‘Christian’ and his most famous book has widely been denounced by educated fellows worldwide as riddled with scientific mistakes within the scientific arguments and theological mistakes within the theological arguments (i.e. by both sides).
He himself has no worth, the piece has no worth, it’s verging on extreme racism against a reasonably large number of students at our university and I would urge you to remove it! Speaking as myself, as always, and not as an Officer.
Interesting: No one here seems to be Chinese. Fuller may have point!
No one in the university (there are plenty)? No one on this message board (how do you know)? And even if that were true, why would that mean that Fuller had a point?
Well, you’d think that if everything he’s saying is so offensive to the Chinese people — someone actually called Fuller a ‘racist’ (why not simply ‘culturalist’?) — then shouldn’t self-defined Chinese people object to what he’s saying? It would certainly add some rhetorical force to their argument. My guess, though, is that most of Fuller’s respondents here are White, politically correct types on a guilt trip that Fuller managed to trigger in them. By the way, people here should dig a bit deeper than negative Wikipedia comments to figure out what Fuller is about. (By the way, the Talk Reason article is a joke — it barely cites anything Fuller has actually said!) The Guardian did an interview with him a couple of years ago that puts his position more in perspective. You can find that on the Wikipedia page.
You beneficially apply the `narcissism of small differences’ to Abrahamic cultures, but I believe this analyses bears still more fruits when applied to all of mankind’s various conditioning, because we share the same classes of wants.
Concretely, the China man and the French man are both playing by the same rules as individuals in different circumstances. Their nation state operate in the same conceptual and physical worlds and even influence one another.
The duality concept is a useful crutch for understanding mutually dependant phenomena: there is much censorship, thought shepherding and governmentally propogated information in every national-type entity. Yin contains the seeds of yang; the totalitarian rulers have bred a vast generation of highly educated people with access to the full range of publicly available information in the west. This generation has the unshirkable responsibility to lead from the top in the China of the future.