Lawfare Daily: Ancient China and Modern Politics

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(upbeat music) So a long came legalist thinkers, and I think Shanghai is as negative, you know, as like pessimistic about human nature as kind of faces.

Shanghai came first. He's one who developed his view that we need to rely on harsh laws to govern society. It's the law fair podcast.

I'm Michael Fiber, senior editor at law fair. Sitting down today with Daniel Bell, a professor at the University of Hong Kong who recently wrote, "Why ancient Chinese political thought bags?" We're in a current time where,

if China feels encircled by other powers, and if it feels that its security is under a great deal of danger, frankly, the legalist school, even if it's not labeled as such,

will become more influential. We're gonna talk about the antecedents and early days of Chinese philosophy and what those various schools of thought can tell us about Chinese public policy and international relations

in our own. I will confess, I was very much looking forward to reading this book when I saw the sort of preview of it in Princeton University Press's catalog because despite having studied Chinese culture

and the Chinese language myself, my knowledge of Chinese political theory and Chinese philosophy, particularly in the pre-unification period, really represented a lacuna in my education.

And as a result, I approached this book in a very particular way. And I'm gonna start with the question that is both a confession and an invitation for you to critique me about how I read it,

which I realized is a bit unusual,

“but I think it would be a good way for us”

to sort of dive into things. And because United States audiences are not really taught at any point in any mandatory curriculum about Eastern political philosophy,

to Western philosophers with whom I was familiar.

It was very hard for me to read about the legalist scholars without instinctively thinking of people from Machiavelli to Carl Schmitt and everything in between. And you have one dialogue in the book

where one of the proxies for the philosophers argues against the sort of indulgence in music that is so much a part of Western culture. And I'm almost positive you to not intend this, but I instantly thought back to Alan Bloom's closing

of the American mind where he has a chapter that has very much not aged well, where he blames much of 1980's societies, hills on rock and roll. Is this a fair way to approach learning about Chinese political theory

or am I guilty of sort of hovering it

“or engaging in what Edward Saeed would have called Orientalism?”

- No, I think it's very useful too. It's a good question, actually. It's very useful to draw parallels with thinkers and ideas that one is already familiar with because there are commonalities and part of,

I selected the political traditions that argued about issues that are timeless and that don't just apply in one particular society or at one particular time. So I would expect the reader to draw comparisons

with ideas that they're already familiar with. That said, I mean, it's worth keeping in mind key differences as well, right? I mean, I think the legalists, in Chinese it's Fajia. Sometimes it's transit is realism.

I think they're more like hardcore Machiavellian than anything Machiavellia ever said. I mean, on issues like, you know, for Hanfeza, for example, who's the thinker who systematized different strands of a legalist tradition,

she was pretty, the idea that you're born bad and you stay bad. I mean, there's no compromise there. And he didn't foresee the possibility of a kind of society that relies more on what we'd called today's South Power

to achieve social order. Whereas Machiavellia in the prince, it was a particular text directed at a ruler and he was hoping to get into power. But when he wasn't successful and when he was a pure political theorist,

he defended something as much closer to the Republican ideals. In the case of Hanfeza, you know, and I think Shangyang, the other legalist, thinker that I deal with, I mean,

they were really, really hardcore, real, polytic thinkers

“who saw the only way to secure social orders,”

especially in the chaotic times that they were writing in, is to have a kind of ruthless commitment to laws that generate fear and punishment with no mercy and also to have a kind of objective military meritocracy as a way of increasing state power.

You know, as you'll recall in the Shangyang, it's literally measurable by the number of the captivated heads of enemy soldiers. They really don't care what goes through people's minds. You know, it's a purely, you know,

they thought there's purely objective and behavioral way of securing social order. And that's, and we need to rely on those, on those harsh means to do it. And they didn't force, so it's more consistently,

let's say Machiavelli and then anything Machiavelli ever wrote. - I would totally agree with that. And you talked about the chaotic time in which these thinkers lived. I want to go through three questions

and we'll take them one by one, but I think they're a good background

“before we get into the substance in the book.”

The first question is going to be,

you have a very firm temporal cut-off in terms of the period, which you were examining. There are a number of political theorists who came after the chin dynasty, but you stopped before a unification.

So I want to talk about why you chose that period, then I'd like to talk about why you chose the eight thinkers that you did in particular. And then I want to talk about an intuition I had in reading the book as a whole

before we get to the individual dialogues. But let's start with the time question. Even the American public that is most familiar with Chinese history probably doesn't know a lot about the area you're writing.

If you look at Jonathan Spencer's search for modern China, which is probably the best selling soup to notts history of the mainland in the United States,

is something like 10 or 15 to one, just in terms of raw page numbers. So what was the advantage or the decision process

“that led you to focusing entirely on the preaching era?”

- I'm a political theorist, and I'm interested first

and foremost in great political theorizing. And I think that the greatest political theorists in China's history were in that period. It was the spring and autumn and later warring states period before China was unified in two to one BCE.

And there was especially in the warring states period as a name suggests constant warfare between states struggling for supremacy. But while it's interesting, that was tremendous amount of intellectual freedom.

I mean, these thinkers could literally wrong from state to state try to persuade rulers without their ideas. And if they succeeded fine, if they didn't, they would go to another state and this sort of atmosphere, I think allowed for this tremendous flourishing of great ideas

and the four major political traditions that were most influential throughout Chinese history. I mean, the great founding thinkers emerge from this period. So you had the Confucian tradition with Confucius and mentions and shins as a three great thinkers.

You had the Taoist tradition with,

“and I think Drongset is the greatest thinker in the Taoist tradition.”

And then you have the legalist tradition as we already discussed. You had thinkers like Shanghai and Hanfeizi. And in the most as well, who were arguably the after the unification of China, the least influential,

but there's still argued about issues that are timeless and fascinating. And what's also interesting is that these thinkers were arguing with each other. I mean, they were literally sometimes they were written in dialogue.

I mean, I just thought it's real dialogue. No, I mean, I learned Plato, like many of us and a lot of the play-tonic texts, I think, yes, Socrates, I agree, Socrates. Please go on, Socrates.

These guys were really after each other's throats. And in literally, in some cases, like when Shinsa, to my mind, the greatest political thinker in the Chinese tradition, who systematized different strands of the Confucian tradition, and then he had a student Hanfeizi

who systematized the strands of legalists who was literally arguing for policies that would justify the illimination of his teacher.

“You know, I can imagine that level of difference, right?”

So he had these really great thinkers in these times who literally set the intellectual agenda from much of Chinese history. And they were arguing about issues, they're still highly relevant today, like just an unjust war,

you know, whether we should use law or morality to reduce corruption government, whether state should fund musical arts and culture. And also, what is a appropriate kind of family law? So I don't know if that's a good enough justification.

No, it is, I think what you're describing is a very real intellectual flowering. That is not limited to one school of thought. The thing that came to mind is sort of the great debates, and, you know, 19th and 20th century

between analytic schools of philosophy and great Britain and the continental schools, only even that seems narrow compared to what was going on in the seven months, it's period. And part of that capaciousness of those dialogues

that we're happening in China is that there were dozens of thinkers and writers in any given school. You mentioned the four main schools and you mentioned some of the thinkers,

but you ultimately go with eight thinkers in particular.

And there was one that I was sort of curious, you did not go with and you actually address that in your afterwards, which you frame almost is a mea culpa. So, you know, 'cause I kept thinking like,

why is Lao Zha not mentioned at any point? And you actually provide a very good answer at the end. But I was wondering if you could sort of speak just as to how you selected the eight thinkers in specific to represent or serve as meta-names

for their general schools of thought. - Well, I think our thinkers that had the deepest ideas and also the greatest political influence. Lao Zha, of course, you know, the author of the Tao De Jing,

this classic of way and virtue. I mean, it's hugely influential text, but it's little minds and very kind of obscure and almost impossible to interpret in a way that sounds persuasive and definitive.

So, I prefer Drongs to represent of the Taoist tradition.

First of all, he wrote in dialogue form, right?

And as you know, this book is written in dialogue form, so it's easier to draw on Drongs of for that purpose. Yeah, so I really, I mean, I had to make some choices

“and I think Drongs is ultimately more deeper”

and more original sinker than Lao Zha, who may have been more widely cited, I'm not sure. Well, the proverb's like nature of Lao Zha makes him easier to cite, particularly for people who have not done a deep dive into this.

So, I was going to make a very unflattering comparison that I will refrain from, but it's sort of like, out to me, Rien Joannza is like reading in actual Zen master, even he's not Zen, while reading Lao Zha is kind of like trying to learn

about Zen from reading Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance. There's a level of depth and property present in one that I don't think is as present in the other. I agree, but just for the benefit of our audience who is not read your book yet,

can you just give a quick introduction? We need to take more than a few minutes on who the eight speakers are and what they represent. And then we'll get into the specifics of the dialogues you posit.

Okay, thanks. So it's four chapters and this chapter has two thinkers in dialogue with each other. And they represent quite radically different perspectives. And I try to present each thinker in a as persuasive

a way as possible drawing on their original words to the extent possible. And often those thinkers were in dialogue with each other in their times.

So the first dialogue is between Confucius

and drawings on to what extent the state should enforce family virtues or, for example, divorce law or whether state should promote Philopiety, caring for and reverence for the elderly and for ancestors.

“I think both thinkers and have very different views on that.”

So I selected Confucius, of course, because he's as a name suggests the most influential thinker in the Confucian tradition. But actually the name and English Confucian tradition is a bit misleading because we think of Buddhism,

everything of Buddha and Buddhism as the founding father and the rest is pretty much all details or Christ and Christianity. But Confucius himself, in Chinese it's the tradition's rule. It's a tradition without the name

of Confucius being part of tradition. And he himself, you themselves, as an interpreter of an older tradition. And even claim that he didn't have any original ideas. I'm not sure that's true.

So he's influential thinker in this tradition, but not like the founding father by any means. And then Drons as we were saying, as I think is the most is a deepest thinker in the Daoist tradition. These schools became labeled as such only after the China was unified

in the Han Dynasty. In those days, they weren't kind of formal schools. They were great thinkers who were arguing from certain perspectives and subsequently their views became labeled as schools and traditions.

So that's the first dialogue.

The second one is between Han Feitsa who, as mentioned, he's the great thinker who systematized the legalist tradition with Shrinza. Shrinza was his teacher in actual history. And Shrinza had a view that he was right.

They were both operating in the worst time of the war in the world's states period. When it was absolutely, it was very, very difficult to have be optimistic about human nature. A constant warfare, credible cruelty on an almost daily

basis. And Shrinza, well, we have a tendency to batonists, but we can overcome that through education, through reading great books, through having great teachers, and especially through participating in rituals

that generate a sense of community among participants. Whereas his students, Han Feitsa said, "No, we're born by and we stay by

“"and the only way to establish orders through these harsh laws."”

So that dialogue is about how should we use law or ritual to reduce corruption government. And that's, you know, I'm going theme still today. I mean, frankly, I don't know many people in the Chinese government, but when I do speak to them about this current anti-corruption campaign,

no, the language I'll use, it's sometimes so crazy. It's too legalists, and we need more confusionism.

That doesn't, it'll never invoke Marxism or the liberal tradition,

which has very little to say on these issues. It's quite fascinating to what extent these thinkers are still so influential today in the discourse. Sometimes private discourse sometimes public. So the third dialogue is between Mozart,

who's the founding, while we could call him, the founding father of the Moist tradition. And these were things I like. Today we would use word populists to describe them.

And they were, they viewed themselves as representatives

of lower class people. And they thought the main task of the status to secure the material well-being of the people, not waste money on these elaborate ceremonies that confusions like whether it's funerals,

and certainly not waste money on musical arts and culture, which appeal only to an elite. On the other hand, so I have a combination of two people here, one is Shrinsa, who's mentioned earlier. But the other is, there's this text called Yedge,

which means the record of music. So I imagine that, thinker, as Yedge, is a she in this text represents the confusion tradition

“that why music is important in our life,”

and why the government has an important role in promoting music. And the last one is a dialogue between menches, monks and Chinese, who arguably was the most influential confusion after Confucius himself.

And he had a very elaborate theory, but we would call today just war. Under what conditions it is morally appropriate to launch a war, whether it's a defensive war, or what he called punitive expedition,

which is what today we would call him anti-air intervention. As opposed to Shanyang, he was a thinker before Han Feidzeb, who was hugely influential on Chinese history, because he had great, he was an advisor to state of Qin, which we'd like to certain extent on his means,

to strengthen the state of the military, to unify China, and have them debate about just war. And the case study here is whether mainland Shanyang can use military force

“to re-incorporate Taiwan, however you wanted to describe that.”

And we will certainly get to that, debate in particular before the end of this podcast. But I want to sort of, I want to do two things at once. I want to go through the dialogues one by one. But I also want us to sort of fast forward two thousand years

and contextualize these with contemporary Chinese debates. And your book does this to a certain extent, but I want to draw it out a little bit more.

Your first debate is about the merits fundamentally

of Kong's teaching, Confucianism. And the way Confucius has been either praised or criticized by the government of China, from pretty much the Mao era going forward. I'm thinking in particular the way

that Confucius was used in criticisms of Joe and Li, when he fell out of favor. There's no real analog in American politics or really anywhere in the Anglo-Sphere for using a thinker of antiquity as frequently

or as pointedly as Confucius has been used in contemporary China. And I was wondering if you could speak to that phenomenon a little bit, explain to people, perhaps better than I am, what I'm talking about exactly. And maybe positive reason or two for why Confucius's thoughts

have lasted so much longer in the PRC than any political thinker in the West has ever really lasted in his or her own country.

“- Yeah, okay, I think maybe we need to go back a little bit further.”

So after-- So Confucius wasn't so influential in his own day, right? The only became hugely influential starring the Han Dynasty when Confucius and was made into the official value system of the state.

And then it was promoted throughout most of Chinese imperial history as such. And so in the last two great Dynasties, the Ming and the Qing, all public officials had to enter public office through these examinations

and sent it first and foremost on learning the great Confucian texts. So by the time of the early 20th century, first examination system ended and then the whole imperial system collapsed

as you know in 1911, 1912. And then many of the students and intellectuals and political thinkers, they began to blame Confucianism for what they considered to be China's backwardness and poverty.

They said, look, these Western states are so powerful

and we need to learn from them. And we need to shed the ideas that they considered to be futile and patriarchal and backwards-looking and anti-milituristic, frankly, in order for China to develop

into a strong state that would allow us to compete with these Western powers and to prevent us from being carved up by Western powers and by Japan. So it started in 1919 especially and it went all the way to the culture of Lucian as you're saying

between 1966 and '76. So the dominant tradition in the 20th century if I can over simplify this tradition of anti-traditionalism were Chinese intellectuals and eventually the Chinese government

blamed China's traditions for its backwardness and there was an all-out effort to stamp out

and it took an extreme form in the culture of Lucian. But what happened after that after 1976

“is well, all of a sudden several things happen.”

First, there was a recognition that we went way too far

and this anti-intellectual kind of way and that actually there's a lot of great ideas in these thinkers, including the Confucian thinkers that ought to be revived and including that our useful for China's economic development

and modernization. But Confucianism is a very much of this world-late tradition. I mean, it's very diverse, but it has hardly anything to say about the afterlife. It has certain commitments about working hard,

about education, about saving for future generations and that all those kind of traits are actually useful for economic development. And also what happened after the late 1970s is that Marxism lost its hold

as a kind of motivating ideology for reformers and for young people. And there was a need to achieve some sort of values based the legitimacy that drawn much longer tradition with the Confucian political tradition at its core.

So that also helps to explain this revival. So by the time we get to the two years or eight Olympics in Beijing, you might remember, one character was nothing about Marxism, nothing about socialism. One character was selected to represent Chinese tradition

and it was its character of "Hua," which is usually translated as "Harmony,"

“but I think a better translation is diversity in harmony.”

And so this Confucian tradition was very much brought to the fore for this mixture of economic, I think, intellectual and political reasons. And it's made a huge comeback over the past four years,

which is very much an ongoing comeback. And it literally received its stamp of approval in 2014 when President Xi went to Chu Fu, which is like ground zero for the Confucian tradition. And he was handed two books about the Confucian tradition.

He said, "I will study this diligently." So now the Confucian tradition is taught in schools in universities and it's very much central to the education system and also to the, let's call it the values-based legitimacy of the government.

And there's also this huge intellectual flourishing of Confucian thought. I mean, as we know, there's been increasing censorship in China and most intellectuals are obviously against that. But that said, the Confucian tradition

is much more open than, for example, works on the liberal tradition. So you go to a bookstores in China, there's so many books

“from diverse perspectives on the Confucian tradition.”

In a way, it's good that the government has said, "This is what we mean by an official interpretation of the Confucian tradition." 'Cause that might be the kiss of death, 'cause that means everything else might be prescribed.

Actually, that's a bit what happened to the Marxist tradition. As an intellectual tradition, frankly, it's not very vibrant in China because there's one interpretation

and others are not discouraged, or sometimes not encouraged, sometimes actively discouraged. So that, I think that helps to explain the flourishing of the Confucian tradition.

But let me just say, even in the worst days of the 20th century, meaning the worst days of this tradition of anti-traditionalism,

Confucians always there under the surface,

like when it comes to family relations, it would, you know, this commitment to feel piety, you know, it's so central to the kind of ethical system of ordinary Chinese, you never went to it. And, or to give you another example

of how some of this is driven by the bottom-up. There's this tradition, there's this national holiday called the Qing Ming Festival, which is usually translated as a grave sweeping festival. How did that come about?

Well, tens of millions of Chinese took that day off to go sweep the graves of their ancestors and find the garment, just literally cadence, said, let's just make international holiday so that people to make it easier for people to do that.

And another interesting part is that, you know, Hong Kong is still very different than mainland China. And yeah, as you know, one country to system, okay, fine, there's not as strong a legal protection as there used to be.

But still, on issues like family law, it's very different system.

But in Hong Kong, you've always had

this strong commitment to feel piety, you know, for half of the people living public housing and they can get a subsidy if they live with their elderly parents, you know, I'm from Canada and it would be hard to imagine

that sort of policy in Canada, right? I mean, you have similar policies in Singapore, you know, in Vietnam, you know, in all of the Confucian heritage countries, regardless of the huge differences in their economic and political systems.

It's quite fascinating to me the last. So that's it. There's also a lot of empirical research by social psychologists who work on these issues and they measure it.

How these values influence people's outlooks. And again, a huge and very measurable differences between, there's a great book by Lee Jin. Family name is L.I., where it's called cultural foundations of learning by Cambridge University Press.

She also is a new book and she demonstrates empirically how there are very significant differences in between East Asians and Americans approaches to learning and some Asian Americans somehow are somewhere in the middle. You know, she demonstrates this empirically, it's quite fascinating.

Hey, have you ever heard of a very interesting moment?

One of the things you just mentioned, or one of the things I really wanted to tell you, a moment of freedom, a new mindset flow from Tuiqro's is a very interesting moment. And there can now be a whole different kind of experience. Nine years later, in the Balkon cabin, there's already 179,000,000 euros,

where you can be in the right direction and at my shift point, every moment is a dream. My shift. Now, when I hear you describe Confucius

“when the way you just did, I think of it very much as”

almost a virtue-based system. But the next dialogue focuses on legalism, which, although these ideas are promulgated, if not simultaneously contemporaneously, legalism is not something I would associate with virtue.

At least in the sense that it does not rely

on the personalities or intentions of citizens, quite the opposite. I think it's fair to say that Hanphasa might have the most negative view of humanity of any think or ever. I mean, this is somebody who makes John Calvin look like Mary Hopens

in terms of about the human condition. So, how does legalism spring up, roughly at the same time as Confucius, thoughts make their way through society, and how has it been adopted by latter-day triangle?

- So, the legalist tradition, it's somewhat later than the Confucius tradition, and it really reached its apogee in the warrants

“disappeared, especially towards the end.”

The most violent and chaotic part of the warrants disappeared. And this was a time when literally, as a state, you had to, it was a extreme form of social Darwinism. You had to kill others or else die yourself. And that was a dominant perception.

And in that context, not surprisingly, these Confucian ideas for political rule, which we lie more on what we call today, soft power, like persuasion and education, and rule by moral example, and informal rituals,

at a generated sense of community and love among participants, we're not very affected in that context. So, a long came legalist thinkers, and I think Shanyang is as negative, you know, as like pessimistic about human nature,

as Shanyang came first. He's one who developed this view that we need to rely on harsh laws to govern society. And in terms of foreign policy, we need to have this, as mentioned,

“this military meritocracy that relies strictly”

on observable criteria to promote soldiers, number of decaptate heads of enemy soldiers. And the whole military bureaucracy speak, bureaucracy by the chin state was reformed along those lines, and the chin eventually succeeded in unifying China.

And the first dynasty, right, by the self-style emperor, Shin Shihong, ruled a China largely according to these legalist ideas, but it only lasted 15 years. And why is that?

Well, Shwinsa, who is Hanfei's teacher, he predicted he says yes, the chinism was powerful state, and he might succeed in the short term by relying on these harsh means, but eventually people rebel.

They don't like to be ruled by these cruel means, and once they get an opportunity to rebel, they'll find it, and they'll do so. Plus, laws can cover everything.

There's always these gray areas,

and people will find ways around these gray areas. So even this kind of legalist aspiration to govern society by these laws, it's literally a totalitarian aspiration to govern people by means of these laws

that govern almost every day actions, regardless of what people think. As you say, it's not a virtue-based society, quite the opposite. You just look at people's behavior,

who cares what goes in people's minds. Shwinsa said, that's not gonna work. Eventually, people will rebel, and he was right. He actually predicted it would take three or four generations

and it allowed to call me 15 years. And after that, the legalist tradition largely died out as part of the official discourse, because the Confucians won the fight, so to speak. That said, as an informal kind of way of governing,

legalism continued to have huge influence, and arguably even the Confucian tradition took on boards, some of these legalist ideas. Like for example, this emphasis on impartiality, rule but impartial means.

Of course, everyone, the ruler himself, and it's usually him, was exempt from the rules, but the ruler should implement this rule of law

regardless of whether it's the rulers, kind of friends or family, they should be subject to the same rules that everyone else is subject to. It's commitment and impartiality.

That actually influenced the Confucian tradition later, even the examination system, which I think is China's great invention, you know, are you believe it?

- No, let me interrupt for a second,

'cause I fear the civil service examination system that China had is something that is very much going to be unfamiliar to most of our relationships. So can you sort of just not just explain what it is

“what I think the important thing about the examination system”

is also how much importance was placed on it. It had a sort of totemic significance that no application process in American government, for example, could ever reach. - Yeah, so that's right.

So first of all, there's some ideals, right? A political meritocracy that we're argued for by the Confucians and certain extent by other traditions too. And they argue that everybody should have an equal opportunity to participate in government,

but then there should be mechanism in place to select and promote public officials with superior ability and virtue. And different means were try to institutionalize this idea, none of which were very successful,

but eventually in the swayed dynasty, they came up with this wonderful idea. This is about 1,300 years ago that, well, let's try written examinations that would be open to all,

all men, of course, not women were not eligible. And then whoever succeeded at examinations, they could give them posts at lower those of garment and we could promote them, see their successful and they could rise to power that way.

Now, that examination system became very refined and made more systematic. So by the time we get to the Song Dynasty, they developed this idea. The examinations would be graded blind,

meaning that they would be copied out by somebody else so that the examiner wouldn't recognize the handwriting of the person who wrote the exams. And in some case in the Song Dynasty, if you did well on the exam,

you'd be given directly post at the highest levels of garment. I don't like the translation civil service because we think of, you know, in the West, we tend to think, well, we have civil servants who are selected by examinations

in a merit-to-cratic way, but then we have elected politicians, and in principle, the civil servants serve the politicians. But in the case of the examinations, all public officials, except for the emperor himself,

would need to go through the examinations

as a first step, and maybe sometimes final step,

to having political power. So I prefer the translation examinations for public officials. And that has been part of the revival of the tradition, is starting the late 1970s,

two forms of examinations were used to select public officials. The first is the Galko, which is the examination to get into universities. Again, now, of course, it's gender blind,

all people have equal opportunity to get into university. And after that, you have these other examinations called a Gorgian call shirt,

“which means, I think, the good translation examinations”

for public officials. They have to go through those two examinations in order to be put on the road to political power. So it's quite fascinating. You have the same kind of method in form

that you had throughout imperial history, meaning first examinations, and then performance evaluations that lower those of garment, that has been re-established more or less

in the same way that you had it throughout imperial China. The content is deferred, of course, but the form is more or less the same. It's quite fascinating, it's continuity. Now, I want to move on to your third dialogue.

And I'll confess I was a little taken aback by it, and that is probably simply because

I personally have always focused much more

on China's external relations than on how the CCP views its obligations to its own citizenry. And your third dialogue is fundamentally, and I'm vastly oversimplified in things here,

so feel free to push back. But it's fundamentally about state subsidization of the arts. Can you sort of talk about why you felt that

“was an important topic to place within the context”

of all these other dialogues? Just because I'll be honest, it's not something I'm really familiar with as a major debate within the PRC. - Well, so I served as dean at Shandong University.

And Shandong University is the home of the Confucian culture, right? And part of my mission was to promote Confucianism. And the Confucians placed heavy emphasis on the promotion of rituals and music

as a way of generating a sense of community, care, and harmony among participants. And that is a very ancient view

but then we also faced a kind of counter-reaction against now less framed as Moist,

“but as sometimes it's their label themselves as Marxist,”

who would say, this is all kind of stuff for the elites.

No, look at Shandong, it's a hundred million people.

We've stopped some people living in poverty. We should first and foremost deal with poverty with providing for people's basic material well-being. This was a very much a live debate. And these ideas of who argue

against these Confucian emphasis on music, they were the Moist, who were literally were going right after the Confucians precisely for that reason. And then Shwinsa, towards the end of the war and says, period was arguing very forcefully against the Moist

for being kind of very vulgar view of human flourishing. They didn't seem to be very-- I mean, they didn't deny that music is beautiful and joyful, but they just said that it's not that's hasc of the state to promote music.

And so these same issues were very much live when I was in Shandong province.

“That's why I set this dialogue in a kind of poor part”

of Shandong province where you can imagine people arguing about these issues. And actually, one of the interesting parts about China is that it's, of course, it's not a democracy, but you have some democratic mechanisms,

including the experiments with deliberative polling. And so I imagined one, and some of them were in parts of China, not in Shandong as far as I know. So I had to-- it was a bit of creative license. I imagined the little bit of poll in his poor part

of Shandong province, with farmers, largely farmers selected at random, one person arguing from most respective against finding a community center for culture and music, and another who's more

most inspirationary, no, we should focus first

and foremost on poverty. So again, my book has two ends. One is to present these debates, make them accessible, easy

“to understand, and a fairly entertaining way.”

But the other is to show there's still highly relevant today, and I thought it made sense to set it in Shandong province, where these debates are very similar to me when I served as dean of a school of public policy. Make sense.

I do want to move on to your fourth dialogue, largely because we are recording this podcast as a major summit between President Trump and Xi Jinping is concluding. And based on the earlier reports, I digested so far,

it doesn't really look like much of substance was decided, we'll see what pronouncements come out from the respective governments in the days ahead. But there is a lot of anticipation and a lot of consternation about what was the PRC going to demand

with respect towards US Taiwan policy? And how was the United States going to react and either reaffirm its defense commitment to Taiwan or sort of pull back in the hopes of gaining concessions in other areas from the PRC?

And your fourth dialogue is very much a debate about whether the PRC should promote unification, through peaceful conciliatory persuasive means, or whether it should resort to, and I don't mean this in a denigrating way,

sort of a brute force militaristic approach. There is a lot of speculation that Xi Jinping,

ultimately is more inclined or at least willing

to consider the brute force approach if the consulatory approach appears to be taking frankly not much longer. And I guess I'm curious, how much do you think the debate you created

in your dialogue mirrors the debates that are going on within the quarters of power at the CCP as we speak? - Well, it's hard to know exactly, right? But what I do know is that at least until recently,

the ministry of foreign affairs would sometimes host debates between thinkers who have presented different perspectives and have them argue about those issues, literally in Jiangnanhai sometimes.

So I try to imagine thinkers who have presented these two major traditions that are close, I mean, if one of you is kind of Western analogies, one is closest to the more idealistic view, this confusion view that we should rely if it comes to war,

we should be the last resort and there should be very strict conditions before we could morally launch a war whereas the legalists were saying, no, no, no, whatever works is fine. If we can use force in an effective way,

we should, and who cares about the morality,

in fact, this is where they're more Machiavella

and Machiavella himself.

“Like Xiang would say, we need to be more cruel than our enemies.”

That's the only thing that works. So Taiwan is a red line and in this debate, I imagine that it would be triggered by more events in Taiwan and maybe US where we can imagine if Taiwan moves closer towards declaring formal independence

and if there seems to be some sort of support in the US for that move, it's very, we can predict with like the high level of certainty that mainland China will face a lot of pressure to use military power against Taiwan.

So in that context, I imagine a debate between these kind of ultra-realists and these more soft-hearted confusions

and to what extent it's realistic,

I mean, of course, I'm sure there'll be other factors involved, but I just thought to make these debates very accessible and show how there's still timeless. This would be one effective way of doing so. I'm not sure it was effective.

I found it effective. I thought, I mean, I quite enjoyed it. We did another podcast, an episode of podcast called "Rational Security" where we were talking about cross-strait issues itself.

So when I got to that chapter shortly after recording that podcast,

“the timing was very fortuitous and I think I got more audivates”

than you maybe even may have intended because it forced me to question a lot of my own assumptions about what I perceive as the uniformity of thought

within the Chinese government with respect to Taiwan,

but you sort of disabuse readers of the notion that there is a uniformity of thought. So I guess that leads to my final question for today, which is of the various schools that you advocate and who provide the thoughts behind the statements

and the dialogues. Do you think that there's one which at least in this moment in contemporary times is really prevalent in China or are we better off understanding political theory in the PRC and I'm emphatically not using this word

in a Marxist concept, but should we consider a political theory in China more of a dialectic where the various schools of thoughts are still very much in dialogue, still very much contending with each other

and creating syntheses that maybe their original progenitors would not have considered. In other words, is this a dynamic process or has one school thought at least in our contemporary moment gage supremacy?

- Oh, I think it's more dynamic and one of the reasons to go back to another point that you raised why the Confucian tradition has been so influential is that it's constantly engaged with other traditions and taken on board its insights.

So now those who are defend Confucians in today you have this school called Progressive Confucians and they want to reinterpret the tradition so that it's more compatible with for example modern ideas of gender equality and also giving a greater role

for common people in the political system and all these schools now have a lot of scholarly current scholarly interpretations.

“Which one is dumb and I think it's still the Confucian tradition”

because it's much richer and diverse than other traditions. That said, we're in a current time where if China feels encircled by other powers and if it feels that its security is under a great deal of danger, frankly, the legalist school,

even if it's not labeled as such, will become more influential. So it depends a bit on China's future in times of chaos and warfare. I'm afraid that the soft-hearted Confucians

won't have much impact. But to be a bit optimistic, I mean, I think these are as we know there's increasing repression in China and increasing constraints on freedom of speech.

So yeah, know that about that. I wrote a book about my experience during as dean and the longest chapter was on constraints on academic freedom. But I'm still a little bit optimistic about the future

meaning that there'll be more open society in China and in which case the Confucian tradition will become more dominant again. And that's for, I guess a few reasons. One is that the current generation they have leaders.

They went through the cultural revolution, which really gave them a very pessimistic and paranoid mindset. But the next generation of leaders won't have gone through that. And they might be more open to let's call it

a more open form of society.

is the most kind of pro-engagement person

in the Trump administration. That's sort of you prevails. And China feels less threatened by the US.

“And I think people from outside the can change China,”

but what it can do is certain people and the kind of pro-secured people in the Chinese government they can latch on to these threats to increase their own power. Like when or put a different way.

When China joined the WTO, those were pro economic reform that could say, look, we have to go this way. It's not our fault. We join this and we have to proceed in this way. So if there's less external pressure on China,

I think these forces within the government that are more pro-reform and pro-open society will have more power. And it also relates to the anti-corruption campaign, which in my humble opinion has gone on much too long.

And it's relied more on legalist means, which has created so many enemies in the political system, which makes the leaders more paranoid. If that transitions towards a more kind of confusion and way of dealing with corruption,

“then I think also there'll be fewer enemies”

in the political system and the leaders will feel a bit more relaxed.

But ultimately what really gives me a little bit of hope

is that the younger generation, again, whether it's liberals or, yeah, very lively debates in Chinese, academia and in the government too, whether it's liberals or confusions or Marxists, like nobody I met, literally,

like under like 50 favors increase censorship, right? - When some people get in power, I think we can be a bit more optimistic. That said, I've been off and wrong in the past. And so please take whatever I say with a great thoughts, yes? - Well, right or wrong, it is very rare

that many of our podcasts did touch up on Chinese policy or Chinese politics that a speaker expresses much optimism. So perhaps that is a good place for us to leave it on a fleeting and rare moment of hope for this podcast. So Daniel Bell, I very much enjoyed your book,

why ancient Chinese political thought matters for our listenership who is not familiar with the antecedents of Chinese policy and Chinese culture. This is an excellent place to start. And thank you again for joining us today.

- Thanks, so very kind and I enjoy the cursesation. - The law fair podcast is produced by the Law Fair Institute.

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