China still lacks the right ‘soil’ for modernisation (Part 2)

According to Mr Lee Kuan Yew, China has more obstacles to overcome in its progress than most observers recognise. Chief among them are problems of governance, especially the absence of the rule of law. In today’s China, he said, the rule of law is closer to the rule of the emperor. Here we have a huge country where small emperors exercise tremendous local influence across a vast expanse, informed by cultural habits that limit imagination and creativity and reward conformity.

There is also the shaping of thought and language through epigrams and 4,000 years of classic texts that suggest everything worth saying has already been said (and said better by the ancients). In addition, it is exceedingly difficult for foreigners to learn the challenging language of Mandarin sufficiently to embrace China and be embraced by Chinese society. All this puts serious constraints on China’s ability to attract talent from other parts of the world.

In 2006, Mr Lee predicted that China would need at least 30 to 50 years of keeping its head down and working hard before it could attain true revival. When China came up with the slogan “peaceful rise”, it was he who suggested that it should be changed to “peaceful development”, so as not to provoke other countries.

While Mr Lee found the perception and attitude of the Chinese leaders at that time quite reassuring, he warned that a future generation of leaders might develop an overblown view of themselves, lose their head, and go toe to toe with the US prematurely. He thought that would be the beginning of China’s misfortunes, a subversive mistake.

In the face of suppression, decoupling and chain-breaking by the West, an emphasis on self-reliance is a natural response for any country. But self-reliance can be misleading, because it encourages an isolationist mentality, relying on “holding its breath” and enduring rather than “improving its soil” for innovation as a response.

It may get propelled by raging nationalism to go further and further down the path of isolation and solitude. The long-term consequence would surely be a gradual slip into outmodedness because the software for innovation will never be made better just by holding in its breath. The correct attitude and response should be “Renzhengfeiism”.

Now, the all-round suppression of Huawei as a company by a superpower is something unprecedented. The superpower in question had even declared a “state of national emergency” over the company. However, by many people’s standards, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei could be seen as someone who holds the highest admiration for Westerners.

Ren once hired an entire management team from a well-known American company to take over Huawei. He got them to teach Huawei’s folks, hand on hand, to run his enterprise with America’s most advanced management methods — that is to say, to show them culturally defined attitudes and behavioural patterns that were difficult to convey in words and could only be taught by example in practice.

In the eyes of many, this was outright “wholesale Westernisation”, a sign of him adoring and fawning over the Westerners. But Ren Zhengfei aimed to tackle and overcome the cultural idiosyncrasies within Huawei that originated from Chinese societal norms. He believed that this approach was the most effective and thorough.

There are similar success stories elsewhere. For example, both Singapore and Hong Kong inherited and retained the legal system left behind by the British colonial authorities in toto, and that played a key role in their economic take-off. Thanks to the confidence, sense of security and predictability afforded by this legal system, these two places have been able to attract many large corporations and high-end talent, enabling them to excel and shine in the global economic arena despite being geographically miniscule. Singapore’s GDP is even higher than that of Malaysia, from which the city-state was expelled in 1965.

Whenever Huawei’s employees run into their boss Ren Zhengfei and appear overly cordial in greeting him, he gets upset and reprimands them for currying favour with the leader. Ingratiating oneself with the leadership is at the heart of the Chinese culture of practicalities and arguably a major impediment to China’s modernisation. Ren’s efforts are directed towards reforming the longstanding cultural norms his staff have imported from society, and aims to cultivate a new corporate culture.

Ren Zhengfei never holds back on praising the US. He is very grateful to the American companies that have had a cooperative relationship with Huawei. As he would put it: “I still want to learn from you even though you suppress me, because you are the most advanced. Who else am I going to learn from?” Such is the determination to stay on no matter what.

But it is not about Westernisation per se. Not only does Ren not reject the fine elements of Chinese culture, he also holds in high regard some of the qualities from the Chinese Communist Party’s red culture, especially the spirit of all-out hard work, sacrifice and unwavering perseverance as shown during the party’s historical struggle to establish its rule over China.

He spends a lot of money to invite experts to lecture on this tradition for Huawei. What Ren strives to do is to integrate the best from the three cultural traditions — Chinese, Western and “red” — so as to develop a better and more resilient corporate culture.

National rejuvenation has to be marked by a corresponding degree of advancement in science and technology. If the so-called “Four Confidences” is put forth too soon and used too broadly and excessively as a slogan, it would easily be reduced to superficial frippery or even be misleading.

The true essence of Renzhengfeiism is about leveraging the strengths of others to compensate for one’s own shortcomings, ultimately overcoming weaknesses. This approach has absolutely nothing to do with self-respect and self-confidence.

With much generic talk of “self-confidence”, there is a risk of veering towards unnecessary conflict and clinging to outdated ways, thereby missing opportunities to learn from others’ strengths and address shortcomings.

In Bill Gates’ retrospection of his entrepreneurial journey, he advised caution to those aspiring to follow his path: Before achieving success, your self-respect holds little value to others and may even bring you harm. Our common saying “a weak nation has no diplomacy” is based on a similar truth.

Gates’ present stature is rooted in his past humility. This mirrors Deng Xiaoping’s wisdom of maintaining a low profile and patiently biding one’s time.

Even in the bloody years under Stalin, the Soviet Union had produced veritable masters in different fields. Think the great musician Shostakovich, and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky who single-handedly worked out almost all the technical details of astronautics, as well as several Nobel laureates for physics. Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table of elements from the Tsarist era still constitutes part of the foundation of chemistry today.

From the time of Peter the Great onwards, Russian elites had been wholly absorbed in learning from the West. Peter himself even made private visits to Western European countries in the guise of a workman for this purpose. By the time of the October Revolution, Western culture, etiquette and methods of thought were already deeply ingrained, at least in the scientific community.

Japan too has done well in assimilating Western academic culture. The country boasts 29 Nobel Prize winners to date. In the case of China, many masters emerged during the Republican period, most of whom had spent time in the West and studied there. All these attest to the importance of Western-style academic culture as general ethos.

Should the West succeed in decoupling China from its science and technology research and education, the foundation of China’s scientific and technological research would be greatly weakened, such that China would have to go down the path of isolated technological development.

The situation could be worse than it was in the 1950s, because back in those days there was a “big brother” — the USSR — strong enough to vie neck-to-neck with the US. The first artificial satellite in human history was launched by the Soviets, and it sparked the Sputnik moment for the US, driving it to enter a state of emergency and mobilise its resources on a national scale to catch up.

With the Soviet Union’s help, China was able to build up a relatively complete industrial system for itself by the time Mao Zedong passed away. Presently, however, China stands quite isolated face-to-face with the US.

To free itself from isolation, it has to practise Renzhengfeiism — that is to say, it has to maintain as many relations with the US as possible with brazen-faced doggedness, rather than put up a tough front for the sake of pride. That’s because the weaknesses of Chinese academia cannot be overcome in the short term, but can only be made up for by assimilating America’s strengths.

The purpose of stubbornly hanging on is to assimilate and thereby achieve long-term benefits. However, this requires China to proactively contribute and engage positively to achieve mutual success. Through these efforts, China could become an integral part of the forefront ecosystem of science and technology.

There are many ways to bring this about. For example, China can leverage the attraction of its huge market or make full use of the connections and partnerships it has built up over decades of reform and opening up, ensuring continuous reinforcement and expansion. It can also take advantage of the conflict of interests between the US and the other developed countries as the US turns inward — after all, these countries have their own interests to safeguard, and cannot always bear the costs of the American policy containing China.

Indeed, as the US is cutting back on its spending and generosity abroad drastically, they will gradually feel that the alliance with America brings no great profit and too much trouble. Opportunities for China are bound to emerge over time.

The world has changed. Lessons learnt from history (e.g., the Thucydides Trap) may not still apply. As the global south grows stronger, the West will make adjustments on their end even without the challenge from China.

In particular, the US is going to feel that continuing in the role it has played since World War II is a bit too much to bear, and the benefits are diminishing. The role becomes something it both resents and finds difficult to relinquish. Donald Trump for one has always complained about America’s allies and China mooching off his country for a long time. The time will come when the fight for hegemony between China and the US no longer has much meaning. The two countries will then very likely get back together again as partners.

The inevitable result of “America First” is the superpower’s inward contraction, which will leave many gaps in the global arena that need to be filled in by other countries or international organisations. China will naturally play a part. But the world will be more complex by then.

China lacks experience, and taking America’s place in toto would be a very heavy burden that does not bring much benefit. It is not in China’s national interest to take up the sceptre. Nevertheless, we cannot rule out the possibility that leaders who want to make a name for themselves in history, along with strongly vanity-driven intellectuals, will push China hard to take on international responsibilities.

Despite its hefty dominance, Western culture may not necessarily bring about happiness. The intense competition and involution that it forces upon the masses will make more and more people weary or feel overwhelmed and burnt out. “Lying flat” will rise up as a counterculture. People are also turning to the spiritual pursuit of happiness and the meaning of life. By that time, Chinese culture in its cleansed and refined form could bring its strengths to bear, and enter the world’s mainstream.

Right there is one possibility for Chinese-Western partnership. When it comes to innovation and material production, the US is good at turning zero into one, whereas China is good at quickly unfolding one into one hundred. The US is good at creating new things, while China is good at flipping such creations into refreshing variations, value-for-money commodities. There lies the second possibility for partnership.

As we conclude, it must be noted that the West as pictured in this essay is idealised. In methodological terms, it is what we call an “ideal type”, employed to highlight key similarities and differences through comparisons and contrasts, so as to arrive at effective solutions.

Undoubtedly the West has various shortcomings of its own, some of which are more serious than China’s. Having developed to the present extent, China has good reasons to be proud of itself. Even so, Chairman Mao taught us that “humility makes people improve, pride makes people fall behind”. That is the truth.

Removing and transforming undesirable traits from Chinese culture, taking in culture from elsewhere surgically in a selective, focused and purposeful manner — these have proved effective in the cases of Huawei, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Let us not get caught up with the Chinese/Western demarcation, but focus on the practical effects. The Four Confidences should be understood as a call to strive for a higher level of attainment in the realms of path, theory, system and culture.

If taken to mean that China’s current state is the best, it might lead people to cling to outmoded ways. By using the mirror of the idealised West to show a clear reflection of China’s weaknesses, we can get a sense of the right direction, and formulate a corresponding course of action.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “中国仍缺乏现代化土壤（下）”.

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