Moralization of China

Xin Liu

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9789813230248
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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Alongside China's vast material development, there came a change of its mental habits, largely affected by the technological revolution in the means of mass communication. This book shows how such a change has brought — and yet been brought by — a new form of pictorial thought, essentially sensuous and imagery, which is suggesting a possible future for the world. Today's China is different from what it used to be; the Maoist years appear, even to the official mind, an absurdity; and this difference is evident in the replacement of the Maoist mass-politics by what should be called "Moral politics", which is petty and personal. It is the moralizing practice that characterizes today's China, when the birth of so-called "ordinary people", taken as a collection of individual authors of their own private lives and personal stories, became an acknowledged social fact, proliferating in all kinds of mass media. This study traces the birth of "ordinary people" to the beginning of the century, when the reformation of the political in terms of personal dilemmas or moral groans began. From the beginning of this century, the moral content of Chinese politics is more and more fulfilled by such as problems of marriage or sexual affairs. In other words, this is participant observation of an affective change in the Chinese mind, where and when sociology became photographic, i.e. the photographer a natural sociologist, and the mold of Facebook or Wechat communication has reshaped the ideographic tradition of its writing system. This is yet another "Cultural Revolution" on the ruins of the Maoist revolution.

--> Contents:

• Preface
• Introductory
• After Mao: Mobility and Virtuality
• Cinematographic Reality: the Pictorial Thought
• Anamorphosis or the Order of Facebooks
• Absolute Privacy and Possessive Narcissism
• Afterword
• Acknowledgements
• References

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--> Readership: Policymakers, academics, professionals, undergraduate and graduate students interested in Moralization of China, Maoism, global China and its postmodern transformation. -->
Keywords:Moralization of China;Maoism;Pictorial Thought;Public Intellectuals;Photographic Reality;Facebook-Communication;Absolute Privacy;Narcissism and Individualism;Confessional Publicity;Global China and Its Postmodern TransformationReview: Key Features:

• Conceptual ethnography: what social theory needs today
• Critical, not only of China but also the means of mass-communication in general
• A new style of thinking which is looking at our own future prospects

Chapter
I

After Mao: Mobility and Virtuality

Questioning how to start is to start questioning: How can we approach, from the other shore of an enormous ocean, what is occurring in today’s China, which is no longer simply Chinese in its essential significations? In other words, what is the meaning of such a grandeur technomaterialistic transformation, i.e. a different United States that China has produced, which has signified much more than its domestic production? For example, if one may ask, should we approach China’s reform, what has happened after the death of Mao, as imitation? In other words, is it merely a reproduction of certain modern schemes of things, i.e. “the order of things,” in another location? If such is our intention, with a view on other parts of the world, India or Brazil, or Africa or Russia, whatever examples we may have in mind, there must be the question of imitation, once an important theoretical conception. For a preliminary and yet useful reflection, let us return to an older place of reference, i.e. to borrow an image of theory from Gabriel Tarde’s Laws of Imitation. According to Tarde, there are two kinds of imitation in history. One is what he calls “custom imitation,” i.e. when the past and the future constituted people’s chief concerns for knowledge and learning, whereas in modern times, when innovations or inventions have become common, it is what he calls “fashion imitation” that comes to the forehead of man, whose attention is here and now, with his aim for knowing as nothing more than a continuous expansion in space. He took up religion as an example: “When the spirit of Custom is in full sway, religious sentiment is directed towards the past or the future, man’s great preoccupation is centered about his ancestors and his posthumous life, as in China or Egypt, or about his posterity, as in Israel. In a word, devout spirit is supported by the thought of the infinite in time. On the contrary, where the spirit of Fashion is fully triumphant, religious sentiment receives its liveliest inspirations and its most spontaneous impulses from the thought of the immensity of the earth and heavens, from the conception of a universe whose boundaries are forever receding and of a great omnipresent God, the common father of all beings scattered throughout the infinity of space” (Tarde, 1903, 281). The tendency for making oneself always ready for new fashions, invented by other people, seems to fit the picture of today’s China, at least in appearance. Reform, the old Tarde might have said, is fashion imitation. One could even go further in saying that Maoism terminated the old habit of customary imitation, immanent in the Confucian doctrine, and paved the way for today’s new fashion imitation.¹ In other words, Maoism as revolution means not only a change of political power but also a historical departure from custom imitation, having thus made possible for China’s quick assimilation to the new fashion of digital capitalism today.

After three decades of economic reform, if visiting China, one would be struck by her quick maturity in virtual sociality, nurturing a different possibility of being in history and society. Human flesh search engines or the sheer possibility of communicating in an Internet café to an anonymous lover, a pure enjoyment for young people, constitute a new world of indifference to the old passions. On Maoist ruins grows a new crop of sentiments, fertilized and made possible by the digital revolution in mass communication; everyone sees the possible effect of this revolution, though, by no means does everyone understand it in the same way. Some think it an entirely new happening and, supposing it a global inevitability and never wishing to link it to any immediate or foreseeable political change, hope that they can, while benefiting from it, still check it or bring it under control by the old authority; others think it irresistible, because it represents to their minds a most persistent tendency of global advancement — an advancement that will sooner or later change the character or temperament of those who have allowed it to come into their lives in the first place. There seems to be an old question renewed: What is the relationship of technological advancement to political freedom? Is what is happening in China, i.e. a fast accumulation of technological and economic power, necessarily a sign of its political democratization in the near future? Is it possible to imitate America, according to the official mind of China, without having to import any of its values, political or social? Will this technological revolution in mass communication, in the long run, create social conditions in favor of those who have created this technology? With solidarity defined by connectivity rather than collectivity, should the consequences of democracy in society, as Alexis de Tocqueville has shown, be similar for tomorrow’s China? Or is it merely an appearance of resemblance, i.e. nothing but another ephemeral taking place like Maoism itself, considering the extraordinary longue durée of Chinese tradition?

In today’s China, mobility — if not freedom — has gained a new value.² The physical movement, which is tied to social mobility, is greatly inspired by the revolution in mass communication — delivering a most obsequious and hyperactive child of digital capitalism. Cellular-phonic, inter-net-worked, televised connectivity of men produces and is produced by a virtual reality which is new to China — not simply in a technological sense but in the sense that it has given a new twist to the mind of man. To understand this change, rather than posing an old question about state–society relations, one must try to understand the photographical or cinematographic mode of life that China now embraces, in which the pictorial thought, i.e. thought without thinking, predominates. Symbols or metaphors in verbal forms, such as those powerful words delivered by Mao himself, came to be replaced by images and photos, so vast an amount on the Chinese Internet, that have made thought indistinguishable from mere feelings. Thought is so pictorialized, a bare demonstration of the power of digital technology, that it has become a perfect means for mass communication of their sentiments. It is not only convenient, with which a greater commercial world has been achieved; it is also playful, a toy for the multitude that have never cared much about meaning and serious knowledge. A chat room on the Chinese Internet may be compared with a mass meeting during the Maoist years, when the meaning of a word or sentence can never be secured by their designated significations. True it is that, on the Internet, virtual violence has replaced real fists, but the temperature of a boiling head fighting his enemies in virtual space could have just been as high as that of a Red Guard fighting his class enemies. The masses are sentimental; they sentimentalize almost everything, and now a perfect means for their sentimentalization is provided by the Internet communication, surely a democratic innovation for the multitude’s being in the world.

The scenery, which seems to have not changed much as the city grows taller, is almost a tourist spot now: the East Gate of Renmin University (Renda in Mandarin) in the northwest of Beijing, an increasingly popular area of attractions not only for its famous universities but also for its expanding entertainment and shopping centers. At the gate, a hefty, granite façade condescends toward a horde of young people, lively but still a little awkward in their movements, touring the capital in the summer, taking pictures in front of the grand gate, impressive but not beautiful, in order to make sure that, if one did not get to study there, at least in one’s album a photographic memory of its famed gate be kept. Summer provides a good opportunity for ethnographic observations. There were many young students, not Renda’s own, who came to take pictures there, and they came with their lovers or friends, some even with their parents or relatives, and they postured themselves in front of the gate, like fashion models at work, extremely self-conscious of their own postures. A new underground train station was opened at the gate area, which has made even more tourists come around. Traveling in Beijing by train has become popular, nevertheless, buses are still one of the main transportational means for local people. If one took one of the buses that passed by, now supposedly with zero emission, one would perhaps hear a peculiar announcement by the ticketing-woman, “Next stop, the East Gate of Renda! For Renda or for Dangdai Shopping Mall or for a fake certificate, all get off here!” Could any foreign ear catch the accurate meaning of the announcement? “To get off for a fake certificate”? What does it mean? To sell counterfeit certificates, such as a student pass or a personal ID card or a driver’s license, has become a lucrative profession whose business assures the rights of a buyer’s market. Outside the East Gate of Renda, on sidewalks, under the shades of tiresome trees, there was a troop of women whose business is to try to get customers to buy counterfeit certificates — illegal but no secret to anyone. Those unconventional entrepreneurs are mothers, often still breast-feeding their babies, always having a little one in their arms. It is not unusual to see a pregnant woman that carries another little one in her arms, soliciting for the business. Their status as feeding mothers should make them exempt from any police harassment, a good strategic business ethics.

These entrepreneur-mammas are not themselves producers of counterfeit certificates; they are the retailers of the business; they are watching out for those, such as students or any passers-by, murmuring to each of those who pass by whether they want to purchase any fake certificate, such as a college degree or a personal ID card. Price is negotiable. If one needs a MBA degree, for whatever reasons, job-searching perhaps, one could start his or her negotiation with one of those dedicated businesswomen who have taken care of both their babies and their interests well. To buy a driver’s license is not uncommon, for example, and if the price is agreed, one will be led to a small lane nearby in order for the transaction to be finalized. In the case of getting a driver’s license, two possibilities exist: one could receive a real one with a bar code that the transportation police should recognize. In such a case as this, the fake one is a real driver’s license stolen from someone else, with the picture of a similar guy resembling one’s own looks. Another choice is to have a real picture of oneself on the license, but it is pasted on to a counterfeit new card, which cannot pass the police computer checks. There are many different kinds of needs for faking certificates, especially in cases of rural migrant workers looking for jobs in the cities. Many people know how to drive and drive well, for example, but they may not have the time or energy to take the driving test, involving a difficult and complicated procedure, and therefore a fake driver’s license would be helpful for their immediate need on a CV, for example, for employment purposes. For different purposes, the business caters different needs, which were demanding at the turn of the new century in particular. Nobody knows the actual number of transactions each woman made for a summer, but it must be a profitable business because it has brought so many caring mothers into such a peculiar day care system. Much less popular today, if compared with ten years ago, partly because of the rise of digital technology that has made the counterfeit certificating less feasible.

A recollection from a summer a few years ago, when I was doing field research in Beijing, would always bring me back to an unforgettable scene that happened at the East Gate of Renda. While standing by the gate and waiting for a colleague to show up, I turned around and saw a fight among three women, two of them being the business mothers. It was around five thirty, and people began to walk home in a sweltering summer. Nothing seemed unusual when a slightly older mother, in her early thirties perhaps, caressing a tender baby in her arms, chatted with a young student who, no more than twenty, just walked out from the gate, with an elegant straw hat on her head. Everything happened as if it would happen in a Hollywood movie: the young student said something to the businesswoman with whom she had been talking, but wanted to leave and could not. Had anyone realized what was happening than the mother, all of a sudden, stood up from where she sat and hit the student in her face while shouting and spitting at her. By this time, the businesswoman had put her baby, sound asleep, under her left armpit, then attacked her customer. It looked as if the girl did not prepare for this, shocked perhaps, and tried to run away from the spot, but her strength failed her, and a shower of fists fell on her face and shoulders. And yet worse became worse, because another woman, younger and also holding a little creature in hand, jumped into the fight, adding even more blows on the weaker target. A friend perhaps but definitely working for the same business, the two women struck down the girl, who had been stumbling, while trying to run away from the attack, in order to get back into campus. But she fell and was trampled by the two ferocious females, whose angry shouts were reverberating in the sticky air, with their babies unaffected, peacefully slumbering under their arms — if not having a good dream. In the end, with the help of a security guard, the student went back inside the campus. Although it happened in a span of a few minutes, hardly enough time for anyone to react, it seems to have lasted forever in the memory of an ethnographer.

Remark: Women and Violence

Whose fault it was, to begin with, is less significant a question than the recourse to violence as the settlement of a business disagreement, a question unavoidable for any proper sociological explanation. The physicality of its temper, not derived from human biology, is characteristic of this case, despite the unlikeliness of the situation, which should be no more than a business negotiation among women. Not the object of their retaliation but the manner in which it is invoked gives the ethnographic experience a theoretical bind. This example, for a very different reason, might have created in one’s mind a reflection on the violence of the Cultural Revolution — some young female teenager students washed their hands in the blood of others, such as those of their once beloved teachers, often white-haired of the same sex. It is not gender, either then or now, but a peculiar temper that those who have bred it has made the fight an easy solution. In this case, at the Gate of Renmin University, the most startling fact is not even the fight, but why did the second woman jump into the fight without any hesitation? Or rather, benignly thinking, why did she not try to stop the fight but made it aggravated? Did she know the cause? Did she need to know the cause or the reason of their disagreement? Or did she simply want to lend a hand to her relative or friend, a business partner of some sort or merely a dear comrade of the same class? By class allegiance? Or kinship ties? Or common business interests? What gave rise to the immediacy of her resolution is a troubling thought that keeps disturbing the mind of an ethnographer, a witness of another kind whose mind has never been troubled by the Balinese cockfight. It is not the fight itself, not even the origin of the problem that might well be the fault of the young student, but the immediacy of the second village woman’s reaction, her autoreaction one might say, that became puzzling: for it is the mode of impromptu being, not cultural conditioning, a vibrant modality of social existence, not social structuring, rural perhaps in its fundamental constitution but this time exploded in an urban setting, that should explain the taste for the spice of violence. This is a typical social reaction, the manifestation of temper by fists, many examples of which we have seen in today’s China, often reported by official media but not necessarily officiated, especially in those marginal spaces, i.e. places favored or frequented by certain rural–urban migrant workers.

The student might have done something inadequate, whose attitude toward rural women might have been hostile, and she might have insulted the first businesswoman, but all these are beyond our point: in open public, with their babies sound asleep in their arms, why did one jump into a fight like this, quite inconvenient even for themselves, if one should think rationally? This seemingly strange or paradoxical example, if without an ethnographic meditation on the violence of the Cultural Revolution, an anthropological reminiscence of the things past irresistible to the mind of the ethnographer, would mean perhaps a different meaning. Not an old storehouse for recollection, one’s memory is the guidance for his questioning: How have the material and especially technological changes in today’s China affected its throbbing modality of social existence, such as exemplified by its peasantry over many centuries? Is it the same old China or a new one now? As we have seen, if one were to trot the new territories of research in social sciences, with so vast a conquered world of publications on China, its consumerism, its urban development, its technological progress, its moral change, its cultural renovation, etc., one would find that an endless profusion of new works can be enlisted as evidence for China’s drastic changes; however, on the other hand, unfortunately, or fortunately, if one possesses the due patience of an old-fashioned ethnographer, one could also easily set up a PowerPoint presentation for the existence of a universe of counterexamples that should prove the opposite point of view, with the same vivid conviction, i.e. China has not changed much in both its heart and habit, at least not since the Maoist years, one might add, with the same degree of truth verifications. This is China, both old and new, both astonishing and perpetuating, both familiar and strange.

Violence we have encountered in daily life, we continue to encounter in a similar way that would remind us of the old days during the Cultural Revolution, although, true it is, the meaning of violence has changed. There is no longer a Maoist call for rebellion, there is no longer the passionate youth that wanted to destroy all the old traditions with their passionate struggles. But still there are masses, the people of another kind, i.e. the mobs in the eyes of Le Bon, such as those who conducted their business near Renda. The endeavor of ethnography, much less than a scientific inquiry, is an existential mode of questioning, a questioning that should penetrate the cultural interiority of another being of beings. This unfortunate example of women-fight, not Geertz’s cockfight, brings to the mind of an ethnographer an anthropological question: is there any change in the habits of heart for those who have become digitalized? In other words, what is the technological impact on the masses? What would be, if put in social–theoretical terms, the digital impact on the solidarity or conscience of men, such a vast number of them struggling for a better life in the name of popular justice or social equality? Given the fact that today’s China has become more and more economistic, more and more technologized, more and more individualized as some scholars have claimed, still the persistence of certain old habits, i.e. fists and teeth, being the essential means of arguments for the masses.³ It seems, the technicality of life has become more technologized, a global tendency of mercantilization, on the one side, but on the other, i.e. on the other side of the same bridge of occurrence, the perpetuation of the die-hard habits and sentiments for the masses whose mind is indistinguishable from their fists, just as those radical Maoist Red Guards who would have to think about the world by their interlocking arms.

Nursery came to obtain a unique significance for the spirit of Chinese capitalism, which should make both Puritanism and Confucianism ashamed.⁴ Those, fondling their babies in public, are the wives of certain migrant workers from China’s vast countryside, still an overwhelming preponderance in its social influence. The rural–urban migration, having supplied cheap labor for economic development, is the social context in which the East Gate of Renda gained its infamous tourist attraction. Their husbands are known as mingong, i.e. migrant la...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Series Editors
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface
• About the Author
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter I After Mao: Mobility and Virtuality
• Chapter II Cinematographic Reality: The Pictorial Thought
• Chapter III Anamorphosis or the Order of Facebooks
• Chapter IV Absolute Privacy and Possessive Narcissism
• Afterword
• Acknowledgments
• References