In 1988, a young professor of international relations at Fudan University in China travelled the length and breadth of the USA for half a year. He wanted to understand that great country in depth, at a time when the Soviet Union was coming to an end, Japan was challenging the US for the status of the world’s leading economy and the latter was intensifying its neoliberal process begun in the 70s.
Wang Huning, the ‘Chinese Tocqueville’, as he has since become known, warns in the preface to his ‘America against America’ (published in 1991) that ‘obviously, I have studied and seen the United States as a society, more as an observer than as a researcher’.
A Nation of Contradictions
This is an honest testimonial from someone who has managed to perceptively grasp many of the characteristics of the social reality of a diverse country at a particular historical moment. Probably inspired by the film Kramer vs Kramer (1979) – to which he makes a small reference – the drama of a child who sees his parents divorcing and going their separate ways could be a criticism of the extreme individualism of that society.
This is a sociological document of great interest, timeless even though it was written almost four decades ago. It praises the many virtues of a country steeped in contradictions. Wang wants to absorb the good examples into China: entrepreneurship, a pragmatic spirit, respect for tradition, a compulsion for modernity, a symbiosis that is not always easy to understand.
Right at the start of the book, the author recognises that although Marxism was correct in its analysis of capitalism, it was wrong in its focus. ‘For a long time, driven by the reinforcement of ideology, there was a total rejection of capitalism, which was influenced by dogmatism, which prevented people from judging capitalist society objectively and scientifically.’ To this self-criticism, he adds that under “left-wing ideology”, which took the class struggle as its outline, our perspective of the whole world was disturbed and people were prevented from learning from the advanced experience of other countries’.
But he also sees in the American society of the 80s the seeds of a social disaster to come: ‘In a commodity economy, the power of money is irresistible. Without a force to guide it, people will orientate themselves towards profit. This will eventually lead to serious social problems.’ Any doubts about the accuracy of his prognosis?
In his retrospective of the evolution of what was then the world’s largest economy, the author talks about the paradoxes that American society has experienced since the Mayflower arrived at the shores of New England. From the debate about the primacy of freedom over equality, to the then growing crises of values, poverty, extreme inequality, crime and drugs, Wang provides a frank critique of the dubious reality of the USA at the end of the 80s.
The growing power of lobbies with ramifications in academia, the public service linked to the two-party system that controls everything, the large corporations, the lack of authority, the breakdown of nuclear institutions like the family. None of these are examples to be followed, but they are worth reflecting on.
It doesn’t mention a number of other factors that have led to the current limit situation, such as financialisation, the plague of weapons, both internal and externally, endless wars or corruption, but it is a comprehensive and very descriptive text. Simple, but engaging.
As far as international relations are concerned, Wang warned that ‘for a long time, the Americans didn’t want to recognise Japan’s success […] I think they will face a similar situation again’ and that it will be ‘then that the Americans will really reflect on their politics, economy and culture’, warning that ‘if we want to surpass the Americans, we have to do one thing: surpass them in science and technology.’
A Timely Reflection on Global Power
Almost four decades later, China is now the leader in 37 of the 44 critical technologies covering defence, space, robotics, energy, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, advanced materials and the main areas of quantum technology, as well as being by far the country that produces the most STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) graduates each year.
The author seems to criticise the decadent path taken by the US on the left, with capitalism and liberalism as its foundations. A path inversely parallel to the one China had already embarked on at the beginning of the 70s. He critically mentions the ‘growth of egalitarianism, nihilism and relativism in contemporary American culture’ and predicts the country’s decadence due to these germs.
Wang is today one of the main figures in the Chinese system. A man very close to and considered one of President Xi Jinping’s top ideologues, and before Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. He is often described in the Western press as the ‘éminence grise’ of the CCP, the ‘man behind the curtain’.
Given the current geopolitical moment in which China’s rise coincides with a clear resizing of US global power, ‘America against America’ has attracted renewed interest from the Western public, particularly in the US. At the time of the pandemic, numbers of the original edition could be found on eBay for up to $3,500. Fortunately, new editions have been published so that we have access to this great testimony, which partly explains the complexity of relations between the world’s two largest economies today.
On the eve of the US elections, at such a critical moment in international relations, this is an extremely well-timed book to understand much of what motivates the US to be in the situation it is in. ‘It can be said that Japan was only the first nation to challenge the United States. In the next century, more nations are likely to challenge the United States as well. That’s when the Americans will really reflect on their politics, economy and culture,’ he foreshadowed.
In a kind of Hegelian dialectic, Wang’s book-experience has certainly helped to add to the Chinese journey that began in 1949, a correction of a traditionalist, conservative, but above all pragmatic slant, also absorbing for itself the best of the American experience. This is how the People’s Republic has been steering its unequivocally socialist path, but on the right side. Only those who don’t want to can’t see the outcome.
Ricardo Nuno Costa ‒ geopolitical expert, writer, columnist, and editor-in-chief of geopol.pt, especially for «New Eastern Outlook»
